News Trends & Insights

Top news stories to watch in 2025

Peter Stojanovic

The most important stories and trends in 2025 to know, for business leaders.

C-suite leaders need to understand numerous developing news stories and trends in order to keep up with a changeable industry. Over three parts, discover the top news stories to watch in 2025 and beyond to elevate your insights.

Overview

The ability to continually anticipate change is a hallmark of a great leader.

Through the combined efforts of intuition, data, networks and curiosity, these leaders have curated for themselves a fine-tuned, constantly evolving ecosystem of information feedback loops that they use to refine decision-making, investments, partnerships and more. It isn’t something taught per se as developed organically; a natural cohesion of intelligence gathering, communities and self-improvement.

This is what I have come to learn during my time as Editor, and regular interviewer of Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 C-suite executives.

Today, the world is becoming yet more connected and complicated. The task of anticipating change has become more necessary therefore—but more difficult.

Trends that impact the C-suite seem to come from many more corners of the globe: fiscal policy, international geo-politics and innovation have dominated Boardroom discussions since the Post-War period. Fast forward nearly a millennium(!) and executives today must concern themselves with demographic and generational shifts, the outsize role of the customer, regional and sometimes even local politics, ethical and moral dilemmas, to say nothing of advancing climate change and complex issues within our globalised economy, such as supply-chain resilience.

It should be noted that no single leader is expected to be able to follow the above in great detail and perform in their role to a high standard. As the best leaders already understand, one’s network should be utilised to keep up to date with what one may have missed within this global overload of information.

Top news stories to watch: Today

1. US President Trump's 2025 agenda

The US President's second term has begun with a lightning round issuing of Executive Orders—as largely predicted, many of which are direct reversals of his predecessor's policies. Although self-titled as "pro-growth" and "anti red-tape", Trump is also pro-tariff and increasingly protectionist in his America-first rhetoric. The blunt messaging inadvertently hides unintended consequences, however, and it is the spectre of these that haunt many a Board meeting. For example, his anti-China stance during his first term directly shaped former President Biden's technology tariffs from 2021. These tariffs were meant to stifle China in the global superpower's AI arms race. The impact? A little-know startup, DeepSeek, got creative and has since made waves on the global stock market—more on this, further below.

America's stance on geopolicy, economics, society and more is likely to change, meaning the entire world and its businesses need to re-evaluate their exposure across supply chains, regions and customer bases. It isn't just about minimising risk. There are also opportunities to be discovered, too. Policy hawks were surprised, for example, when the European Union and several South American nations as a Bloc signed a significant deal that had been languishing for over 20 years; a direct result of both regions' fears over the US' retreat in trade.

CEOs and their teams will look to maximise the buzzterm for 2025: geopolitical resilience.

2. Evolving generative AI regulation

As the welcome party for generative AI winds down, governments, advocacy groups, technology firms and the wider industry are jostling to spin up or minimise the power of AI regulation.

The Group of Seven (G7) nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK and USA, as well as the European Union) finalised its 11 International Guiding Principles to govern AI, known as The G7 Hiroshima Process. The UK’s AI Safety Summit in 2023 birthed the Bletchley Declaration. Three EU institutions responsible for new legislation–the Commission, the Council of the EU and the European Parliament–are in the final stages of agreeing the terms of the bloc’s new AI Act. The US and China both have different stances and rules out.

In early 2025, China's DeepSeek has upended already the perceived dominance of the US-based AI sector, using fewer and less advanced Nvidia chips for very similar Large-Language Model power and accuracy, using open source data. I know many in the C-suite are busy wrapping their heads around what’s in, what’s out, and what’s everywhere, and getting to grips with these developments—or connecting with those who do so for a living—would be a smart move.

3. Will DEI die?

Since last June 2024, farm equipment manufacturer John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniel’s manufacturer Brown-Forman, Ford, Lowe’s, Molson Coors, Boeing and Walmart have all dropped or are scaling back DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion, commitments. Even Apple is tussling with shareholders on its vote on a proposal to scrap the phone maker’s DEI programmes, citing “litigation, reputational and financial risks”.

Much like ESG, DEI is either collateral damage as businesses refocus on growth in a challenging, competitive market, or actively targeted by competing socio-political mindsets. The US Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, ruled race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. This proved a watershed moment for a controversial workplace phenomena.

One to watch? 2025 is also predicted to see a swell of so-called employee activism. For many, DEI programmes have been vital in supporting measures to protect at-risk communities or talent. Sitting back and watching those be dismantled is unlikely to be a position they enjoy.

4. The sociology of hybrid working

How can we make hybrid work, work?

