This Billionaire Wants To Save America’s Newspapers. He Thinks He’s Found A Way
Luisa Kroll, Forbes Staff
9 min read
Every morning, 140 newspapers from 29 states are delivered to the front door of David Hoffmann’s $105 million, 24,202-square-foot estate in the Port Royal neighborhood of Naples, Florida. The papers, all but nine of which he owns and which range in circulation from 5,000 to 250,000, eventually make their way to Hoffmann’s office. There the 73-year-old billionaire settles into his leather blue desk chair, facing the bay, and starts reading. He divides the papers into two stacks: the toss pile and the “red pen” pile—papers he marks up with a felt-tip. He’ll discuss the red pen pile later with Nathan Bekke, the interim CEO of Lee Enterprises, one of the nation’s biggest newspaper chains, in which Hoffmann took a controlling interest in February. Sometimes it’s an inflammatory headline that catches his eye. Other times it’s politics: Associated Press stories, for instance, are sometimes a little to the left for him. He also dislikes articles that don’t portray a city in the most accurate light.
Jamel Toppin for Forbes
“I am going to save newspapers in America,” declares Hoffmann, who owns 42 titles outright plus a 53% stake in Lee, which publishes 70-plus newspapers including the St. Louis Post- Dispatch, Buffalo News and Omaha World- Herald. “I am hopefully going to do something for America that is meaningful and far-reaching.”
That’s a bold claim given the industry’s struggles. Nearly 40% of U.S. newspapers have vanished in the past two decades, leaving 50 million Americans in “news deserts” with limited or no access to a reliable source of local info, according to the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University. The problem is getting worse: More than 130 papers shut down in 2025. The internet won’t help: Monthly unique page views of the 100 largest U.S. papers are down more than 45% on average over the past four years, per Medill.
But Hoffmann believes he has found a strategy to make local papers not only survive but thrive: a seemingly simple blend of preserving cash and making a profit while doubling down on what he calls “hyperlocal” content. The nation’s largest newspaper chain, Gannett, and Palm Beach–based investment firm Alden Global Capital, which owns more than 170 titles, are both notorious for cutting staff. But Hoffmann has branded layoffs a “bad word.” He’s even adding a few newsroom jobs to bolster coverage of local tourism, sports and business, reflecting his unabashed belief that such boosterism is important for communities’ health.
As he rolls up more papers, he’s consolidating payroll, sharing services like legal and marketing among titles and sometimes reducing the frequency of the printed product; online he’s pivoting toward paywalls. All local publishers have full P&L responsibility and share in the profits if they hit their numbers.
Mega Manse: Married for 54 years, David and Jerri Hoffmann needed a big place to host their three kids, 13 grandkids and many Midwestern friends visiting Florida. So last year they paid $85 million and $20 million for adjacent homes with a combined 12 bedrooms, 16 bathrooms, a gym, a pool and a home theater over 24,000 square feet.
HF Companies
It seems to be working. Every one of the 48 titles he’s bought since 2022 and owns outright through Hoffmann Media Group is making money. As for Lee Enterprises, he’s providing a massive liquidity injection that restructured the company’s troubling debt. As of January, Lee Enterprises was sitting on $455 million in debt—a legacy of its 2020 purchase of Berkshire Hathaway’s 31 newspapers—carrying a 9% interest rate. Hoffmann’s $50 million equity placement (of which he personally contributed $35 million) allowed the company to negotiate that rate down to 5% for five years, instantly wiping $18 million in annual interest payments off the books. Other immediate steps he took after assuming control in early February: installing Bekke (formerly COO) as interim CEO (Lee’s former CEO retired as part of the deal), eliminating a third of the board and consolidating some printing plant operations. “The team wasn’t winning, and we needed a new coach,” Hoffmann says. The stock has doubled since the deal was announced.
With debt stabilized, Hoffmann is doubling down on that ultra-local coverage. That starts with high school sports, which bring places together. He quickly inked a partnership with Nebraska sports tech firm Hudl, whose tech enables papers to show nearly instant game highlights online as a way to build subscriber loyalty and attract advertisers. Lee Enterprises will roll out Hudl, which is already being used in St. Louis, across other markets in the next six to eight months.
