WSJ What’s News - Apple Names New CEO, Succeeding Tim Cook

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

P.M. Edition for April 20. Apple has named John Ternus, a longtime company insider, as its next CEO, succeeding Tim Cook. Plus, Tesla owners are pushing back against the company, saying that CEO Elon Musk overpromised and underdelivered on the cars’ autonomous features. Journal reporter Becky Peterson explains what this could mean for Tesla. And, in good news for soon-to-be college graduates, there are early signs that entry-level hiring is picking up. We hear from Ray A. Smith, who covers workplace issues for WSJ, about what’s changed. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Why the class of 2026 might be graduating into the best job market in years. Plus, Tesla owners are pushing back against the company, they say, promise themselves driving cars and never delivered. The pitch Musk has made is that you will be able to step into your Tesla, enter an address, and go to sleep, text, eat a meal, just live in your car as if you have a chauffeur. And that's what people don't quite have yet.

And Apple has named a new CEO. It's Monday, April 20th. I'm Alex O'SAleft for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, top headlines and business stories that move the world today. This just in, Apple has named a new CEO. It's John Ternis, the company's current senior vice president of hardware engineering. long seen as a top contender to succeed Tim Cook. Cook will become Apple's executive chairman.

Ternus's appointment will take effect September 1st. For more on this developing story, visit WSJ.com. We've got some potentially good news for the class of 26. Entry-level hiring seems to be picking up this year. A widely watched survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers out today shows that employers expected to boost hires of new grads by almost 6% this spring. Big companies such as McKinsey and IBM also say they've increased graduate hiring this year. WSJ Workplace reporter Ray Smith says that's a big turnaround from the past few

years. This is a very big surprise. Employers feel the need to replenish their pipelines. They've been holding back on hiring for the past several years and some of the economic uncertainty has lifted in some ways for companies, but they're also realizing their needs have change, and so they may need to hire more entry-level workers. New roles that have been created because of AI, that leads to a need for a different kind of worker, a younger worker who maybe has some experience with AI. But also, we're seeing a lot of demand in health care that's hiring briskly, but also some of these jobs that these college graduates are taking, we don't yet know whether they are first-option jobs or last resort jobs. We talked with a zip-referral jobs. We talked with a Zip

recruiter, economists who frankly said that some of them could be fast food jobs or door-dash jobs. So we still have to caveat this in terms of whether this is all good news or whether there might be some cracks in this. The U.S. and Iran plan to hold peace talks in Islamabad, Pakistan this week. Though Tehran hasn't publicly confirmed it will send representatives to the meetings, people familiar with the matter said that Iran has told regional mediators it would send a negotiating team tomorrow. A White House official said that President Trump doesn't seem inclined to extend the ceasefire with Iran that is set to expire on Wednesday evening, putting pressure on the talks.

Stock slipped today on the tensions in the Persian goals. President Trump has threatened to attack Iran's infrastructure if the country doesn't make a deal. The NASDAQ and the SNP both dropped by 0.3% or less, while the Dow was roughly flat. The dip in the NASDAQ broke a 13-session winning streak, its longest since 1992. Meanwhile, oil prices climbed, with Brent Crude, the international benchmark, rising more than 5%. Coming up, why a more than 200-year-old Wall Street institution is embracing crypto. That's after the break. Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice.

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in 1792 is as old school as it gets. And now it's setting itself up for the new. Vicki Gougham, who covers crypto for the journal, joins us now to discuss the exchange's attempt at transforming into a crypto powerhouse. Vicki, why is the New York Stock Exchange interested in crypto? The New York Stock Exchange symbolizes everything that is Wall Street and Bitcoin, which was created after the global financial crisis is designed to disrupt Wall Street. So New York Stock Exchange is trying to carry this great Wall Street institution into the future. It's also a way for them to kind of recognize that digital assets are here, and then blockchain may be important, if not a major part of the future for the financial services industry.

And how are we seeing this transformation already starting to happen for the New York Stock Exchange? The New York Stock Exchange announced earlier this year that they're going to launch a tokenized securities platform where investors can trade securities like stocks 24-7 on a distributed ledger, which is the blockchain, and investors will be able to use a type of cryptocurrency called stable coins, which are pegged to the U.S. dollar to trade these tokenized securities. Intercontinental Exchange, which is the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, They recently made this investment into OKX, which is another crypto exchange, which was originally founded in China. So it does seem like that they're planning a lot of different things.

