FedEx founder and former CEO Fred Smith has credited his experience in the Marine Corps and the Vietnam War with helping him establish the shipping giant. In particular, the effectiveness of wartime logistics and the Marine tradition of small-unit leadership were influential, he said in 2014.

“Everything that went into FedEx that made the business that it is today relates to what I learned in the Marine Corps, and I’ve always been grateful for that education and for those I’ve served with,” he said at the time.

As Americans observe Veterans Day, here’s a look at current Fortune 500 CEOs who have served in the military.

Casey’s General Stores

Darren Rebelez, who is also chairman at Casey’s, attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and served as an infantry officer in the Army from 1988 to 1991, according to his LinkedIn profile.

After the Army, he began his civilian professional career as a KFC restaurant manager. He moved on to other companies and took on greater leadership roles, including stops at Exxon Mobil, 7-Eleven, and IHOP.

Since 2019, Rebelez has been CEO of Casey’s, the third largest convenience retailer and No. 297 on the Fortune 500.

Emcor

Anthony Guzzi also graduated from West Point and served in Army as a Light Infantry Captain from 1986 to 1991. After the Army, he had stints at McKinsey and Carrier.

He became president of Emcor in 2004, CEO in 2011, and chairman in 2018. Emcor, No. 300 on the Fortune 500, is a top mechanical and electrical construction, industrial and energy infrastructure, and building services company.

Xcel Energy

Bob Frenzel served in the Navy in active duty from 1992 to 1998, working as a nuclear engineering officer and weapons officer. He was also in the Navy Reserves from 1998 to 2006 and attended the Navy Nuclear Power School.

“I always like to think I’ve been making electricity for three decades,” he told Fortune in April.

After active duty, he worked at Arthur Andersen Consulting, then Goldman Sachs in the energy and power group. Stops at Energy Future Holdings and Luminant followed before landing in his current role.

Frenzel was promoted to Xcel chairman, president, and CEO in 2021 after joining the utility as CFO in 2016. Xcel is 319 on the Fortune 500.

Jeffrey Martin is another West Pointer who served as an air-cavalry pilot. He left the Army in 1989. Prior to joining Sempra, he worked at NewEnergy, UniSource Energy, and the law firm of Snell & Wilmer.

His career at Sempra, No. 322 on the Fortune 500, started in 2004. He was named CEO and chairman of the utility in 2018.

Reflecting on his military service in 2022, Martin said people often mistake leadership with “creating followership,” adding that what’s more important is creating new leaders across an organization.

“That means whether your focus is on winning on the battlefield or in corporate America, leadership is all about raising up those around you and bringing out the best in people, teams and organizations,” he explained.

Delek US Holdings

Avigal Soreq served in the Israeli Air Force in various roles between 1996 and 2004. After his military service, he worked at KPMG, Trabelsy, and SunPower, then began a 10-year stint at Delek, a petroleum refiner.

He left to become CEO of the Israeli airline EL AL but returned to Delek, which named him CEO in 2022. Delek is No. 336 on the Fortune 500.

Advance Auto Parts

Shane O’Kelly also went to West Point and served as an infantry officer in the Army from 1990 to 1997, which included numerous deployments with the 1st Cavalry Division and the 325th Airborne.

After the Army, he worked at McKinsey, then had stops at Home Depot, AH Harris Construction Supplies, PetroChoice, and HD Supply. O’Kelly has been CEO of Advance Auto Parts, No. 389 on the Fortune 500, since 2023.

MBW Explains is a series of analytical features in which we explore the context behind major music industry talking points – and suggest what might happen next. Only MBW+ subscribers have unlimited access to these articles. MBW Explains is supported by Reservoir.

Live Nation CEO and President Michael Rapino opened the company’s 2025 Investor Presentation on Wednesday (November 5) with a confident prediction: the live music industry will be worth $50 billion by 2030.

That projection formed the centerpiece of a presentation designed to reassure investors after Rapino described 2025 as a “digestion” period in certain venue types following the post-COVID touring surge, with Live Nation positioning itself for what it called a return to normalized growth in 2026.

“We think ’25 was still a little bit of a digestion from the post-COVID in terms of lots of content went out in ’24 and ’23,” he said. “Some of that didn’t end up coming out in ’25 in our [amphitheaters] and arenas, just naturally through the cycle.”

However, he expressed confidence about 2026: “We’re sitting here today looking at our pipe for next year for stadiums, arenas, and amps, and we’re very confident that next year is back to kind of a normalized year across all of our platforms.”

“This industry is going to grow,” Rapino told attendees. “We always over-deliver against the industry. No one should be debating whether we’re not going to grow the fan count on the revenue side to the normal historic numbers we’ve always delivered.”

Rapino’s $50 billion forecast for 2030 builds on what he described as the industry’s historical growth rate of around 8% annually.

“Historically, this has been about an 8% annual growth industry,” Rapino said. “We had always delivered close to that or a little higher.”

The estimate roughly correlates with a projection published by Goldman Sachs in the latest edition of its influential Music in the Air report earlier this year, which forecast that live music revenues to grow from $34.6 billion in 2024 to $38.2 billion in 2025, $52.6 billion in 2030, and $67.1 billion in 2035.

The investor day presentation arrived the day after Live Nation published its Q3 revenues, which climbed 11% YoY in Q3 2025 to $8.5 billion.

