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A woman CEO, Phebe Novakovic,  at American defense company General Dynamics says in an interview says she is patriotic and shares her experience growing up in Europe during the Cold War, as the daughter of an Air Force officer.  She also talks about her first job interviews  when she was turned down for jobs after being 7 months pregnant. Women are now CEO's or hold senior positions at defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing,in four of the five largest U.S. defense companies. Most of them including women in the Pentagon are low key and private in their conversations. On the divisiveness in the U.S. Novakovic has some direct comments. She says she wories profoundly about this, especially the part that means there is no national narrative, just conflicting angry opinions that are corrosive and cancerous. This is because democracy requires shared values and a strong nation requires its own national narrative. She points out that in this way you can destroy yourself faster than an enemy can destroy you. About tech companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon not wanting to work with the U.S. government she says she is alarmed because this shows an ignorance about where they think their freedom comes from, where their platform of innovation and technology comes from, which is the strength and vitality of the U.S. as a nation.  ...

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Wal-Mart promotes Doug McMillon, head of the expanding international operations since 2005, to the CEO position. He started as buyer trainee in sporting goods in 1991. He is a native of Jonesboro, Arkansas, and was mentored by Chairman Rob Walton of Wal-Mart. The current CEO Mr. Duke took the position in 2009. He will stay on as advisor to McMillon for one year, a practice followed by Wal-Mart, with the prior CEO Mr Scott staying on for 2 years when Mr. Duke took the position. Under Mr McMillon international operations in Mexico, China, India, Japan and other countries now make up 29% of sales of $135 billion for the year ending in Jan 31, 2013.

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A mid-July 2011 CBS poll on where Tea party supporters stand on raising the debt ceiling and on a balanced deficit reduction approach combining tax increases and spending cuts. This poll shows 66% of Tea Party supporters saying Republicans in Congress should compromise on their positions to reach an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. Only 31% said they should stick to their positions even if this meant not reaching an agreement. On a balanced approach 53% said it should be the path taken including tax increases and spending cuts for a solution to deficits, and 45% said only spending cuts was the right way. This shows a more flexible Tea Party than is presented in the media reports and strident statements of politicians.

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The VW emissions scandal lingers on five years after the rigging of of millions of diesel vehicles to cheat emissions tests. Now former CEO Martin Winterkorn is ordered to face trial on charges of defrauding customers. It is interesting to note how it all started was a grandiose ambition set by Winterkorn according to this report in the WSJ, to make VW the largest auto company in the world ahead of Toyota and General Motors and push sales of diesel vehicles in the U.S. with "clean diesel vehicles." At this time of pandemic it is appropriate to note that the world has changed since 1946 when the wages of top managers were 2 times that of a Caterpillar company worker, and reached level of 400 times a worker for some executives of companies before the pandemic.  Even in supposedly egalitarian countries where worker representatives are on boards such as Germany, the wages had pushed way upwards to about 170 times the salary of the average worker at VW in 2015 when the emissions crisis erupted. This VW episode shows that the grandiose ambitions of executives were another part of the problem before the pandemic. Today the VW disaster has led to a completely opposite result. Diesel is not taking over the U.S. it is now the now the no go in Germany, as diesel vehicles are being phased out. Instead Germany's auto industry is now making large investments in the electric car industry. Significantly chancellor Merkel and the CDU no longer see the automobile industry in Germany as having some kind of special status and the shift to electric is being made with the planned loss of jobs and a restructuring to replace lost jobs with other jobs over 10 years. And the SPD has called for a legal ratio of the average ratio of a company's top managers  in relation to a workers wage at the same company. The pandemic has put things in perspective on a number of fronts, from wage relationships, health, healthcare and wellbeing, healthy lifestyles, mental health, making clear that health and a commonsense idea of fairness, good infrastructure, and sensible wage relations all go together in this world that the creator made. ...