Hoffmann is in the middle of a roadshow to meet business leaders in Lee’s key markets, which started in St. Louis in March and is continuing on to Omaha, Nebraska; Buffalo, New York; Richmond and Roanoke, Virginia; Madison, Wisconsin; and Phoenix. While on the road, he is pitching businesses to subscribe and advertise. (Hoffmann wants to be the top salesperson and has already brought in over a half-million dollars in annual ad revenue and 500 new subscribers.)
patrick welsh for forbes
How to play it
By William Baldwin
Once upon a time, small-town monopoly newspapers were precious. Nostalgic investors might thus gravitate to the scarcely profitable Lee Enterprises or USA Today. Those with a cooler head will prefer News Corporation, whose press lord, Rupert Murdoch, has skillfully pivoted to the digital age. In the interpretation by the folks running AVI Global Trust, a London closed-end, News Corp. is not so much a media company as a family holding company trading at a discount to the value of its assets. Among those: the Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins, Dow Jones Energy, the Factiva news tracking service and 61% of the Australian real estate middleman REA Group.
William Baldwin is Forbes’ Investment Strategies columnist. Illustration by Patrick Welsh for Forbes
His dedication to small-town news traces back to his childhood in Washington, Missouri, about an hour outside St. Louis, where his father, a World War II vet with a seventh-grade education, drove a milk truck, and his mother, an orphan, waited tables and later cared for newborns at the local hospital. The family had no running hot water until he was in high school, something he sees as “an advantage, not a disadvantage.” Sports were his lifeline; he got a scholarship to play football and baseball at Northeast Missouri State University. He quit school when injuries kept him out but later put himself through the University of Central Missouri doing factory work and baling hay. After graduating with a degree in industrial safety and occupational health, he worked for several companies including Pullman Standard, which manufactured New York’s subway cars.
At 36, he put two mortgages on his house to start an executive search firm, DHR Global. These days, through his Hoffmann Family of Companies, he has investments in more than 125 businesses, from Missouri wineries to Mississippi River cruises to a minor league hockey team in Estero, Florida. He’s also buying the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins, pending league approval. “He’s not afraid to take a risk, because he knows what it’s like to come from nothing,” says his son Greg, who runs the family’s real estate business. “He has built his core fundamentals not around success but what he believes in.”
It was a trip to visit his hockey-playing grandsons, Henry and George, and soccer-playing granddaughter, Adelaide, on Chicago’s North Shore in 2021 that got him into the newspaper business. Still a big sports fan, he wanted to read about the kids’ games and see their photos in the paper, but the local Glenview, Illinois, Pioneer Press had recently shut down. He looked into buying it but was too late. Laid-off staff had scattered; equipment had been sold. “I thought ‘This is wrong,’ ” he recalls. “That was the moment I knew I was going to embark on a program to save newspapers in small towns in America.”
A star athlete in high school, David Hoffmann (middle) loves local sports, despite the fact that his own athletic career ended up with him quitting in college, forgoing his football and baseball scholarship because he was getting beaten up too much.
Hoffmann Family of Companies
A year later, around the time his two sons became co-CEOs of his holding company, Hoffmann made his first foray into media, buying Fort Myers–based Florida Weekly, founded by Pason Gaddis, a Gannett veteran who is now CEO of Hoffmann’s privately held media group. From there the pair picked up a handful of titles in tourist spots including Michigan’s Mackinac Island Town Crier (2023), California’s Napa Valley Register (2024) and Colorado’s Telluride Times (September 2025) and Aspen Daily News (December 2025). Another key part of the plan is to focus increasingly on original local content and rely less on third parties like the Associated Press, which provides most small papers with their national and international news. Hoffmann and Gaddis are also interested in using their papers to host events, like RV and house-and-garden shows. “Similar to how musicians had to move from record sales to concerts, we see an opportunity to leverage our brand trust to be an event leader in our communities,” Gaddis says.
As for AI’s impact, Hoffmann is not concerned, explaining that he thinks there is a place for it but that it won’t replace good, trusted journalism. Adds Gaddis, “Exploring AI monetization, not fearing it, we understand the digital transformation and are doubling down.”