Here are three other things you might have missed from the company’s 2025 Investor Presentation…

1. Live Nation’s growth story centers heavily on global expansion.

Michael Rapino emphasized that the “next billion fans” will come from global markets rather than traditional strongholds.

“That 14-year-old that’s living in Colombia, in Cape Town, Boston or Milan has a jukebox in their hand, and they know that Drake dropped a song this morning or whoever that relevant artist is of the day, and they want to go see that artist,” Rapino said.

He pointed to recent international successes as evidence. “Travis Scott, we just brought through all of these markets, Dubai, India, China, selling out the largest tour in history in some of these markets. Latin America is on fire, Argentina, you name the country or the city, there is nothing off limits right now where these artists can’t show up and sell a stadium out and arena.”

Live Nation’s global infrastructure positions it to capitalize on this trend, according to Rapino. “Having 148 offices in over 40 countries, where we have local entrepreneurs. This is still a local business, although a global superstar, right? You have to execute locally, sound, light productions, marketing, permits, [and] understand the significance of the market,” he said.

Omar Al-Joulani, Co-President of U.S. Concerts and President of Touring, provided concrete evidence of international growth acceleration. “Imagine Dragons went to Brazil last week. Last time they were there, they played two cities. This time they played four cities. Next time, they’ll play four cities, but two of them will be different than two [of them] this time, which means when they go back to the third time, they’ll place six cities,” he explained.

Al-Joulani also noted pricing convergence between international and domestic markets. “If you look at the average gross for The Weeknd in Europe and the UK, [it] is now generally on par where we were in America, [while] your average tier price in India is USD $100 for big shows, that’s growing incredibly quickly compared to other markets,” he said.

2. Venue Nation plans $5.2 billion spend on 48 new venues

Live Nation’s venue development arm laid out an expansion plan involving 48 large venues in its pipeline, requiring approximately $5.2 billion in capital expenditure.

Jordan Zachary, Co-President of U.S. Concerts and President of Regions, detailed the scale of the buildout. “28 of the 48 venues that we talk about in our pipeline for large venues are international,” he said, calling it “an incredible statement” about global opportunities.

The pipeline represents an increase from the 35 venues discussed at the previous year’s investor day, signaling what Zachary characterized as “an evolving strategy”.

“These venues will deliver about 30 million fans,” Zachary said. “That will represent $600 million of AOI across all of our businesses.”

The company targets portfolio-wide returns exceeding 20% on these investments, with funding coming from “a combination of cash on hand, project and corporate debt as well as partner funding.”

Zachary noted that 2025 saw major venue additions, with 2026 bringing “a number of large ground-up developments opening, including large amphitheaters, significant AOI contributors and large indoor venues.” International builds will accelerate in 2027 and beyond.

The venue strategy extends beyond new construction to enhancing existing properties. Zachary emphasized food and beverage as a key margin driver, with Live Nation’s venues generating $1 billion in food and beverage revenue from $2 billion in total venue revenue.

3. AI initiatives target 35 million unsold tickets

Live Nation revealed that 35 million tickets go unsold across its shows annually, with 98% of events failing to sell out completely, representing what the company views as a major opportunity for AI-driven optimization.

Saumil Mehta (pictured inset), who joined as Ticketmaster President just three days before the investor presentation, outlined how AI could address this challenge.

“One of the core problems that Omar and Michael touched upon is that 30% of concert and sports tickets go unsold or that 98% of shows are not fully sold out. So we should be able to help here with AI,” Mehta said.

He explained further that the company’s “goal with AI and commerce is twofold”.

“First, we want to make sure that wherever fans are, we can meet them where they are and we can ensure that they can discover, search and, if appropriate, also transact on another surface with AI to continue ticket growth and continue selling out tickets,” Mehta explained.

Ticketmaster plans to launch on Google‘s Gemini AI platform within two weeks of the presentation, with additional partnerships to be announced in Q1 2026.

For Ticketmaster’s own properties, Mehta demonstrated a chat concierge feature. “Think about our owned and operated experiences, whether it’s on our app or our website. Our website has hundreds of millions of consumers engaging with it every month. Our app has tens of millions of consumers in the US itself and is one of the largest apps in the App Store,” he said.

Al-Joulani, meanwhile, also explained how AI helps artists make touring decisions. “Are you playing the right city on the right night of the week in the right venue. Are you scraping and looking at all the other traffic that’s going on, weather patterns, homecoming games, Etc. AI has been really helpful to get us to optimize tour routing, also optimize pricing,” he said.

Beyond commerce, Mehta emphasized AI’s role in fighting fraud and bots. Coming from fintech background at Square, he noted parallels between financial services and ticketing. “Fintech has been at the bleeding edge of identity verification, ML-based risk models and fraud fighting at scale,” Mehta said.

Ticketmaster currently blocks approximately 20 billion bot attempts monthly, up from 1 billion in 2022. “That tells you that the scale of the problem is nearly 20x the size. But the good news is that our defenses have kept up and are doing great,” Mehta said.

The company has also implemented identity verification, recently blocking 1 million high-risk accounts. “Only 3% of which passed subsequent identity verification,” Mehta noted, adding that this led to 9,000 tickets being recovered and made available to fans.

Music Business Worldwide

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