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Matthias Muller, 61, is the new choice for CEO of VW following the emissions scandal in 2015. Changes at VW with the departure of Mr. Winterkorn, include the resignation of Ulrich Hackenberg, chief engineer of Audi, Wolfgang Hatz, chief of R&D at Porsche, and Heinz-Jakob Neusser, development chief of Porsche. Hatz and Hackenberg worked closely with Winterkorn. VW says about 11 million cars were equiped with the software that turned off the emissions control mechanism on the road. This was on the VW Passat, Jetta, Audi 3, all built on the same platform and using this software to circumvent emissions controls. The new head of VW USA is Mr. Vahland, 58, head of Skoda, who is a former manufacturing strategy review chief of GM Europe. Matthias Muller, is backed by the Porsche-Piech families that are large shareholders in VW. Ferdinand Piech had actually lost confidence in Winterkorn and tried to remove him from the CEO position in April 2015, before a turn of events led to the emissions scandal. Muller completed an apprenticeship with Audi in 1977, followed by studying computer engineering at the Munich University of Applied Sciences. In 1984 he joined Audi's IT department, becoming product manager for Audi 3 in 1993, and taking on overall product management at Audi in 1995. In 2007 VW's new CEO Winterkorn appointed him head of product strategy for VW, and in 2010 to the CEO position at Porsche....

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Shell's new CEO in 2014, Ben Van Beurden, is from the "downstream side" of refining and chemicals, where there is less tolerance for the cost overruns seen in heavy engineering type oil exploration projects. He is Dutch and worked for Shell for 30 years. He says profits are "too low" and Shell will focus on reduced spending and capital efficiency. Shell is withdrawing from exploration in Alaska and divesting some assets.

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Adidas new CEO Kasper Rorsted, of Danish origin, adopted a costcutting approach at Henkel. Adidas needs to improve margins in its competition with Nike. It has also lost ground in European markets. He is seen as an American CEO in Germany.

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K.V. Kamath, former CEO of ICICI Bank, will become the new nonexecutive chairman of Infosys. S.D. Shibulal, the chief operating officer, will be the new CEO of Infosys. Mr Shibulal said he will pursue a new strategy that will align the company's businesses on the basis of industries, service lines and geographies. Infosys stock is down 16%, and it is experiencing weak growth. This follows a period when the founders of the company, including Mr. Narayana Murthy, played a dominant role in management.

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Apple shift to new CEO John Ternus Explained.

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September 2014 interview with Dave Lessar, CEO of Halliburton, where he discusses criticism of the company over its fracking activiies.

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As part of his plans to revive Sony, CEO Hirai plans to increase sales in emerging markets by 44% in 3 years. Sony is the leading brand for television, audio equipment, and notebook computers in India. Hirai plans to increase operating margins to 5%, and increase revenues by 33%, by March 2015. The outgoing CEO, Mr. Stringer reached 5.4% operating margin in the fiscal year ending March 2008, but things changed after the global financial crisis and the problems in 2011 with the tsunami and earthquake in Japan and floods in Thailand. Sony also plans to start a new medical business with medical diagnostic products, and endoscope type products that use its advanced image sensors. Sony plans to focus on mobile devices, digital cameras, and videogames for further investment.

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How will the rise of renewables solar, wind and hydropower, nuclear change the demand and supply of oil and gas by 2030? How will this affect producers such as Russia, Saudis/UAE, and the US? And how will it affect China and India and the US? This question is answered by the new IEA forecast model that shows the demand at 105 million barrels a day in 2030, and supply at 113 million barrels a day, showing that renewable will have increased by 2030 to produce an oversupply of oil and gas. After 2031 this gap will widen and grow so that oil and gas prices will drop. This will accelerate the growth of India and China. Indian prime minister Modi tells people in towns across the country that the government will help people to put solar panels on homes so that instead of paying an oil and gas bill the energy generated from solar and added to the grid will give them a check every month to add to income.

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The remarkable story of how a CEO of a $4 billion food company is running the business from a children's bedroom. The founder of the plant based alternative meat maker is a biochemist who lives in Northern California Bay area. His employees are based in Redwood City, California. Mr. Brown, 65, communicates with his employees from here. He is also a marathon runner and a believer in fitness. He sets a 90 minute no meting time for employees when they can take a breather, get some fresh air, and walk around.

He has given employees, including hourly and temporary workers, paid leave so they can stay and work from home. The plant is closed with a third party in Chicago meeting commitments for its products manufacturing.He will reconsider restarting the plant April 7 if demand is higher than the supply. He views this as the right action and right thinking, as by stickling with his employees he believes they will stick with him in the long run.

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Research In Motion's new CEO, Thorsten Heins, worked at Siemens for 23 years. He joined RIM in 2007. During the Siemens years Heins was head of the communications business and cheif of technology. At RIM he was the chief operating officer. He was brought into the company to bring new perspectives and fresh thinking into RIM. As COO he was in charge of hardware, software and more recently of sales. He said he plans on continuing the current strategy with better execution in product development and introduction and in marketing. RIM will continue focus on its next generation operating system, which it hopes to license to other companies.

