Good morning.
I spoke yesterday with two CEOs who are running companies at the leading edge of change in today’s rapidly evolving economy.
The first was Kent Masters, CEO of Albemarle Corp., which is hardly a household name but may soon become one. The company is a leading provider of lithium used in electric vehicle batteries. Its market value has increased fivefold since the start of the pandemic, to $31 billion. Masters says the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress put more fuel on that fire:
“It’s significant. Everyone is positioning themselves to take advantage of it. It will either drive volume or drive profitability. There are both consumer incentives and manufacturing incentives, and they all hinge on manufacturing in North America and where the materials are coming from…We are a U.S.-based company. We already had plans to invest in North America, and now we are accelerating.”
