Transcript
Yeah, it's been a while. What do we do? I don't know. Who are you? What do I say? Luckily, it's written down for me, live from your ESG, bath salts, inhaler kit. One of my favorite kids Special during the holiday season. It's a business fans Friday, show here, at December 6 studies in the United States. All right, USA 2024 on today's weekly wrap up, Murder. It's true. Murder. Oh yikes. Black women fighting back. Investor cowards. And the darkest reason yet. For a CEO and board pay cut. Oh, the darkest reason, there's a lot of dark stuff in our show today. Our show today is being sponsored by free flow analytics.com. The only platform measuring board power connections and performance for free. So, if you're one of the people, Who was ever wondered. Out loud or to yourself or to your friends. If you have friends, whether a board is confident or not the first place, you might want to start to answer that question. First question might want to go to, it was free flow, analytics.com, they could help you on the road. Of figuring out board competency because when I hear board competency it doesn't apply. Incompetency as well. So maybe you want to try to find yourself. I like how you're always looking at the opposite side of things. Yeah, speaking of, that was the that was, I moderated a panel at Riu is not why I bring it up. It's not why I'm big thanks to the panelists there and is responsible investor, and it was on board competence and thanks for free analytics. Would you discover I discovered that they're all competent? Oh, discovered all of them. How would they then how do they explain the amount of short-term CEOs? Like CEO is getting fired quickly and getting huge Severance packages and then having to pay huge gold in the low packages for the next CEO? How does the board explained that that doesn't sound very competent. I asked the question as an example during the panel. I said, you know, whenever an activist investor shows up all the sudden no one's competent on the board, right? But the year prior, they were competent. I do have to say of the conference. I was a bit shocked by this. Up, probably a half dozen to a dozen people came up to me at some point and said, are you the guy from the podcast? The guy some someone is listening. We just like, I know this. No, they saw my tag and they were like are you the map mascardi from like, there's a lot of you're the guy from the podcast. What am I? Exactly. You're not. Yeah. The other guy in the podcast. So somebody's listening. So maybe we should say something important today. What do we got? Well, it's no one surprised. You ready for this? You want to get right into the show? Let's do it. Hold on. Hey, play you in. Because there's a lot to discuss. Explains before I get to the store that we explain something to me. Matt we have over the years, we have met incredible amount of resistance from investors on the just the sheer notion of voting. No one directors, right? Yeah. So why so what, why in all the surveys of directors themselves? Do they find that there is that there is incompetence among them on the board, like there are other directors that they don't think should be in the board in the first place. Yeah, every survey says there's at least the directors, they say, there's at least one director that shouldn't be there. At least one, right? Yeah. I which, which Matt, if you do the weird third grade math, that means that they're fell Direct on the board. Also, might think thinks there's at least one, it could be the they could be thinking of each other, which only each other. There's two people on the board, right? I actually think so. Have you ever played the game among us if you ever played that game? Yeah, so let's just say, yes, it's, it's sort of like, a risk but online it, but effectively your voting out people, I know, AOC famously played this on Twitch. I know that played it on Twitch, it won't point. I think they should have to disclose which director, why not the rest of the directors? Think shouldn't be there. No, on an annual basis. You know, how to start with this if you're uncomfortable with actually saying their name, give it give everyone a code name and then cite the code name of who is the The directors. And they will, we can work in suffering the code, right? Full proof. That'd be fun for us full proof. Yeah, okay. All right. Go ahead story. Well, unfortunately, this one is obvious. We were both were away all week for and We missed the craziest. Named executive officer Story of the Year of the ever. I don't know. This is just nuts, but everyone knows the story by now. The murder of Brian Thompson. Yeah, not good United Healthcare CEO. So he's not the CEO of United. Healthcare Group has been anyone's confused. He's actually a named executive officer. Isn't he is an executive? He was an Executive Vice President of the group, but he was the CEO of the unit, you know? United Healthcare anyway. He was killed in New York. I don't know what day Wednesday but I'm sure I don't even I was thinking about how to present this story and I and I realized that like everyone probably knows all of the details of the story. It Matt, this is so troubling that the only social media app I ever interact with his Reddit and I don't actually participate, I just kind of lurk and I mostly look at stuff in my local city. It's just to see what's going on and what people are complaining about what restaurants are opening and closing, but right at the top of my feet was a video that auto played. Because I guess that's just I don't know when you roll the videos play and it was footage. Of of this guy Brian Thompson. The name is like being shot. It was right there. I didn't even have a choice, it just started playing. And I was like, what is this? And I and I five second ten, he shot. I mean, this is how crazy our world is not only are named executive officers getting murdered, but it's it's already available on social media for people to watch nine seconds later, but the reactions on social media were. Okay, let me get to that. So I'm not gonna get into the details of the