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Blackberry CEO Heins is interviewed by the WSJ's Will Connors in January 2013 during the launch of the Blackberry 10 touchscreen smartphone.

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Carlos Tavares runs Stellantis the company that combined the operations of France's Peugeot, Italy's Fiat and America's Chrysler right out of his living room in his Lisbon, Portugal home one week every month. He is a believer in the advantages of hybrid work model and says most of the 75,000 workers at the company can work remotely most of the time.The quality time that is generated in this new work model that allows life balance and getting fresh air walks outside is needed when you consider that auto companies such as his are embracing world of electric cars- Stellantis will have 75 models of electric cars by 2030 In this interview with the WSJ shown here he says the fact that one is giving back high quality time that otherwise goes to commuting means you get more time during the day. Carlos Tavares says remote work is an opportunity to recreate a better life balance. He doesn't see any risk in it at all. He sees how hard people are working, harder than they did before, and says giving back one half hour or two hours of quality time actually helps the process of getting good work. Look he says after a long day of remote work people need that time to go out and have a walk for an hour just to refresh one's mind, because the work was so intense. Tavares asks why shouldn't we trust each other? He believes it is the only way to go. Asked about his own work routine for remote work.He says it is the Portuguese routine of  7 am to 4 pm or 5 pm and then an hour out for a walk. He has a small desk in his living room, and he is sitting there with his iPad, grandkids are going by but nobody sees them. Does he miss the face to face contact? He does says Tavares. He still sees other employees as he does go to the office. What about mentoring for junior  employees? This does not have to be five days a week, you may want coaching one day a week, what you don't want is someone on your back five days a week. For Tavares it is all about the quality of time that is used. On company culture the much abused word Tavares makes some good points. If you say this is the culture and hand it to somebody then how do you get that creative mind to exercize his own judgement, how do you get diversity of thinking. Tavares is forthright and honest here- he says if I give you a culture and put you in that box I will get it wrong, and by killing the valuable diversity of thinking I will make it counterproductive. Actually with French, Italian and American operations under one roof and employees of 170 nationalities there is a value in appreciating the value each employee can bring. Practices at Stellantis- Tavares says if you want your people to be in game shape or in great shape mentally don't call them or email them on weekends, so that they can use the weekend to recharge themselves. He even apologizes for calling on a weekend. Or if you email your people tell them to not respond till Monday. ...

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Pascal Soriot is made the new CEO of AstraZeneca PLC. He was chief operating officer of Roche's pharmaceutical division and CEO of Genentech before the merger with Roche.

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Frenchman Christophe Weber, 47, is head of Glaxo's vaccine business. He is the next CEO of Japanese pharmaceutical manufacturer Takeda Pharmaceutical Company. He will succeed President Yasuchika Hasegawa. Weber will join Takeda in April as chief operating officer and become president in June 2014. Hasegawa will continue as interim CEO for one year and Weber is expected to succeed Hasegawa, 67, at that point. Hasegawa has run the company for 10 years. During this period Takeda has expanded internationally. Takeda acquired Swiss drug company Nycomed in 2011. Executives were hired from western companies. Francois-Xavier Roger, of Luxembourg's Millicom International Cellular SA was made the chief financial officer, and Phillip Duncan of Novartis joined as chief procurement officer. Hasegawa sees new talent from western companies as useful in penetrating emerging markets. Weber also headed Glaxo's Asia/Pacific operations. Hasegawa told a news confernece: "We're no longer in an age where decisions are based on whether a person is Japanese or foreign." ...

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Nike changes CEO's as it's directly selling to buyers strategy and cutting off ties to retailers struggles, with gains for Adidas and New Balance.

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About 100 million barrels in storage on the sea accessible in Iran War during March 2026.

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Dick Costolo resigns as CEO of Twitter in June 2015. Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey will be the interim CEO. This follows a high turnover in senior managers at the company, with the departure of the COO, CFO, and replacement of 4 product chiefs. Quick decisions by Costolo in the early days before the IPO helped the company, but are now seen as a weakness for Twitter. Twitter share price was down 20% after reporting weak revenue growth for the last quarter.

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Carlos Tavares of Nissan is made the new CEO of Peugeot in November 2013.