This surprisingly sticky question remains high on Board agendas even several years after a global pandemic upended decades of working practices. To say that the topic is complex is an understatement. The great push for remote work also pushed a rapid technological shift—cloud computing jumped and remote collaboration services improved month by month. Many staff enjoyed a reconfiguration of their work-life balances; many did not. This asymmetry was pounced on by managers, business leaders and politicians worried about productivity, city-infrastructure use and quality of life. The conversation has not moved significantly from these (loosely) two camps. The main reason? Leaders are so focused on where people work, not enough time and resources are given to understanding how people work.

Team and organisation size, sector and region all impact how teams work best together. But office design, technology landscape, team personalities and far more provide a series of as-of-yet unknown unknown details. Cue more questions (and investment) in answering these questions, finally.

5. CEO staying power?

In 2024, CEOs of global companies left their jobs in record numbers. Why? Investor scrutiny, brutal change management programmes, and employee dissatisfaction. In fact, 202 CEOs left their posts last year, surpassing the six-year average of 186 and a 13 per cent increase over the previous year. Activist investors have played a major role: they drove out 27 CEOs last year, nearly triple the number in 2020. Just under a quarter of the 2024 departures resulted from planned succession processes—which represented another record.

Why does this matter? CEO figureheads shape and distill the north star for their organisations. They hire and shape (and reshape) the executive team. Their staying power theoretically smooths the growth trajectory of the business. Although change can sometimes be useful or necessary, too much, all at the same time, can scramble investor appetites and a global economy that is primed on expected relationships and valuations. In parallel, nation states also saw many, many incumbent leaders fall foul of angry voters. If one is to learn lessons from the other, it is that the grass is not always greener; CEOs made more nervous of making mistakes make less risky bets that are vital for breaking new ground, experimentation and innovation.

6. Get to know Generation Z—and beyond

Ah, generation Z. It is worth stating here that A) there is no agreed-upon definition of who each generation represents by age, and B) it is problematic to assume all members of one generation behave the same.

Those said, anecdotal experiences of working with generation Z are too numerous to dismiss, and emerging data on generation Z is too challenging to ignore. Z’s across the US, Europe, China and South Korea, as examples, are more disillusioned with the social contract between government and population: that translates to a more relaxed work ethic (from a traditionalist’s view), higher demands on HR, often counterintuitive spending habits (they can’t afford homes but they can afford Gucci), a more divergent political sentience (those who are more politically aware and far more aware than other generations, and the same in the other direction), and a wider gulf between male and female voting habits, a phenomenon not recorded before in previous generations. One may say Z’s have a lot to learn about the world. I would argue we have more to learn about, and from, them.

What does this tell us about Generation Alpha, the next cohort for society? is the question on many a Futurist's minds.

7. Extreme weather adaptations

Local, regional and international weather patterns are newsworthy, yes, but they also impact industrial productivity, human productivity and the resilience of nation states. Rapid flooding in parts of southern Europe in late 2024—such as in Valencia, Spain—and the wildfires that ripped through up- and low-market suburbs of Los Angeles in January 2025 are stark reminders that few parts of the world are "safe". One sector bearing the brunt of this new normal is insurance. An entire business model will need to be re-evaluated as weather-related impacts costs country's billions of dollars worth of damage. Business leaders are paying particular attention to how society reacts and adapts: where are people moving to or away from? Climate migration may have deep political ramifications, but it will also upend once-established skills and talent pools.

Why a story to watch Today? Because it will take time, and because there is nothing like experiencing the negative effects of something today to catalyse your mitigation tactics for tomorrow.

8. Post Davos sentiments

The Davos 2025 theme was Collaboration for the Intelligent Age. This aptly follows the 2024 theme of Trust, laying the groundwork for more conversations about the role of humans in an increasingly AI-driven world.

The need for global cooperation to help steer towards a positive outcome in a time of rapid technological advances is not lost on even the most isolated of industries. How should the C-suite translate this overarching message? Years of pandemic experimentation and productivity are having unequal effects on business value today, and different CEOs are putting forward very different messaging on how AI and human beings will work in the future, to jarring media response. How empathetic are leaders being towards their workforces and their partners? It is tricky to quantify such a qualification. But it should be noted that within the main story of the summit—AI—lies the truth of the matter: positive business change cannot happen without talent. And talent who cannot collaborate (or trust) is arguably the biggest stress test for a business today.

Those are the stories and trends happening right now.

Now, read the developing stories for tomorrow and beyond, parts 2 and 3:

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Top news stories to watch in 2025

The most important stories and trends in 2025 to know, for business leaders.