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Murphy USA (No. 231) promoted COO Mindy K. West to CEO, effective Jan. 1. Valero Energy (No. 34) appointed Homer Bhullar as CFO, effective Jan. 1. Fiserv (No. 208) appointed Paul Todd as CFO, effective Oct. 31. CSX (No. 301) appointed Kevin Boone as CFO, effective Oct. 29. Hormel Foods (No. 352) appointed Paul Kuehneman as interim CFO, effective Oct. 27.

And more in this week's Fortune 500 Power Moves.

• Novo Nordisk (No. 368 on the Fortune Global 500) made an unsolicited bid for Metsera, a New York-based developer of obesity drugs that agreed to be acquired by Pfizer (No. 67) for up to $7.3 billion last month. Novo Nordisk’s bid is worth as much as $9 billion, per the Wall Street Journal, and gives Pfizer just four business days to make an offer Metsera considers better. Pfizer described Novo Nordisk’s offer as “illusory,” warning it is “prepared to pursue all legal avenues to enforce its rights under its agreement.”
• Thermo Fisher Scientific (No. 104) agreed to pay $8.88 billion for Clario Holdings, a company that helps collect, analyze, and manage clinical trial data. Thermo Fisher Scientific CEO Marc N. Casper wrote in a release announcing the acquisition that Clario will help the company perform “faster, more informed drug development.”
• Eli Lilly (No. 100) is partnering with Nvidia (No. 31) to build its own supercomputer to process decades of medical data and help the company develop and test medicines. Diogo Rau, chief information and digital officer at Eli Lilly, said in a statement that the move will help the company “set a new scientific standard that accelerates innovation to deliver medicines to more patients, faster.”
• Huntington Bancshares (No. 351) agreed to acquire Cadence Bank (No. 935 on the Fortune 1000), a regional bank managing $53 billion in assets across Texas and the South, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The announcement of the $7.4 billion deal comes just a week after Huntington completed its merger with Veritex Holdings, which also has a significant footprint in Texas.

• Amazon (No. 2) beat expectations with $180.2 billion in net sales for the quarter, driven by a 20% year-over-year increase in revenue from the company’s cloud business, Amazon Web Services, and growth in its digital advertising business. The results came just days after the company laid off more than 14,000 employees.
• Apple (No. 4) posted record sales for the quarter, even though iPhone revenue fell slightly short of expectations. CFO Kevan Parekh said the company expects next quarter to be its best ever, with 10% to 12% revenue growth year-over-year if holiday spending stays strong amid macroeconomic uncertainty.
• Alphabet (No. 7) beat earnings expectations with $102.35 billion in quarterly revenue, with the company increasing its projected AI spend for the year to as much as $93 billion. The company saw 15% year-over-year growth in revenue from its Search business and other advertising revenue, and, according to CEO Sundar Pichai, the company’s Cloud business has a $155 billion backlog.
• Microsoft (No. 14) experienced similar growth in its own cloud business, Azure, with revenue up 40% and pushing total revenue up 18% to $77.67 billion. The company also announced a $3.1 billion hit to its net income because of its investment in OpenAI.
• Meta Platforms (No. 22) announced plans to increase its AI spending in 2025 to between $70 billion and $72 billion, up from between $66 billion and $72 billion. During the earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg maintained that the company is experiencing “returns in the core business” from its AI investments.
• Starbucks (No. 126) reported that same-store sales rose in September for the first time in seven quarters, fueled by CEO Brian Niccol’s focus on improving customer experience and product innovation.
• Fiserv (No. 208) now expects just 3.5% to 4% revenue growth for the full year instead of a previously forecasted 10%. The adjustment comes as economic struggles continue in Argentina, where Fiserv experienced organic revenue growth of 329% in 2024. CEO Mike Lyons noted that the company had anticipated that demand from other countries would offset losses from Argentina, but has reprioritized long-term investments and shifted the C-suite.
• Chipotle (No. 372) cut its outlook for same-store sales for the third consecutive quarter as CEO Scott Boatwright blamed a high cost of living and unemployment for declining traffic from 25- to 35-year-olds.

Earnings calls next week include: Marathon Petroleum (No. 29), Pfizer (No. 67), Uber Technologies (No. 101), Amgen (No. 134), Apollo Global Management (No. 163), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) (No. 167), and Super Micro Computer (No. 292) on Nov. 4; Warner Bros. Discovery (No. 114) and Kenvue (No. 281) on Nov. 6; and others.

• Croatia’s former president, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, warned Europe is at risk of becoming a “geopolitical playground.”
• Omar M. Yaghi, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and UC Berkeley professor known as the inventor of reticular chemistry, asserted it is “not too late” to fix climate change.
• Delta Air Lines (No. 70) CEO Ed Bastian announced the airline will soon offer direct flights from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia.
• Ana Paula Assis, SVP and chair of EMEA and growth markets at IBM (No. 68), emphasized that business models need to be transformed to unlock AI’s true potential.
• Qualcomm (No. 117) CEO Cristiano Amon said that while “everybody’s playing to win,” when it comes to an AI bubble, it’s still too early to tell who will succeed.
• WeRide CEO Tony Han said that while autonomous driving can’t guarantee 100% safety, it could be 10 times safer than human drivers within the decade.
• Jeremy Allaire, CEO of stablecoin giant Circle, explained why international laws need to be updated for a “machine-governed economic system.”
• Mary Callahan Erdoes, CEO of JPMorgan Chase’s (No. 11) asset and wealth management business, said that AI stock valuations aren’t wrong—they’re just not right—yet.

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