With letters of intent signed to buy another nine publications, and more in the pipeline, Hoffmann is keen to irrigate as many news deserts as he can—and with a net worth of $2.6 billion, he has plenty of money to do so. He knows he has skeptics. But with his focus on profitability, he remains bullish. “It’s not brain surgery. . . . We don’t mind being judged on our performance,” says Hoffmann, whose own small-town success story reminds him why these American locales are still worth the investment.
Note: April 6, Story was updated to reflect that Alden Global Capital is an investment firm not a hedge fund.
AP says it will offer buyouts as part of pivot away from newspaper-focused history
FILE - The Associated Press logo is shown at the entrance to the news organization's office in New York, July 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Aaron Jackson, File) ·Associated Press
DAVID BAUDER
5 min read
The Associated Press, one of the world's oldest and most influential news organizations, said Monday it is offering buyouts to an unspecified number of its U.S.-based journalists as part of an acceleration away from the focus on newspapers and their print journalism that sustained the company since the mid-1800s.
The News Media Guild, the union that represents AP journalists, said more than 120 of the staff members it represents received buyout offers on Monday.
The news organization is becoming more focused on visual journalism and developing new revenue sources, particularly through companies investing in artificial intelligence, to cope with the economic collapse of many legacy news outlets. Once the lion’s share of AP’s revenue, big newspaper companies now account for 10% of its income.
“We’re not a newspaper company and we haven’t been for quite some time,” Julie Pace, executive editor and senior vice president of the AP, said in an interview.
Despite changes – the company has doubled the number of video journalists it employs in the United States since 2022 – remnants of a staffing structure built largely to provide stories to newspapers and broadcasters in individual states have remained.
That has its roots well back in American history; the AP was started in the mid-19th century by New York newspapers looking to share the costs of reporting outside their immediate territory.
Exact numbers of staff reduction unclear
The number of AP journalists who will lose jobs is murky, in part intentionally. The AP does not say how many journalists it employs, though it has a large international presence as well as its U.S. staff. Pace said the AP's goal is to reduce its global staff by less than 5%.
Since buyouts are being offered now to only U.S. journalists, it stands to reason that the cut among that workforce will be more than 5%. Whether there are layoffs depends on how many people take the offer, Pace said.
“The AP employs hundreds of talented journalists who are willing and able to adjust to the changing media landscape,” the union said in a statement. “However, the company refuses to offer them appropriate training and tools. Instead, AP continues to get rid of experienced staff and flirt with artificial intelligence — ignoring the opportunity to differentiate AP news stories as ones that are and always will be created by human journalists.”
The union said AP ignored a request last week to bargain over artificial intelligence. The news outlet had no immediate comment on that claim, or the union's estimate of how many people were offered buyouts. It's not clear whether the buyout offers were concluded by Monday afternoon.
Over the past four years, the AP’s revenue from newspapers has declined by 25%. Gannett and McClatchy, two of the largest traditional newspaper publishers, dropped AP in 2024.
In recent days, the company learned that Lee Enterprises — publishers of newspapers like The Buffalo News, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Richmond Times-Dispatch — is seeking an early exit from a contract due to expire at the end of 2026.
Pace said the buyout plan was in the works before learning about Lee Enterprises. “We made a decision earlier this year that we needed to be bolder in this transformation,” she said.
An even higher focus on the day’s biggest stories
Besides the transition to more video capabilities, the AP is deploying rapid-response teams where staff members, no matter their geographic base, contribute to the day’s big stories, she said. The AP is putting more journalists on beats to break news on topics of known customer interest. But it is committed to maintaining a presence in all 50 states.
“The AP is not in trouble,” Pace said. “We’re making these changes from a position of strength but we’re doing so now to recognize our changing customer base.”
Those customers now are dominated by broadcast, digital and technology companies, an illustration of where people are getting news. The AP has seen 200% growth in revenue from technology companies over the last four years, said Kristin Heitmann, senior vice president and chief revenue officer.
The AP was among the first news outlets to make a deal with an AI company, agreeing in 2023 to lease part of its text archive to OpenAI as it built out its capabilities. The AP launched on Snowflake Marketplace last year to license data directly to enterprises building their own system. It has launched AP Intelligence, a division designed to sell data to financial and advertising sectors, for example.
Google contracted with AP last year to deliver news through the Gemini chatbot, the tech giant’s first deal with a news publisher.
“If you can think of a large technology company,” Heitmann said, “they are a customer of ours.”