And what does this functionally change for traders? In the future, if there is a fully functioning token and securities platform, traders can potentially expect being able to trade 24-7 or just being able to use the tokens that are representations of stocks on the market, the blockchain to do other stuff in the crypto space. It definitely comes with risks because this has never been done before. And we've also heard from a lot of traders or experienced market participants that trading more than eight hours a day could lead to burnout. That was WSJ reporter Vicki Gouang. Thanks, Vicki. Thank you for having me. And three pieces of news today about the Trump administration. We're exclusively reporting that

During Fed Chair nominee Kevin Warsh's confirmation hearing tomorrow, Senate Democrats plan to press him on his finances. A staff memo sent around by the senators says Warsh hasn't been as transparent in disclosing his assets as past nominees, and that the public can't tell whether his investments include banks, the Fed regulates. As we reported last week, Warsh disclosed assets worth more than $100 million, but said that due to confidentiality agreements, he wouldn't identify the underlying holdings of his largest individual investments. The Office of Government Ethics said that the disclosure complies with federal ethics law, except for a few dozen holdings, and that Warsh will be in compliance only after he divest those holdings.

Warsh has agreed to do this if he's confirmed. In another exclusive, we report that the Justice Department's antitrust division is investigating whether large meatpackers engaged in criminal anti-competitive conduct. The Justice Department disclosed an investigation after Trump accused beef companies of manipulating prices for cattle they buy from ranchers. and driving up prices for consumers. But officials haven't revealed that it is a criminal matter. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. Meatpacker JBS said the company isn't aware of a criminal investigation involving JBS, while Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef didn't comment.

And FBI director Cash Patel has filed a defamation lawsuit against the Atlantic magazine and one of its writers, Sarah Fitzpatrick. In the suit, which was filed in federal district court in Washington, D.C., Patel alleges that an article about government officials' concern about his drinking and conduct was malicious and factually inaccurate. He's seeking $250 million in damages. He told Fox News's Maria Bartaromo over the weekend that he planned to sue. We have to fight back against the fake news.

It's one of the many things that President Trump is so successful at in leading out on because no one is attacked as baselessly as he is and as much as he is. Patel's defamation suit adds to the growing list of legal disputes between the Trump administration and news outlets over coverage and press access. The Atlantic says it stands by its reporting and will defend itself against the suit, as the reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick noted Friday night on MS Now. I stand by every word of this reporting.

We have excellent attorneys. For years, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, has claimed that the company's fully autonomous vehicles were just around the corner. That promise helped keep Tesla stock near all-time highs. Now, though, thousands of Tesla customers are pushing back. They've got a powerful navigation system called supervised full self-driving mode. But Becky Peterson, who covers Tesla for the journal, says these customers are looking to hold a company accountable for over-promising and under-delivering on the fully autonomous version.

The unsupervised version of full self-driving isn't something that any customers have access to right now. The pitch Musk has made is that you will be able to step into your Tesla, enter an address, and go to sleep, text, eat a meal, just live in your car as if you have a chauffeur. And that's what people don't quite have yet. In the U.S., Tesla owners have filed a class action lawsuit that alleges that Tesla charged customers thousands of dollars in upgrades for a product that didn't exist and still doesn't. Becky says that could be bad news for Tesla, whose share of the electric vehicle market has fallen. They're not able to get away from the customers who want access to this technology.

These are customers who bought the car in 2017 or 2019 and paid for this lifetime upgrade and then didn't get the service because the technology wasn't ready, despite what Tesla and despite what Musk said. Now there's a question of, are these people going to buy new Teslas? How do they feel about the brand? Someone like Tom Lusavio, who is the California lawyer suing Tesla, he says, I bought this car in 2017. The hardware on the car is out of date, and you promised me full self-driving, and I've never gotten it. So he is both asking for Tesla to make good on not delivering this product to him, but also he wants damages for them for false marketing and over-promising. On the earnings call, Musk and other executives will say, we know we're probably going to have to update this hardware, but we don't want to. want to do it until we have a final product, until we have an unsupervised version of the

autonomy software that we know is going to be stable. For this story, Tesla and its lawyers didn't respond to requests for comment. Tesla is expected to report its most recent earnings on Wednesday after market close. And that's what's news for this Monday afternoon. Today's show is produced by Danny Lewis and Pierre Biennamee with supervising producer Tully Arbell. I'm Alex So-Selef for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening. When a country's productivity cycle is broken, people feel it in their paychecks, their communities, their futures. What does this mean for individuals, communities, and businesses across the country? Join business leaders, policymakers, and influencers for CGs' national series

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