story, but I was gonna wrap up. I was gonna summarize this story about just citing. Some of the headlines that we have tagged here at free flow United, Health CEOs, killing unleashes, social media, rage against insurers. Yeah, after United Healthcare CEO, shooting American Express, frustration with health insurance industry. Again, they're not studying frustration with murderers or people who own guns. Although they should do that too. Killing of United, Healthcare, CEO prompts, flurry of Stories on social media, overnight insurance claims. There's Lot of that partly. One of the reasons here is that there was actually were there were words inscribed on some of the ammunition two of those words were delay. And deny there is a book written by professor at Rutgers law called delayed denied. Defend a book that discusses, how health insurance companies avoid paying patients claims Other headlines include slain United Healthcare CEOs accused of insider trading. Social media swoons over alleged United Healthcare, CEO killer. I mean investigation, I guess a lot of people are finding him good looking. Oh that's Brian Thompson. Didn't seem to have a bodyguard and not surprised his corporate security consultant. Another headline a wake up call C Suite. Security comes into Focus. After you know, Healthcare CEOs death. So that's just some of the headlines covering the story All right, two things struck me about the story. Other than the fact that Neo was murdered. That's I hope that's one of them. One that no one says he's in any. Oh, I read. Was that he was, I thought the CEO. Yeah. United Healthcare was shot. Not the CEO of the Health Care Division of United Healthcare. I'm with you. So, I was off on jury duty so I one of the things on jury duty, you know a lot of your phone. So I was I wasn't really I wasn't really focusing on this story and I kind of heard the highlights like you did and I too thought it was the CEO of a publicly traded company. It's not even the CEO, right? It's the so that they already got that wrong, is crazy to me, I'm not trying to minimize know, his course to say that the media is reporting it in a way that's different from the reality. Because like then this is another piece of evidence that Nuance is dead because to say, like a named executive officer, who was leading the healthcare division was shot. It's too much of a garbled mouth full. So they all just say CEO of United Healthcare shop and this is the thing I've been shouting about for years, is just, I'm always in shock how little how little understanding there is at all about the corporate world. Like it's about the People, The Who Run the corporate world, the directors, the NEOS, the CEOs. And in fact, the one thing I always talk about how when they cite CEOs, and headlines often, they don't even name them, they just call them like Target CEO. To that point, I saw his name more than I see, like a CEO like says that, like they're gonna reverse Dei policies and it just says to look. Walmart CEO says the river, this guy's name. Brian Thompson was everywhere. I said that was it was in every headline, CEO, Brian Thompson, you know, my question is will do, will do you think that this now that there's so much? There's so much backlash on social media against insurance companies. They're not exactly sympathetic to this name because of Officer Brian. Thompson. Do you think there's going to be a change in coverage of how people of how business news covers companies, or maybe a change in coverage from from normal news or anything? Just you don't think people change. Okay. All right, interesting point. What else does that does? Bring me to point two go ahead which is the social media rage against insurers now, we're is all the social media, rage coming from Blue States in this country because Doesn't every other state, hate Obamacare, not want, socialized medicine, not want control, like, you know, fighting against caps because that's not free market. Capitalism you talking about the politicians? I think most Americans do want, Universal Health Care. Do they know it? Well, then like this Gap. There's this clearly a gap. No one likes insurers. We want a different system. We all think it's broken, but half of the elected officials. Don't like want to repeal anything that looks like Health Care reform and the other half can't get anything done to perform it. So what's your point here? My point those are just my thoughts are really like a point. It was like yes that again heard to me with the slew of story again. This is one of the few stories that we cover here on this show that that people already are reading all about and hearing all about that. We don't really like, well, I gotta take a little bit further on that. Okay, bring up later and I was gonna say, I'll look at move on my my only perspective on this and I'm not Certainly not on any. I'm not advocating for murder of violence and any level. But the one thing I did notice because we were talking about in our pre-production meeting is that this is like a Groundswell of populist ESG. Smooth thing suddenly all my friends are sending me charts about, you know, like the percentage of customers are all how much it's their salary is and how many hours he's getting piano lessons. Okay? This is what we do every day. Why don't you pay attention to what we're talking about but I did look at his, he is a named executive officer. He is listening, the proxy statement I did look at his pay. And it is quite noticeable that zero none of his paid targets, were attributable to anything related to customers or patients nothing. And and I think this is a little bit odd, because we do see in a lot of service industries that there is at least, some sliver of pay dedicated to customer satisfaction or something. But these, these execs United Healthcare, none of it. It's all, it's all the exact, or just all of the listed NEOS, just Revenue earnings per, share, that kind of thing. So, that's the fascinating thing, we've done only a few times on the show, do we talk about? Neo pay versus CEO pay, right? CEO. Pay gets all the headlines we