Predictions markets now part of the picture for AP
Last month, the AP agreed to sell U.S. elections data to Kalshi, the world’s largest predictions market.
AP’s long tradition in counting and analyzing elections data is another growth area; the company saw a 30% increase in customers between the 2020 and 2024 cycles. It got an additional boost last year when ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN signed on to the service.
The company, traditionally a wholesaler of news to other companies, has also seen growing interest in its direct-to-consumer product, apnews.com, which provides revenue through advertising and donations.
The new business frontiers do not indicate a weakening in the AP’s standards of providing fast, accurate, non-biased news, leaders said. “If anything, it makes it more important that we retain these values as we make the transition,” Pace said.
The AP is trying new forms of fact-checking, including use of video, and more often putting its journalists in public to explain how they got particular stories, she said.
“I think that authenticity, and the fact that you can associate a real person who is often quite experienced and quite deep on their beats … it builds more credibility,” she said. “We’re really trying to embrace that because I do think it’s vital when there is so much misinformation out there.”
This story was originally published on Retail Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Retail Dive newsletter.
Dive Brief:
Less than a year after taking sole leadership of On, Martin Hoffmann is stepping down as CEO, effective May 1. The company described his departure as voluntary and planned.
Co-founders David Allemann and Caspar Coppetti take the reins from him as co-CEOs and board co-chairs. Co-founder Olivier Bernhard will stay on as an executive member of the board.
Scott Maguire, appointed chief innovation officer in April, is being promoted to president and chief operating officer. As previously announced, Frank Sluis will be chief financial officer, a role Hoffmann held for 13 years, even after he became co-CEO five years ago.
Dive Insight:
On is presenting Hoffmann’s departure as his decision “to take a planned hiatus and pursue philanthropic interests.”
At the same time, though, the company characterized the leadership shakeup as an “updated model” that keeps the founders looped into its daily operations and strategy and “ensures On remains agile and decisive while continuing to scale."
Speaking to Retail Dive earlier this year about his first months as the only chief executive, Hoffmann said leadership was well-positioned.
“I think we have an amazing team — a very wide leadership team, which is there for many, many, years — and this team is leading the brand,” he said.
The move announced Wednesday is likely a response to business getting more complex for On, especially as Nike improves, according to Jefferies analysts led by Randal Konik. Last year, On’s annual net sales topped 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.8 billion at the time of the release) for the first time, up 30% year on year, with gross margin expanding to 62.8%, up from 60.6% the prior year.
However, the total addressable market for On “is not as big as the market thinks, so growth will slow, margins will compress, and the stock price will decline substantially,” Konik said in a Wednesday client note.
The most recent changes are just the latest in a string of leadership moves in a short period. Marc Maurer, who spent 12 years at the brand and stepped down as co-CEO in April, is leaving the company this month after a stint as an adviser.
This is “a surprising amount of shuffling of the C-suite,” Needham analysts led by Tom Nikic said Wednesday.
“Furthermore, Mr. Hoffmann was the ‘face’ of the company for investors (even when he shared the CEO role with Mr. Maurer), so this will likely come as a shock to the investor base,” Nikic said. “Investors may be disappointed that the proverbial boat is being rocked when the company is performing so well.”
MILAN — The Agnelli family’s holding company Exor N.V. has sold Italian media company Gedi Gruppo Editoriale SpA, parent of daily newspaper La Repubblica, among other titles.
On Monday, K Group — the Kyriakou family-owned parent company of international media, content and entertainment organization Antenna Group — said it acquired 100 percent of the company, including, in addition to La Repubblica, the likes of HuffPost Italia, National Geographic Italia and Limes; the radio brands Radio Deejay, Radio Capital and m2o, and the advertising agency Manzoni.
The transaction doesn’t include the La Stampa title, which has been agreed to be sold to the SAE Group, together with its printing center and commercial network for local advertising sales. Simultaneously there’s an agreement to dispose of Stardust, excluding it from the scope of the acquisition.
The operation is part of Exor’s bigger plan of simplifying its portfolio, which includes investments in companies ranging from Ferrari and Stellantis to Philips and Italy’s soccer team Juventus Football Club, passing through The Economist Group and luxury players such as Christian Louboutin and Hermès International’s China project Shang Xia.
