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Cost management has become the leading internal focus for finance leaders, as companies balance pressure to invest in technology with the need to protect margins, according to Deloitte’s first-quarter 2026 CFO Signals survey. The survey of 200 North American CFOs found that nearly half cite investment in new technologies (49%) and shrinking profit margins (48%) as key drivers of cost control efforts, with most organizations opting to redirect spending rather than cut it outright. Around 52% are reallocating operating expenditure, while fewer are reducing overall budgets. Technology is seen as central to managing costs, with 53% of CFOs identifying automation and tech upgrades as the most effective lever, and cloud-based planning, budgeting, and forecasting tools ranked as the most valuable solution. However, challenges remain, including organizational silos (46%), outdated systems (39%), and misalignment between strategy and cost initiatives (38%), which continue to hinder effective cost management.

 

Wall Street Journal

Most Finance Teams Are Piloting AI But Seeing Little Return  

52% of finance teams are in active AI pilots, yet only 1 in 5 report meaningful integration of AI into core processes. For CFOs, the pressure to move fast is real, but so is the risk of stalling in experimentation mode. A new CFO AI Roadmap outlines a structured path from pilot to practice, covering AI maturity assessment, governance, and prioritizing use cases across planning, forecasting, reporting, and close.  

Get the CFO AI Roadmap

 

American International Group has announced that Eric Andersen will become chief executive from 1 June 2026, with Peter Zaffino transitioning to executive chair, completing a previously outlined succession plan aimed at maintaining strategic continuity. Mr. Andersen, who joined as president and CEO-elect in February, will also join the board, while the company highlighted Mr. Zaffino’s role in its recent transformation and return to profitability, including a net profit of $3.1bn in 2025 and $6.8bn returned to shareholders.

 

Insurance Business

Rivian has disclosed that chief executive RJ Scaringe received total compensation of $403m for 2025, driven primarily by $373m in stock options and $26.6m in stock awards, making his pay around 13 times higher than the next best-paid U.S. auto executive. The package, largely performance-based and tied to ambitious stock price and financial targets, forms part of a long-term incentive plan that could be worth up to $4.6bn over a decade if achieved, despite Rivian remaining loss-making and its shares having fallen 86% since its 2021 IPO. The company last week started production of its smaller R2 SUVs, with customer deliveries expected later this spring, targeting the low-cost sector to increase demand and boost profits.

 

Financial Times

Reuters

Chipotle has appointed former Burger King and Activision Blizzard executive Fernando Machado as chief brand officer effective June 1st, replacing Chris Brandt who departed in January, as the company looks to strengthen its marketing strategy and brand growth. Mr. Machado, who previously served as global chief marketing officer at Restaurant Brands International, is expected to enhance customer engagement and support long-term growth, while interim marketing lead Stephanie Perdue has been promoted to senior vice president of brand marketing.

 

Orange County Business Journal

​Public hearings are taking place at the U.S. International Trade Commission headquarters in ⁠Washington regarding ​a set of ongoing Section 301 unfair ‌trade practices investigations into dozens of countries suspected of failing to act to prevent imports of goods made using forced labor. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer's office last month launched ​investigations into the economies of ​60 countries, including major U.S. trade partners and allies such as Australia, Canada, the European Union, Britain, Israel, India, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, saying they failed to ban imports of goods ‌produced ⁠with forced labor. Witnesses at the hearings are expected to include human rights groups, U.S. industry groups and representatives of foreign governments.

 

Reuters

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan has heard extensive arguments over a proposed $38bn settlement between Visa, Mastercard, and merchants in a long-running antitrust dispute over credit card “swipe fees”, with a decision on preliminary approval pending following a nearly three-hour hearing. The revised agreement, intended to resolve litigation dating back to 2005, would see the card networks lower interchange fees by 0.1 percentage points for five years, cap standard consumer card fees at 1.25% for eight years, and allow merchants greater flexibility to reject certain categories of higher-cost cards and impose surcharges, changes aimed at easing costs for retailers. However, major merchant groups and companies including Walmart have opposed the deal, arguing it fails to meaningfully increase competition and still forces retailers into difficult choices between accepting high-fee rewards cards or losing sales, while restrictions such as the “honor all issuers” rule would remain in place.

 

Bloomberg

Reuters

The Democratic Republic of Congo is creating an armed security force to guard the country's mining sites and secure supply chains. The ​initiative will be funded by a $100m budget under strategic partnerships with ​the United States and the United Arab Emirates, the General Inspectorate ⁠of Mines (IGM) said. The 'Mining Guard' unit is expected to reach more than 20,000 personnel by the end of 2028. “The will of the President of the Republic is to clean up the entire mining sector, by eliminating ​practices that run ​counter to good ⁠governance, transparency and the traceability of minerals,” said Rafael Kabengele, the country’s inspector general of mines.

 

AP News

Financial Times

Reuters

Activist investor Starboard Value has taken a top-five stake in artificial intelligence (AI) software company Dynatrace and is urging strategic and operational changes to improve its underperforming share price. Starboard argues that despite strong positioning in AI-driven observability software, Dynatrace’s growth has stalled and its valuation lags peers, prompting calls to reduce sales and marketing costs, expand margins, and accelerate share buybacks beyond its existing $1bn programme, with potential returns of over $2.5bn in three years.

 

Wall Street Journal

Microsoft is rolling out its Copilot 365 AI assistant to all of Accenture's roughly 743,000 employees. Reuters notes that Accenture is one of the most aggressive corporate adopters of AI, and has even tied top-level promotions to usage of the technology. The latest move is further to Accenture's plan in 2024 to deploy Copilot ​to as many as 300,000 staff. Almost all (97%) of employees said Copilot helped them complete routine tasks up to 15 times faster, and more than half  ​(53%) reported major gains in productivity, according to a company ​poll of ⁠200,000 users. "Our teams are already doing higher-value work because of it," Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said.

 

U.S. News

Apple is facing a labor complaint alleging it is treating unionized employees unfairly as it closes its Towson, Maryland store, the first in the company’s U.S. network to unionize, by requiring staff to reapply for roles rather than allowing transfers to other locations. The International Association of Machinists claims this differs from Apple’s approach at two non-union stores also being closed, where employees are reportedly being allowed to transfer, arguing the policy amounts to retaliation for union membership. Apple denies the allegation, stating it is complying with the existing labor agreement, which provides severance and priority hiring only under certain conditions, and cites declining retail conditions at the mall as the reason for the closure. The dispute is the latest in a series of complaints filed with the US National Labor Relations Board amid ongoing unionization efforts across Apple’s retail workforce, with the company continuing to contest allegations of anti-union behavior.

 

CBS News

Reuters

Chinese state-sponsored hackers are using botnets of compromised IoT (Internet of Things) and SOHO (small-office home-office) devices as their cybercriminal infrastructure, according to a new 10-country joint security advisory. Security agencies including the US Department of Justice, UK National Cyber Security Centre and US National Security Agency have published a paper titled “Defending against China-nexus covert networks of compromised devices,” which says hackers are using the botnets to steal people’s data, or disrupt activities. "Anyone who is a target of China-nexus cyber actors may be impacted by the use of covert networks," the report says. "The use of covert networks of compromised devices - also known as botnets - to facilitate malicious cyber activity is not new, but China-nexus cyber actors are now using them strategically, and at scale."

 

Financial Times

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