Chief Executive Officer & Chairman, Nasdaq Inc
Nasdaq CEO on ESG: We are a disclosure economy
Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman joins CNBC's 'Squawk Box' to discuss joining Just Capital's latest "Just 100" list, which ranks companies based on ESG issues. For access to live and exclusive video from CNBC subscribe to CNBC PRO: https://cnb.cx/2NGeIvi
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About Adena Friedman
Adena Friedman, Chair and CEO of Nasdaq, discussed the upcoming expansion of U.S. equity trading to 23 hours a day, five days a week, in a May 2026 interview with Barron's. She stated that such trading "is already happening" in unlit venues and that Nasdaq's systems currently operate from 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Friedman also commented on potential regulatory reforms, including changes to disclosure requirements and litigation reform, which she said could make the transition from private to public markets smoother for companies. In an April 2026 session at the AI and Future of Finance Conference, Friedman noted that Nasdaq received SEC approval to tokenize equities within mainstream market infrastructure. She described Nasdaq's three key pillars as architecting modern markets, managing over 100 billion messages daily, and maintaining sub-20 microsecond latency. Friedman also observed that financial crime had grown from a $3 trillion to a $4 trillion problem over two years, and that AI infrastructure spending was scaling to about 1% of GDP, with constraints on compute and power.
Transcript (6 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Host0:00
This week we are covering companies in the Just 100, those are the rankings by Just Capital and they're based on metrics including paying a fair wage, sustainability, and disclosures around demographics based on polling of the American people. And for the first time, Nasdaq making that list of America's most just companies, ranking number 91. Joining us right now to discuss this is Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman, someone who's made a number of these issues an important topic not just for the Nasdaq company itself but for so many of the companies that list on the Nasdaq. And when you go through the Just 100 something else I imagine you might be proud of, Adena, is that so many of them are Nasdaq listed companies.
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Adena Friedman0:38
Yes, I actually noticed that myself. We're very, very proud of the companies that have made it there and we're obviously very excited and honored to be a part of that list ourselves.
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Host0:47
So speak to this. You have made it a priority to address a number of the issues that clearly rank very high in terms of the priority list for the Just 100. They have, as Paul Tudor Jones said yesterday, outperformed on the whole. He believes as a result of this. There were some skeptics yesterday when the list came out and I wanted to ask you about this because some people look at a list like this and they say, look, some of these are the most successful companies. They're making a fortune, they have great profits, and because they have great profits, they can afford to do some of these things, and that frankly companies that aren't as successful aren't in a position to do it. It's sort of reversing the situation. I was hoping you might be able to weigh in on that.
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Adena Friedman1:36
Well, I do think that it's important to recognize that every company is at a different stage in their life cycle. So younger companies that are growing and are really just trying to become a success, I think that they have to have certain priorities, but they can still focus on how they achieve their goals in addition to just what goals they achieve. And I think really when you think about what is Just Capital all about, it's really the how you're going about delivering those shareholder returns and making sure that you're thinking about your communities around you while you do it. Some of those things can be significant investments, but there are a lot of things you can do that are not significant investments in terms of considering your employees and being involved in your communities, thinking about the governance of your company, and then just managing your business in a way that manages carbon output responsibly. So I don't think that everything — I don't think it's just because they're successful they have an opportunity to invest in the types of things that matter to the Just Capital group. But more as you are growing up as a company, are you thinking about all the stakeholders in the process of growing and expanding your business.
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Host2:46
One of the other issues is just simply disclosure, transparency. Clearly you rank higher on a list like this if there's more transparency, and so there's always this chicken or egg question for a lot of companies: when do you disclose? I mean, some of these disclosures are increasingly being required and I want to actually talk to you about some of them because I know they are disclosures that you are hoping more and more companies will have in the future. And they can become a forcing mechanism unto themselves, but if the disclosure doesn't make — if it isn't pretty, if you will — is it still worth making the disclosure?
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Adena Friedman3:19
I think that first of all, we are a disclosure economy. If you really think about the public markets and what the SEC requires, it requires disclosure to allow investors to make an informed choice. And you're right, there are certain disclosures that companies may say, you know, well, let me get better first before I disclose. I think in fact one of the things that Nasdaq did recently was we are disclosing now the diversity composition of our company and that's not a required disclosure. And in some respects, you sit there and say, well gosh, you know, I wish that it were better, maybe I want to try to make it a better picture before I disclose it. But we made the decision, even though we know that we have work to do, to disclose that to investors and allow them to track our progress. I think investors really appreciate the ability to track progress as we move ESG from this notion of 'let me get started in my ESG journey' — and a lot of companies have gotten started in really understanding how they can improve the communities around them and improve how they manage their employees and their clients — it's now a matter of tracking progress. And we're kind of moving into what I would say the second phase of ESG, which is how quickly can companies move along and make a difference and have an impact. The only way that we can measure that is if it's disclosed. So I do think that Just Capital is right in focusing in on disclosures.