The one-upmanship driving CEOs

AS FIREFIGHTERS doused the flames that engulfed Notre-Dame in 2019, Francois-Henri Pinault, the business leader whose family controls the luxury group Kering, put up an eye-watering 100 million euros (S$150.6 million) to rebuild the historic French cathedral. Just hours later, rival chief executive officer Bernard Arnault of LVMH shot back with a 200 million euro gift. It was the perfect display of CEO one-upmanship – philanthropy, but with an element of competition.

Bosses talk endlessly about customers, investors and employees, yet the audience they are often most anxious to impress is each other. From industry conferences to LinkedIn posts, these are arenas for peer rivalry – who is portrayed as the most visionary, whose message is going viral or whose approach to artificial intelligence or sustainability is best.

“Ultimately, CEOs are competing against each other,” one headhunter told me. For publicly listed companies, “their primary obligation is to perform better than other CEOs in their sector”. Board directors and investors prioritise relative performance, and these executives know it.