Table of contents for June/July 2022 in Fortune

▸ IS IT TIME FOR A “MAXIMUM WAGE”? Fortune recently posed that question to our 1.8 million LinkedIn followers. Over 10,000 responses poured in, with the overwhelming majority—65%—saying yes. That sentiment—the strong sense that some corporate leaders get paid too much—has been around for as long as we’ve had corporate leaders. A 1982 Fortune cover story called executive compensation at the time “madness.” A 2003 cover called it out again: “Their performance stank last year, yet most CEOs got paid more than ever.” Over time, the outcry has gotten louder, but CEO pay keeps pushing higher. From the late 1970s through 2020, realized compensation for chief executives rose 1,322%, according to the Economic Policy Institute. That’s a far bigger bump than investors got from the S&P 500 over that…

▸ BEFORE ALEXIS MCGILL Johnson became the CEO of Planned Parenthood, she was the cofounder of Perception Institute, an organization that advises C-suite executives and other leaders on issues of bias and discrimination. It’s a background that’s serving her well today. Since the May leak of the Supreme Court draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade, her phone has been ringing nonstop. On the line: CEOs seeking her counsel as they face not only an end to the constitutional protection of abortion rights, but also the growing expectation that they do something about it. “Businesses have a strategic imperative here,” she says. That imperative? Take action. While companies may have once considered the issue outside their purview, the end of Roe v. Wade will have profound financial consequences, as Treasury…

• EVEN BY THE STANDARDS of a high-powered Fortune 500 media mogul, David Zaslav has generated an inordinate number of headlines over the past year or so. And most of them involved giant gobs of money. In May 2021, Zaslav’s Discovery Inc. agreed to buy AT&T’s WarnerMedia unit, the Hollywood studio heavyweight that also owns HBO and CNN. The megamerger was valued at $43 billion, and it saddled the newly formed Warner Bros. Discovery, the company Zaslav runs today as CEO, with a gargantuan total of $55 billion in debt. A limited series’ worth of drama ensued. This February, two months before the merger closed, CNN boss Jeff Zucker—a close friend of Zaslav’s—abruptly resigned over an undisclosed romantic relationship with a subordinate. Zucker’s downfall complicated the high-profile debut of CNN+,…

Fortune Five Hundred REVENUES $7.8 BILLION Coinbase PROFITS $3.6 BILLION No. 437 EMPLOYEES 3,730 TOTAL RETURN TO SHAREHOLDERS (FIRST TRADE DATE THROUGH MAY 18, 2022) –79.5% • WHEN IT COMES to being first, Coinbase has racked up an impressive list of achievements. It was among the first cryptocurrency startups in the country when it launched a decade ago. It went on to become the first crypto unicorn, nabbing a $1.6 billion valuation in 2017. It was the first crypto exchange company to list on Nasdaq in 2021. And it was probably the first stop for your cousin, third-grade teacher, and maybe even your grandma when wading into the wild waters of crypto. It certainly was the first company in history to spend millions bouncing a QR code around the screen…

METHODOLOGY Companies are ranked by total revenues for their respective fiscal years. Included in the survey are companies that are incorporated in the U.S., operate in the U.S., and file financial statements with a government agency. This includes private companies and cooperatives that file a 10-K or a comparable financial statement with a government agency, and mutual insurance companies that file with state regulators. It also includes companies that file with a government agency but are owned by private companies, domestic or foreign, that do not file such financial statements. Excluded are private companies not filing with a government agency; companies incorporated outside the U.S.; and U.S. companies consolidated by other companies, domestic or foreign, that file with a government agency. Also excluded are companies that failed to report…

▸ SNAKEHEAD FISH looks like a nightmare and tastes like a dream. Chef Gregory James had never heard of the species before moving to Maryland’s Eastern Shore to reinvent the restaurants at the Inn at Perry Cabin, the luxury hotel in St. Michaels. Last spring, two fishermen showed up at his kitchen door with a fresh catch of the fang-toothed cross between a catfish and an eel. Since then, the snakehead has blessed his menu—and his food-cost Excel. “It’s delicious, and a whole fish costs me about $6,” he says. It’s a win for James whenever one of the Inn’s blazered-and-seersuckered diners savors the monster with caramelized sweet potato coins, apples, arugula, and a swoosh of mustard—on a $105 tasting menu. Around the country, the restaurant business is booming…

THIS EDITED Q&A HAS BEEN CONDENSED FOR SPACE AND CLARITY. “We’re all competing for the same talent. If Tech Company A lowers your pay and we don’t, then you are going to come work for us.” MAN ON THE MOVE You’re actually living in Airbnbs full-time right now. What has that experience been like? CHESKY: I started living on Airbnb in January. I’ve lived in about a dozen places: Atlanta, Nashville, Charleston, Miami, Boston, Chicago, a couple of places in Colorado, Vancouver. Right now I’m in New York. [I stay at each] a little under a week. Moving can be difficult, but I’ve just embraced it. I pack pretty light. It’s really just [golden retriever puppy] Sophie; she’s my primary accessory. There are two things I’ve learned. One, you…

▸ IT WAS MAY 5—day 71 of Europe’s biggest military conflict since the Second World War. At a flash point on the front line in eastern Ukraine, “the enemy was really close,” recalls Oleksandr, a Ukrainian Special Forces lieutenant whose last name and exact location are being withheld for security reasons. Oleksandr’s fighters urgently needed to relay details about Russian troop numbers and weapons back to their base. Then their comms line cut out. Russian forces had launched a barrage of missiles along the front, and the strike had severed a strategically vital mobile network. But the line wasn’t down for long. Oleksandr’s unit scrambled to rig up gear that they had carried to the front: a portable Starlink satellite receiver and transmitter, not much bigger than a desktop…

