Top CEOs may cut off funding to Republicans who have supported Trump's election challenge: 'Money is the key way'

• CEOs of major companies have said they may stop funding Republicans who have backed President Donald Trump's challenge of the election results, according to Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder of Yale's Chief Executive Leadership Institute.
• Sonnenfeld hosted a call on Tuesday with more than 30 chief executives. Among those in attendance were execs from Disney, Accenture, Goldman Sachs, and Deloitte, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
• "Just coming out with another public letter isn't going to do much," Thomas Glocer, former CEO of Thomson Reuters, told the WSJ after the meeting. "Money is the key way."

Top CEOs may withdraw financial support from Republicans who have backed President Donald Trump's challenge to the election result, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the founder of Yale's Chief Executive Leadership Institute, said Tuesday.

More than two dozen CEOs are considering such a move, he told CNBC's "Closing Bell."

Sonnenfeld, a senior associate dean at the Yale School of Management, said he hosted a call earlier that day with more than 30 chief executives across sectors including finance, pharmacy, transportation, and manufacturing.

He declined to name the CEOs, but people familiar with the gathering told the Wall Street Journal that execs from Disney, Accenture, Goldman Sachs, and Deloitte attended.

About nine in 10 CEOs on the call were "talking about cutting off support," Sonnenfeld said.

"We haven't seen them put the money where their mouth is previously, and that's a big change," he added.

Some present discussed pulling business investments in those lawmakers' states, the Journal reported.

Alongside the CEOs, around a dozen former White House advisors attended the virtual summit, the Journal reported. These included Jeh Johnson, who served as homeland security secretary during the Obama administration, and Anthony Scaramucci, who worked as the White House communications director for just 10 days in 2017, before being ousted over comments criticizing the Trump administration.

The CEOs had contacted Sonnenfeld to arrange a meeting after he organized a similar one in November when Trump first disputed the election result, he told CNBC.

During Tuesday's call, the CEOs said they wanted to move beyond making statements and "put our money where our mouth is," Sonnenfeld said. The CEOs discussed ways to facilitate a smooth presidential transition, sources told the WSJ, and also spoke about the effectiveness of stopping political contributions.

Some of the attendees said they would reconsider investments and hiring decisions in states where officials backed Trump's election challenge, the sources told the WSJ.

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"Just coming out with another public letter isn't going to do much," Thomas Glocer, former CEO of Thomson Reuters and a current director at Merck and Morgan Stanley, told the WSJ after attending the meeting. "Money is the key way."

Business leaders are usually hesitant to discuss politics in the boardroom, Glocer told the publication, but this was changing.

"Business leaders need to stand up on these issues because in the end they are business issues, not just politics as usual," he explained.

CEOs at the meeting said the situation was causing "divided communities, angry workforces, and hostile workplaces" and noted that "this is not business as usual," Sonnenfeld told CNBC.

"The GOP acting this way - these GOP members are certainly not the voice of American business, large or small. So they're talking about cutting off support," Sonnenfeld told CNBC.

He added that nearly nine in 10 CEOs said Trump was "trying to overturn democratically run elections to stay in office."

Separately, more than 170 American business executives signed a letter Monday urging Congress to certify the result on Wednesday and confirm Biden's victory.