Finance

JPMorgan and BlackRock C-Suite Departures Highlight Succession Challenges in Finance

The recent departures of CEO candidates at BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase highlight the difficulty of finding an outstanding replacement, as well as the challenge of retaining top talent. Experts say the exit announcements of potential CEO successors at both firms serve as a stark reminder that CEO transitions are far from straightforward, particularly in the high-stakes world of top finance roles.

Mark Wiedman, BlackRock's leading client-facing executive and a potential successor to CEO Larry Fink, announced on Wednesday that he would step down from his role in the spring after a 20-year tenure with the company.

TECH

Tech's Big Bet on AI 'Agents': Stock Boost or Job Killer?

For the past two years, software companies have been promising that generative artificial intelligence would drive significant sales growth, all while downplaying any potential negative impact on human workers. However, those promised sales boosts have yet to fully materialize, and the software is still struggling to live up to the hype. Despite this, executives continue to make similar promises about the next generation of generative AI—though with one key shift. Now, they aren’t hesitating to position this new innovation as direct competition for human jobs.

This new frontier is AI “agents.” If you're immersed in the tech world, you've likely heard the phrase “2025 is the year of agentic AI” more frequently than “Happy New Year” in recent weeks. Essentially, AI agents represent the next evolution of software bots, capable of taking actions rather than merely repeating information sourced from the internet.

“I think the easiest way to think of agents is they’re kind of yesterday’s bots on steroids,” said Maribel Lopez, founder and principal analyst at Lopez Research.

While Microsoft’s Copilot has become the flagship product for the first generation of generative AI software, Salesforce has beat Microsoft to the punch with agents. Its Agentforce 2.0 is rolling out now, and CEO Marc Benioff has been actively promoting it as part of a “multitrillion-dollar market.”

In a recent interview on the On Watch by MarketWatch podcast, Benioff made his pitch clear: "Digital labor." He also highlighted how Agentforce could help customers reduce costs by replacing certain human workers.

When discussing how Agentforce is being monetized, Benioff shared that the technology has already been used at Salesforce’s help desk, where it halved the number of customer-support inquiries that required human intervention. By reducing the number of support staff, Benioff was able to reallocate resources elsewhere and believes his customers could achieve similar results.

“There’s just less for the support organization to do because of what we’ve done already with help.salesforce.com and by delivering an agentic layer for our customers. And I think that’s going to be an example for other customers to do this. And that, I think, is very cool,” he said.

When asked how workers might feel about being replaced by AI agents, Benioff stood firm.

“The labor market, as you know, is very stagnant,” he said. “We have declining birth rates in a lot of countries. We don’t have people to hire. There aren’t people to fill a lot of these positions, and it’s hard to grow your business. And now it’s going to be much easier to grow your business because you’re going to be able to do it with digital labor.”

CRYPTO

Trump to Issue Crypto-Friendly Orders in First Days of Presidency

President-elect Donald Trump plans to leverage his executive authority to ease the regulatory challenges for cryptocurrency companies and encourage the adoption of digital assets in the early days of his administration, according to three individuals familiar with the plan. Trump, who attracted crypto supporters during his campaign with promises to be a "crypto president," is expected to sign an executive order establishing a crypto advisory council—an initiative he first proposed in July, according to two of the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.