In releasing its 2025 financial results on Monday, which saw Exor reporting 37.1 billion euros in gross asset value at the end of the year, the company’s ceo John Elkann said “[we’re] sharpening our priorities and concentrating on larger companies, where we believe Exor can create the greatest value.”
“We have signed agreements to divest our stakes in Iveco Group, Gedi, Lifenet and Nuo. These four transactions are expected to generate 2 billion euros in proceeds this year, with a total multiple of more than 1.4x on our invested capital,” Elkann said. “As a result, we are increasing our cash available for deployment to more than 3.5 billion euros, which also places us in a strong position to pursue a significant new investment similar in scale and ambition to Philips,” he said.
In particular, Nuo is a company Exor created in 2021 in partnership with The World-Wide Investment Company Ltd. of the Hong Kong Pao family, with the goal to invest in and support the global development of medium-sized Italian companies specializing in consumer goods. Nuo’s investments range from the Ludovico Martelli company — known for its storied personal care brands such as Marvis and Proraso — to the Subdued brand, among others.
Proraso products.
As for Gedi, Exor has been one of its shareholders since 2017, first with a 5.99 percent interest in the company. As reported, in 2019 Cir Compagnie Industriali Riunite SpA, the holding company controlled by the De Benedetti family, agreed to sell a 43.78 percent controlling stake in Gedi to Exor N.V. for 102.4 million euros, or 0.46 euros a share.
Following the completion of Exor’s new transaction with K Group, Mirja Cartia d’Asero will become chief executive officer of Gedi Group. An experienced executive with a track record in leading media and finance organizations, she’s currently president of Clessidra Holding and Clessidra Private Equity sgr and has served as CEO and general director of Italy’s daily newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore from 2022 to 2025.
Mario Orfeo will remain editor in chief of La Repubblica, ensuring editorial and leadership continuity.
In particular, Antenna Group said it plans to invest significantly in extending La Repubblica’s reach internationally, as well as expanding Gedi’s radio business to create an important Mediterranean radio network hub and investing in news documentary production, streaming, podcasts, music production and publishing, education and cinema.
In a company statement issued on Monday, Antenna Group also said it’s “currently in discussions with strategic partners in the U.S. to add additional news and entertainment brands that compliment Gedi’s portfolio” and it will seek to “partner with other local Italian groups and entrepreneurs on its Italian growth strategy.”
Founded in 1988, Antenna Group operates 37 free-to-air and pay TV channels, two streaming platforms and a broad portfolio of businesses across Europe, North America and Australia, reaching up to 500 million people worldwide through its own platforms and partnerships.
Kraft Heinz (KHC) generated $3.7B in free cash flow with a 14% yield and $1.60 annual dividend for 7.1% yield, despite full-year net sales falling 3.4% organically and GAAP net income swinging to a $5.85B loss. General Mills (GIS) trades at a forward P/E of 14x versus Kraft’s 11x on adjusted earnings, with lower free cash flow yield of 8.5% compared to Kraft’s 14%.
CEO Steve Cahillane shelved the breakup plan after six weeks and is instead investing $600M in commercial growth to fix the core business, aligning with Warren Buffett’s opposition to the split and positioning Kraft to stabilize volumes amid GLP-1 drug competition and store brand pressure.
A recent study identified one single habit that doubled Americans’ retirement savings and moved retirement from dream, to reality. Read more here.
Packaged-food giants have spent 2026 dodging two big headwinds: GLP-1 drugs that shrink appetites for snacks and store brands that steal share on price. Organic sales across the sector have turned negative for the second straight year. Yet Kraft Heinz (NASDAQ:KHC) just hit pause on the very breakup Wall Street once cheered.
New CEO Steve Cahillane, who came on in January specifically to split the company, shelved those plans after six weeks. Instead, he told 35,000 employees to focus on fixing the core business and using its scale as an edge. For retail investors hunting income and a turnaround, the move raises a simple question: buy now or keep waiting?
Why a Change in Course?
Cahillane arrived with a track record -- he led Kellogg’s 2023 split and sold the snacks business to Mars for $36 billion. Kraft Heinz itself announced breakup plans last fall to separate fast-growing sauces and condiments from slower grocery staples. But Cahillane quickly concluded the business wasn’t strong enough for a clean split.
