2021’s Biggest Market Risks | CEO’s Warning For Trump | Where’s Jack Ma?

Plus: Meet Amazon’s New Airforce

Happy new year, and welcome back. If you’re like me, everything you pushed off to “deal with in January” has jarringly resurfaced. It’s OK, we’ll get it done. To help, Forbes has picked the must-read stories you may have missed over the holiday break. In this edition of the newsletter we highlight important recaps of the key CEO and leadership trends of 2020, look at threats to the 2021 markets and explore influential new developments in the world of organized tech labor. Cheers to a better and transformative year—I’m excited for it to get going.

Must Reads

Dear President Trump:  CEOs from Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, Microsoft and 197 other companies sent to Congress a letter acknowledging Joe Biden’s presidential victory and demanded that the government go forward in establishing the new administration. Jemima McEvoy has the story and what it signals for the increasingly active role of CEOs in public affairs. 

Where is the market going? No one ever knows. But our Jonathan Ponciano breaks down new analysis from Morgan Stanley on what it sees as the biggest risks to the current run-away bull market. 

Top bosses of 2020: To cap off the year and look ahead to 2021, we compiled—with the help of Laurel Strategies’ Alan Fleischmann—a list of the most inspirational CEOs of 2020 and who will steer the conversation in the new year. Check out the Forbes CEO Awards here.

CEO Profile

Data Point

$58.4 billion

The net worth of Chinese tech icon Jack Ma. The pioneering founder of Alibaba and Ant Group has not been seen since criticizing the Chinese government in late October. Jack Kelly has the story of the high-powered spat and thoughts on where Ma might be. 

Check List

Meet the C-Suite of the future: Vicky Valet shares the new executive positions every modern CEO must add to their leadership dream team. 

Healthcare hiccup: In 2018, a group of the most admired CEOs in business—Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimond—revealed they were teaming up to create a new company to disrupt the healthcare industry. Seems the healthcare industry disrupted them. Rachel Sandler has the story of why their secretive startup, dubbed Haven, is shutting down. 

Coders of the world unite! A group of Google employees have unionized. Siladitya Ray explains why they did and what it means in the union-adverse industry of big tech.