Good morning.
Fortune Senior Editor-at-Large Shawn Tully filling in for Sheryl today. When Donald Trump announced yesterday that he was nominating Stephen Miran to fill a vacancy on the Fed’s board of governors, you could be forgiven for asking, Who?
The 41-year-old millennial, who has chaired the Council of Economic Advisors under Trump 2.0, is hardly a household name, even if you run in economics circles. But as I detailed at the beginning of the summer in Fortune for an in-depth profile, Miran has become Trump’s top pro-tariff ideologue.
As of this time last year, I wrote, “Miran was a virtual unknown in both political and economic circles. He’d worked in a variety of investment firms and never been an academic. He got on Trump’s radar by authoring a series of papers that matched the mindset of the ascendant, pro-tariff contingent in the Republican presidential campaign, including a now famous 41-page treatise Miran himself nicknamed ‘the Mar-a-Lago Accord’ that discussed a number of possible solutions to closing America’s yawning trade gap.”
That got him the nod as chair of the CEA, a position typically held by prestigious names plucked from top universities (Ben Bernanke, Jason Furman, Austan Goolsbee) or longtime Washington operatives (Jared Bernstein), or both. As I mentioned, “None of the dozen noted economists I interviewed for this story had ever met Miran, or heard of him before his ascension to head CEA. In a couple of cases, they fumbled his last name as ‘murr-Ann,’ as frequently do TV and podcast pundits (right pronunciation: ‘My-run’).”
As my sources told me, Miran is a rarity, a highly trained economist who knows all the jargon, has absorbed the peer studies, brings intellectual heft, and makes a logical-sounding case for Trump’s stunningly contrarian game plan. “To say the least, it’s a relatively small pool of PhD economists who are economic nationalists. That’s a blinding reality. But Steve is one,” says someone outside the administration who knows him.
You can read the whole story and hear from Miran himself, in the story here. But given that Miran, if confirmed, will be sharing the table with Trump nemesis and Fed chair Jerome Powell, one thing is for sure: CEOs, CFOs, and anyone watching the economy closely will be hearing the name Stephen Miran quite a bit this year.
Shawn Tully
Leaderboard
Some notable moves this week:
Kevin D. Cook was appointed CFO of Bumble Inc. (Nasdaq: BMBL), effective Aug. 12. Cook succeeds Ronald J. Fior, who is stepping down from his role as interim CFO and will serve in an advisory role through the end of August. Cook brings more than 30 years of financial management experience to Bumble, having served most recently as the CFO at Cloudera, Inc. He has also held roles as the SVP of finance, corporate development and investor relations at Cloudera and as the VP of strategic finance, corporate and business development at Barracuda Networks, Inc.
Costin Corneanu was named EVP and CFO of Amtrak, effective Aug. 4. Corneanu, who joined the company in 2020, has been serving as deputy CFO since January. He succeeds Tracie Winbigler, who will retire from Amtrak on Jan. 1, 2026. Until then, Winbigler will remain in her EVP role as chief transformation officer. Before joining Amtrak, Corneanu spent eight years at Spirit Airlines and four years at US Airways.
Eric Christel was appointed EVP and CFO of Bloomin’ Brands, Inc. (Nasdaq: BLMN), parent company of brands including Outback Steakhouse. Christel joined the company on Aug. 4 for a transition period and will assume the CFO role on Sept. 8. Current CFO Michael Healy will assume the newly created role of EVP, strategy and transformation. Christel brings nearly two decades of experience, including his role as SVP and CFO of The Campbell’s Company’s Snacks Division and several leadership roles at PepsiCo.
Michael Graham was appointed CFO of ZoomInfo (Nasdaq: GTM), a business-to-business database and intelligence platform, effective Aug. 1. O’Brien has served as interim CFO since September 2024. Before that, he held various roles at the company since December 2017, most recently as VP of FP&A since 2023. Prior to joining the company, O’Brien held accounting positions at RainKing Solutions and Kaseya.
Jennifer Fall Jung was appointed CFO and secretary of Sportsman’s Warehouse Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: SPWH), effective Aug. 18. Fall Jung has over 25 years of experience, previously serving as EVP and CFO of The Duckhorn Portfolio, Inc. and CFO of Funko, Inc., a publicly traded consumer goods company.
Big Deal
An analysis by S&P Global Market Intelligence finds that U.S. corporate bankruptcies in July reached their highest monthly total since 2020. Large public and private company bankruptcy filings rose to 71 in July, up from a revised 66 in June, marking the highest single-month figure since July 2020. Year-to-date bankruptcy filings totaled 446 through the end of July, the most for this seven-month period since 2010, according to the report. The data includes public companies with debts or assets of at least $2 million, and private companies with at least $10 million in assets or liabilities at the time of filing.
Going deeper
Here are four Fortune weekend reads:
“DoorDash is worth $100 billion thanks to dominating U.S. restaurant delivery. A much larger opportunity is starting to come into view” by Jason Del Rey
“A bright spot for Tesla shareholders: Under Elon Musk’s new $27 billion comp package, their fate is now intertwined with his” by Shawn Tully
“Palantir’s CTO became an overnight billionaire thanks to soaring stock—he’s the $411 billion AI firm’s fifth insider to join the ultra-wealthy club” by Preston Fore
“Here’s the one-page memo Warren Buffett sent to his managers every two years for over 25 years” by Jessica Coacci
Overheard
“I’m pretty particular about making sure that what goes in the recycle bin actually is in the bin. Even at our house, we have two girls, 22 and 20, and they’re pretty good about it, too.”
—Jim Fish, CEO of the Fortune 500 company WM (Waste Management), said in an interview during an episode of Fortune‘s Leadership Next podcast.
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