Most Americans drastically underestimate how much they need to retire and overestimate how prepared they are. But data shows that people with one habit have more than double the savings of those who don’t.
“Do we separate and then have potentially two companies that are not as strong as we would like them to be? Or do we fix the business, and then we have options to separate in the future?” he recently told The New York Times.
The decision lines up with Warren Buffett’s view. Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway helped engineer the 2015 Kraft-Heinz merger and remains the largest shareholder, publicly called the breakup idea “disappointing” back in September. Cahillane didn’t call Buffett directly, but updated Berkshire CEO Greg Abel on the pivot. In short, the new boss chose repair over rupture.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
Let’s look at the latest data from Kraft Heinz’s fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings release. Full-year net sales hit $24.9 billion, down 3.5% from the prior year; organic sales fell 3.4%. Volume and mix dropped 4.1 percentage points, while price added just 0.7 points. Sales have now declined for nine straight quarters.
Yet cash generation tells a different story. Net cash from operations reached $4.5 billion, up 6.6%. Free cash flow climbed to $3.7 billion, up 15.9%, helped by lower capital spending and better working capital. At a recent share price of $22.49 and market cap of $26.6 billion, that works out to a free-cash-flow yield of roughly 14%. The company also pays a $1.60 per share annual dividend for a yield of 7.1%.
Granted, GAAP net income swung to a $5.85 billion loss for the year -- largely from one-time items that produced trailing-12-month losses of $4.93 per share. Adjusted operating results, however, still generated positive earnings power. Cahillane announced a $600 million investment in “commercial levers” to drive profitable growth and paused all breakup work.
How Kraft Heinz Stacks Up
Compare Kraft to peer General Mills (NYSE:GIS), another staple-food name facing similar volume pressure. It trades at a forward P/E around 11.7 times versus Kraft's roughly 10.5 times on adjusted earnings. General Mills' dividend yield sits at 6.5% compared to 7.1% for Kraft. General Mills' free cash flow yield is also less than its rival's, 8.5% to 14%. Both companies also saw organic sales slide in their latest reports, but Kraft Heinz's cash machine runs hotter.
No matter how you slice it, Kraft Heinz trades at a discount to peers on cash flow, while offering a fatter payout. The stock sits near one of its lowest levels since the 2015 merger, yet the balance sheet has improved, and the new CEO is plowing money into innovation instead of financial engineering.
Key Takeaway
Kraft Heinz is a buy today if you seek high current income and believe management can stabilize volumes. The 7.1% dividend yield and 14% free cash flow yield provide a cushion, while Cahillane reinvests in brands and R&D for GLP-1-era consumers.
Risks remain, of course: Sales have fallen for more than two years, and consumer shifts won’t reverse overnight -- but the breakup is off the table, and cash flow is rising. Smart investors who bought at these depressed levels have locked in both yield and potential upside as the fix takes hold. In short, the numbers now support ownership more than they did six months ago.
NASDAQ:KHCTab ↹ insert · Esc dismiss
Data Shows One Habit Doubles American’s Savings And Boosts Retirement
Most Americans drastically underestimate how much they need to retire and overestimate how prepared they are. But data shows that people with one habit have more than double the savings of those who don’t.
And no, it’s got nothing to do with increasing your income, savings, clipping coupons, or even cutting back on your lifestyle. It’s much more straightforward (and powerful) than any of that. Frankly, it’s shocking more people don’t adopt the habit given how easy it is.
Apollo and FC Barcelona just proved legacy markets are losing their grip on business
Lionel Messi of Inter Miami CF attends an event celebrating the 2025 MLS Cup Champions Inter Miami CF in the East Room of the White House on March 05, 2026 in Washington, DC. Inter Miami defeated the Vancouver Whitecaps 3-1 to win their first MLS Cup championship. ·Fortune·Alex Wong/Getty Images
Just this week, two very different global institutions made the same telling decision. Apollo Global Management, one of the world’s largest investment firms, and FC Barcelona, one of the most recognized sports brands, both announced moves away from New York City in search of more favorable operating environments.
For decades, states like New York and California were the unquestioned centers of economic ambition. If you wanted to build a company, scale a financial institution or anchor a global brand, those were the places to be. That assumption is beginning to change.
