Welcome to your weekly briefing for board directors. We’ll be taking a summer hiatus after this issue, but fear not, normal service will resume on Thursday 3 September.

And there is plenty to digest before then. I call on directors to take note of reducing entry-level roles in their organisations in favour of AI as it could store future problems for your leadership pipeline.

Elsewhere we have top stories on OpenAI’s rogue agent, governance at Diageo and what to expect from the UK’s new chancellor.

If you want to catch up on recent briefings, you can explore the FT Infosys Board Network hub, where you’ll find links to FT.com articles, research and our archive of newsletters.

Do you have comments or suggestions for us? Send them to me at Andrew Hill at andrew.hill@ft.com or Kate Hodge at kate.hodge@ft.com.

Thanks for reading.

I’ve done a deep dive recently into how artificial intelligence is affecting entry-level jobs. While researching the topic, it occurred to me that most directors probably think junior hiring is beneath them. For many, top-level succession planning is their principal, perhaps their only, “strategic” personnel decision.

They should think again. After talking to professional services organisations, from law firms to car designers, I am clear that boards that disregard the consequences of letting AI gnaw away at early-career roles will undermine succession all the way up the hierarchy. 

For instance, IBM “narrowed the aperture” for young new recruits temporarily last year. But Jon Lester, the group’s vice-president of HR technology, data and AI, told me, “we realised we had a problem: we didn’t need people at the lower bands because the work is being done by AI, but we need entry-level hiring in order [for them] to become the next level of leadership”. IBM has now reopened its junior recruiting window.

Other companies, such as Salesforce, have increased entry-level hiring, hoping to capitalise on the gen-AI skills of younger recruits by training them and deploying them in every function, and redesigning jobs around them.

Use of AI is still the second biggest dampener of demand for new graduates (after “cost control”), according to a recent Deloitte survey of UK chief financial officers, even though the same survey suggests the purse-string holders are becoming more optimistic that AI will improve business performance.

But using the new tools to carry out what used to be early-career tasks and eliminating the graduates that used to perform those tasks is short-sighted. 

Deborah Meaden, entrepreneur and doyenne of the BBC’s Dragons’ Den, summed up the threat at a recent FT conference: “A whole cohort of young people is trying to enter these jobs that AI is going to be good at. The businesses need to take responsibility because where do our next leaders come from if [the juniors] can’t learn from them at the water cooler?”

The UK’s tradition of reaching takeover agreements behind closed doors to avoid public spats is giving way to a “slew of semi-hostile approaches”, notes Lex — and it might be just the way to play it.

The public theatre can expose differences between boards and investors. Shareholder registers are also playing a part.

“Unfortunately for UK boards, the presence of investors most likely to be aligned with their view — local long-term institutions such as pension funds and insurers — has been declining for years.”

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My top FT picks

Diageo chair hunts for drinks ‘heavyweights’ in board revamp Governance: Chair seeks robust oversight as Sir Dave Lewis restructures struggling spirits company OpenAI hacking incident exposes mounting risks in AI arms race Technology: Increasing use of aggressive training techniques sharpens threat of bad behaviour by leading models Hotel group Accor hired law firm to investigate conduct of CEO Bazin Culture: Report found no wrongdoing after probing allegations of impropriety in Accor’s dealings with associates of Bazin The five fiscal challenges facing John Healey Politics: New chancellor must fund rising defence spending and promises of cost-of-living support for households

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1. Global corporate affairs survey 2026 | Oxford-GlobeScan This research, based on insights from 294 senior corporate affairs professionals, has plenty of interesting findings including that, of the three aspects of ESG, respondents said governance “poses the most serious reputation risk for companies”.

2. CEO & board survey 2026 | Korn Ferry This survey of 250 directors and chief executives revealed some contradictory insights. Some 60 per cent of boards said “succession planning works best when treated as an ongoing process” — yet only 17 per cent look at succession plans on a quarterly basis. And half of boards said succession started too late in their last transition moment.

3. Should directors control reporting frequency? | ECGI The short answer is “no” according to Jesse Fried from Harvard University. He argues that no company should “cut a previously-mandated reporting frequency without public-investor approval”. This is because managers of non-controlled firms will “be inclined to cut disclosure frequency even when it harms investors” because they benefit more from the move. This is even more so in a controlled firm.