▸ ELON MUSK’S campaign to buy Twitter is a big business story that’s masking an even bigger one. The bid has had the media buzzing about Musk’s plans for his takeover target. The mogul wants to transform the social media platform into an anything-goes town square, which might mean restoring Donald Trump’s megaphone. And pundits wonder whether the maverick can really quintuple the ailing company’s revenues in five years, as he’s been promising. So far, Musk’s vacillating, race-then-retreat pursuit has been a disaster for Twitter’s operations and stockholders. After agreeing in April to take Twitter private at $54.20 a share, Musk began stalling a few weeks later, alleging that the number of “bots” and fake accounts on the platform was far higher than Twitter claimed. Many have seen that gambit…

• IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for the conspiracy theorists to weave a fresh tragedy into their twisted narrative. Just hours after a disturbed 18-year-old armed with an AR-15 assault rifle and racist hate walked into a grocery store in Buffalo and murdered 10 innocent people, on Sunday, May 15, the mass shooting was already being reimagined as part of a plot involving some of the world’s largest companies. The thread is convoluted, but it boils down to this: A rising number of zealots in the internet’s back alleys, like 8kun, BitChute, and GETTR—egged on by the scare-mongering pundits Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson—insist the hate crime was a false flag operation orchestrated by U.S. federal agents, who trained the shooter and arranged the attack as a means of rekindling public…

¶ Includes revenues from discontinued operations. C A cooperative. E Excise taxes have been deducted. L A limited liability company. P A partnership. R A real estate investment trust. 1 Figures are for fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2022. 2 Figures are for fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2021. 3 Figures are for fiscal year ended March 31, 2021. 4 Figures are for fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2021. 5 Spun off WarnerMedia which merged with Discovery to become Warner Bros. Discovery (2021 Rank: 310), April 8, 2022. 6 Figures are for fiscal year ended June 30, 2021. 7 Acquired Magellan Health (2020 rank: 390), Jan. 4, 2022. 8 Changed name from Facebook, Oct. 28, 2021. 9 Company’s senior preferred stock is owned by the U.S. Treasury, which also…

TOP 25 METRO AREAS WITH THE HIGHEST SHARE OF $1 MILLION HOMES AS OF FEBRUARY 2022 EVEN BEFORE THE PANDEMIC kicked off a homebuying boom across the U.S., the city of Anaheim, near Los Angeles, was one of the most expensive real estate markets in America. More than a quarter of its houses were valued at $1 million or more pre-COVID. By February 2022, according to brokerage firm Redfin, that figure had jumped to 55%—the biggest percentage-point gain of any market in the country. But Anaheim isn’t exactly an outlier. Over the past couple of years, the total share of million-dollar homes in the U.S. has nearly doubled, from 4.8% to 8.2%. And the market is especially extreme in California. Nearly 90% of houses in San Francisco, for example, are…

BUSINESS. DISTILLED. ▸ What in the world—the business world, that is—went wrong last New Year’s Eve? Apparently some cranky cosmic bureaucrat in charge of business conditions woke up the next morning with a truly epic hangover. On the first day back to work, Jan. 3, the S&P 500 closed at an all-time high—and has traveled along a jagged downward path since. Four days later, interest rates jumped to their highest level since before the pandemic. Three days after that, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that inflation had cracked 7% for the first time since 1982. By mid-month, COVID’s Omicron variant had pushed average daily U.S. cases to a towering all-time high over 800,000. That was just January. Since then, Russia has invaded Ukraine; supply chains, which expert consensus agreed…

Fortune Five Hundred REVENUES $136 BILLION Ford PROFITS $18 BILLION No. 22 EMPLOYEES 183,000 TOTAL RETURN TO SHAREHOLDERS (2011–2021 ANNUAL RATE) 11.1% General Motors REVENUES $127 BILLION No. 25 PROFITS $10 BILLION EMPLOYEES 157,000 TOTAL RETURN TO SHAREHOLDERS (2011–2021 ANNUAL RATE) 14.2% • IN DEARBORN, JUST OUTSIDE Detroit, the auto industry’s past and future face each other across an access road. The location is Rouge River, the sprawling century-old factory complex where Ford Motor Co. made Model A’s for the masses. One of the busiest plants on the 600-acre campus churns out the gas-powered F-150 pickup, America’s bestselling vehicle for the past four decades and Ford’s most profitable model. But just across the street stands a building whose signage places it in a new era: the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center.…

Walmart held on to the top spot on the 500 for a 10th straight year. Over the past decade, the gargantuan retailer has tallied a total of $5.1 trillion in revenue. Amazon landed at No. 2 for a third straight year and shot past $450 billion in sales, as new CEO Andy Jassy took the helm from founder Jeff Bezos. Apple set a new Fortune 500 record for profits with some $95 billion in net income in 2021. It also grew total sales by one-third compared with the previous year. Exxon Mobil benefited hugely from higher crude prices. The oil giant moved up to No. 6 on the strength of a 57% sales gain and recorded $23 billion in profit. REVENUE RANKING FOR THE FORTUNE 2022 TOP 10 SECTORS RELATIVE…