The issue is not any single policy. It is the cumulative effect: layers of regulation, rising costs, complex compliance requirements and permitting timelines that introduce uncertainty into basic business decisions. These systems were often built with sound intent. But over time, they have made it harder for companies to move with speed and clarity. At a moment when flexibility and execution matter more than ever, that friction carries a real cost.
In Florida, a different pattern is emerging. I lead the Florida Council of 100, a nonprofit that brings together the state’s top business executives, and our Q1 2026 CEO Economic Outlook Index shows that executives in the state remain significantly more optimistic than their national peers. More important than sentiment, however, is behavior. Across industries, companies are increasing capital investment in facilities, technology and infrastructure. These are long-term decisions. Capital investment reflects where leaders expect opportunity to exist over the next decade, not just the next quarter.
Right now, many of them are choosing Florida. From financial services and technology to healthcare, logistics and advanced manufacturing, companies are expanding their footprint in the state. Those investments extend beyond individual firms. They support construction, strengthen supply chains, and create jobs that ripple across local economies.
In South Florida, particularly along the Gold Coast corridor from West Palm Beach through Miami, investment expectations remain among the strongest in the state. The region continues to attract capital and talent, supported by a business environment that allows companies to operate with greater speed and predictability.
Rather than being the product of any one decision, this trend reflects a broader alignment within Florida between policy and private-sector decision-making. The focus there remains on execution: how quickly a project can move forward, how predictable an investment environment is and how much time companies spend building rather than navigating systems.
Even as expectations moderate in some areas, the overall outlook remains strong. Florida CEOs continue to project growth in both sales and hiring and remain far more confident than their national counterparts. Only 9% expect employment to decline in the next six months, compared with 32% nationally. That gap reflects more than optimism. It reflects a different view of where growth will occur and which environments are best positioned to support it.
The Florida Council of 100 brings together many of the executives making these decisions in real time. When this group signals confidence, it is not theoretical. It reflects capital being deployed and companies choosing where to expand.
Economic leadership is not disappearing from legacy markets. But it is becoming more distributed, shaped by the environments where companies can operate most effectively. Apollo and FC Barcelona made that calculation this week. They won’t be the last.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
On’s Longtime CEO Martin Hoffmann Is Stepping Down
Miles Socha
2 min read
On’s longtime chief executive officer Martin Hoffmann, who piloted the Swiss activewear brand through a rapid growth phase and transformation, is stepping down on May 1 “to take a planned hiatus and pursue philanthropic interests.”
On Wednesday, the Swiss company said two of its founders, David Allemann and Caspar Coppetti, will succeed him and serve as co-CEOs while continuing as executive co-chairmen of the board.
“In seamless partnership with the cofounders, Martin engineered the financial framework and strategic discipline and served as the essential link between On’s founder-led vision and the operational scale that transformed the company to the force it is today,” the company said in a statement.
On, Madrid, store, retail, Spain, shoes, sneakers, On Running, On sneakers, On shoes, sneaker store, shoe store
During his eventful 13-year tenure, Hoffmann saw On Running evolve from a sneaker start-up into a formidable activewear player that generated revenues in excess of 3 billion Swiss francs, or $3.8 billion, in 2025.
Commenting on the management transition, Allemann stated: “By unifying founder-led strategic intent with our operational core, we aim to move faster, stay relentlessly focused on product heat and continue pushing the boundaries of what a sportswear brand can be.”
“It is difficult to put into words how impactful Martin has been,” Coppetti added. “From our early days through a landmark IPO, his commitment to our culture and financial discipline has been instrumental. It has been a privilege to work alongside him and we are deeply grateful for his partnership, his outstanding contribution and the legacy he has built.”
On’s third cofounder Olivier Bernhard is to “continue spearheading key performance product initiatives and athlete engagement as an executive member of the board,” the company noted.
Bernhard called Maquire “a rare find” and someone who “naturally he connects engineering and design with execution.”
This week of The Dealmaking 3 with “The Sports Professor” Rick Horrow features MLB and Adobe Inc. (Nasdaq: ADBE) expanding their 2021 partnership to enhance digital fans experiences and content delivery, PlaySight and Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) designing a generative AI analysis tool for pickleball, and Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) TV more than tripling its downloads and claiming U.S. numbers boost thanks to its deal with Formula One Group (Nasdaq: FWONK).
