Good morning! Levi’s is selling Dockers, senators share concerns with Paramount Global Chair Shari Redstone, and Fortune’s Most Powerful Women International Summit is underway.
– Fortune‘s global investment. Fortune’s first Most Powerful Women International Summit in the Middle East kicked off Tuesday, where my colleagues, including Emma Hinchliffe, Diane Brady, and Alyson Shontell, hosted panels with Lisa McGeough, president, CEO, and head of banking at HSBC U.S.; H.E. Dr. Hala bint Mazyad Al-Tuwaijri, Saudi Arabia’s head of human rights; and Accenture CEO Julie Sweet, who is No. 2 on Fortune’s list of the Most Powerful Women in Business for 2025.
Diane’s interview with Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, chief investment officer and head of the investment strategy group at Goldman Sachs, caught my attention, as she discussed the heightened emotions many individual investors might be feeling now due to the current political environment in the U.S., something that Fortune has reported on extensively. But Mossavar-Rahmani took a more measured approach, saying while the Trump administration has introduced more volatility into the markets with its tariff policies, corporate America is still hopeful for more deregulation across different sectors that she says could be a boon to the market.
She also doubled down on what she called the U.S.’s market preeminence: Though things look uncertain and unstable now, the U.S. is still tough to beat on a number of metrics, including productivity and corporate management. “From an investment perspective, from an economic perspective, we say the U.S. is preeminent, and those factors are not going to get affected by any one administration.”
Mossavar-Rahmani also discussed what Goldman looks for in job candidates. A base level of education is good, she says, but better still that the person is passionate about something. She will often look for the “less common things” on a candidate’s résumé, and dig deeper into those during multiple rounds of interviews.
“Years and years ago, somebody said, ‘Don’t always hire the most intelligent person, hire somebody who is intelligent enough, but has a great attitude.’ And that has actually always stayed with me,” she said. “You need to have somebody who’s incredibly enthusiastic, somebody who’s passionate, and, more than anything, somebody who’s intellectually curious.”
Today in Riyadh the Fortune team will welcome Somi Javaid, founder of HerMD; Kinda Ibrahim, TikTok’s general manager of operations for the Middle East, Turkey Africa, Pakistan, and South Asia; and Theresa May, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, among many others. You can watch the livestream here.
Alicia Adamczyk
alicia.adamczyk@fortune.com
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