Good morning. Grant Thornton is laying off about 300 U.S. employees, or roughly 3% of its workforce in the country, people familiar with the matter said, as the professional-services firm navigates declining demand for its advisory and tax services.

The Chicago-based firm’s cuts, coming mostly in the advisory and tax divisions, were to have been completed by the end of Thursday, the people said. Grant Thornton employs about 9,000 people in the U.S. and more than 68,000 globally.

The move follows a series of cuts by large professional-services firms in recent months, particularly in their consulting arms, CFO Journal’s Mark Maurer writes. The consulting industry surged during the Covid-19 pandemic as companies sought outside help to strengthen and adjust their businesses. Many of those companies have since pulled back on consulting services amid recession fears.

The global consulting market is forecast to grow by 6% to 10% this year, down from 10.7% in 2022, according to Source Global Research.

Note to readers: The Morning Ledger won't be published Monday in observance of Memorial Day in the U.S. We will be back on Tuesday.

• The Commerce Department reports personal income and expenditures for April. Economists forecast both income and spending increases of 0.4%, month over month. This compares with a gain of 0.3% and a flat reading, respectively, in March. The core personal-consumption expenditures price index is seen rising 4.6% year over year, the same as March’s reading.
• The Commerce Department releases the durable-goods report for April. New orders for durable manufactured goods are expected to be down 0.8% from March.

Airbnb CFO Dave Stephenson, for instance, says this about Dr. Vivek Murthy’s “Together”: “Dr. Murthy issued a report on the loneliness epidemic together with a framework for how to take action here in the U.S. At Airbnb, we are focused on creating connection and belonging in our community for hosts and guests, as well as for our employees. I’m looking forward to learning more from Dr. Murthy.”

–Anna Mutoh

Wall Street is breaking out its doomsday playbook for how to survive a U.S. default.

The industry’s primary goal: keep the financial markets functioning. Many fear everything from computer glitches to cascading panic if the U.S. misses payments on Treasurys, which are a bedrock of trading and usually considered almost as safe as cash.

Under Wall Street’s plan, though, investors would be able to keep trading all U.S. Treasurys, even those with past-due interest or principal payments. Chaos and confusion would be kept at bay through a series of conference calls, each with an agenda already organized by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association trade group.

• Potential Debt-Ceiling Deal Starts to Take Shape as Deadline Looms
• Biden, McCarthy See Progress but No Deal on Debt Limit
• Administration Dusts Off Contingency Plan

• Microsoft President Brad Smith backed calls for the U.S. government to create a new agency to license major artificial-intelligence systems, amid growing support for regulation of an industry that is moving aggressively to commercialize powerful new tools such as ChatGPT.
• Germany slipped into recession during the first three months of the year, as households cut spending in response to sharply higher prices for energy and food.
• Nvidia shares closed at a record high Thursday as the chip-maker added nearly a third of its market value, which closed shy of the $1 trillion mark.
• The record $279 million whistleblower award issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month stemmed from a bribery case against telecommunications company Ericsson. 

VMware appointed board member Karen Dykstra as chief financial officer and executive vice president, effective June 9. Dykstra, who has been a director at VMware since 2016, has been CFO at AOL, Plainfield Direct and Automatic Data Processing.

London Stock Exchange Group, a London-based stock-exchange and financial-information company, said Chief Financial Officer Anna Manz is stepping down to move on to another CFO role outside the financial-services industry, effective May 2024. A search is under way for a successor.

Fox Factory Holding, a Duluth, Ga.-based maker of parts for bicycles and a variety of performance vehicles, named Dennis Schemm as CFO, effective June 12. Schemm will succeed Interim CFO, Maggie Torres, who will retire upon his arrival. Schemm served as senior vice president and CFO at Trex for the past three years.

BigCommerce Holdings, an Austin, Texas-based developer of software-as-a-service technology, named Daniel Lentz as its chief financial officer, effective July 1. Lentz, who is currently senior vice president of finance and investor relations, will succeed Robert Alvarez, who is retiring.

–Denny Jacob, Elena Vardon, Sabela Ojea
contributed to today's Ledger.

• Yield-curve pioneer Campbell Harvey believes an economic contraction could begin this month and last two to three quarters. “The question is how deep the recession will be,” he said.
• Although AI offers benefits, some sectors are finding challenges. The tech was supposed to transform insurance; it hasn’t. And cybersecurity chiefs say the promise and risks of early generative AI are overblown.
• Companies are facing more shareholder proposals from both sides of the political spectrum, dragging them into the increasingly fractious conversations over environmental, social and governance issues.

Every weekend we select a handful of articles we think are worth a bit of your time, either because they peel back the layers on a compelling business story or somehow make us look at business in a different light.

• Adidas's partnership with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, was the stuff of sneakerhead legend, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports—and its demise has the shoe company scrambling to replace nearly half of its profits.
• For years, Vice had been widely regarded as the future of media. After a series of disappointing results, years of chaotic management, risky endeavors and a liquidity crisis, Vice has filed for bankruptcy, the Financial Times writes.
• Workers in nursing, fast food and airlines say their jobs are only worsening as they continue to struggle with low pay, burnout and staffing issues three years into the pandemic, according to the Washington Post.

Follow us on Twitter @WSJCFO. Follow reporters Kristin Broughton @kcbroughton, Mark Maurer @markgmaurer and Jennifer Williams-Alvarez @JenKayW, and follow Brian Hershberg, WSJ Pro's deputy editor, @BrianHershberg. 

You can reach us by replying to any newsletter, or email Brian at [email protected].