talk about, you know, because the numbers are bigger, everyone's attention to it. But the Neo pay often they have like, it can be shorter term their, the targets for each. Neo are very different. Are not like the same targets as a CEO. Some a lot of them are just Revenue based which fine except that in a case like this. Then you start wondering what the incentives are, right? Like the incentives aren't the outcomes to the your patients. The people who need you. It's okay. You know personal outcomes and share outcomes. Well this is where the shareholder versus stakeholder argument comes into full Focus. If you're not careful you're gonna sound like an ESG analyst soon. Yeah there is one headline I didn't mention which was murdered Insurance. CEO had deployed in AI. To automatically deny benefits for sick people. So, this is, this is a conspiracy theorist dream. Unfortunately, the sets the story. So, that's the that's, I mean, look, that's the story of the week, but I'll also tell you the other things that happened that we would have called. I will determine what the story. That's true. That's true. You're the vote. We had a lot of CEO stepping down. Intel CEO. Pat gelsinger is ousted by board after disastrous performance. Ooh, ousted by board they've already they have Two, they have internal cos I don't remember. They've also already appointed two new directors, the board. This is the drives me crazy about the boards of directors at these publicly held companies. I say that in air quotes is that they've already added Without any investor input, without any vote nothing. They've already added two directors that they're already on the board serving. Yeah, which is just crazy to me. They should go through some kind of a shareholder vote, but that's just my perspective. Also still antis CEO, Carlos Tavares also stepping down again, wow! They say the board, got sick at him and finally, a story that we probably would have covered in a lot more detail. But Tesla, CEO Elon Musk, you heard of him, he loses his bid to get his 56 billion dollar PayPal package reinstated. So there we go. The same Chancellor Kathleen McCormack is saying that. No. Not gonna happen. That's it. That's just wrote no paper and sent it. And she had this to say, which I thought was interesting about this about the shareholder vote. This is what the muskies are all. They're all upset because of this so cold, shareholder. Vote, that re ratified his Bay. She said, even if a stockholder vote could have a ratifying effect, it could not do so here. Were the court to condone the practice of allowing defeated parties to create new facts for the purpose of revising. Judgments lawsuits would become interminable. So that's what she said about that. You know, there was, there's one point that she made that she basically said, yeah. This someone like a similar thing in a different way, which is, like you basically major on evidence and use that to get your self repaid, which you can't do. But she's she's absolutely right that. Like, she basically what they tried to do is they use the court. The court said, the board was incompetent and controlled at the most control, the most controls the board. Yeah, basically, she opened up free flow, analytics.com. Our sponsor went to the test. This is the page. Yes, and saw that must go in 60. This is the perfect use case for our data. If you're, if you're ever were wondering and you're too stupid, not to use. Our data, is that she said, In her original Rule and that musk has individually controlled Testa and dictated the terms of his competition to award that did not fairly negotiate. And again, you can see that in our data quite clearly because despite the fact that he does not own a controlling stake of the of the company, He controls all the influence. Yeah, he controls over 60% of the board influence to her point but in this in this sort of like, denial of the ratification, she's effectively saying like Okay so you were incompetent and controlled then. All you did was take that decision. Attach it to the proxy and say, well now you know that we were incompetent and controlled. So now when you vote, you know, that we are controlled now. Vote on it, right? And she's like, you're missing the point. Yeah, you can't. That doesn't work. You can't do that, right? This is clearly not over. I mean it'll be appealed again. No, right. You know, I think the appeal will take place in Texas now though, right? Do they have? Any did they have any? Here's the thing. Yeah, if they don't appeal the appeal, I think what happened in Delaware so if they but if they don't appeal, they will just set new pay for this year. To say, why not? Just do that, why are they appealing this? Why not just a massive accounting charge that can happen, right? Like so the accounting charge would is 2 billion dollars because when the options were granted in 2018, the price was very different. But today would be a 25 billion dollar account because the meme stock, you know, because it's a meme stock. Oh, there's no evidence that anyone would care because it's a meme stock. Don't care about. It's not cash changing hands. It's just an accounting charge. I don't think anyone's gonna care. So when they file it in Texas, right? Then you're almost, you're the question is, will Texas not care about his pay? And the chances are they won't. That's why they move their. I'm done talking about your own musk, your stories of the week that you can vote. It's Brian Thompson. It's just there's no question unfortunately that's it. Yeah I mean not again not the CEO of the publicly traded entity but a named executive officer on the left named executive officer getting shot in with a guy with a silenced her, right? And a guy who clearly A disgruntled stakeholder, that's all you could. What else could you call them, right? Because as you as you pointed out this guy, I mean I'm making a lot of assumptions here, but he seems to be a disgruntled former customer who did his research and yeah, I mean, write something. I mean, this is not like someone who would just trying to get his gold necklace. All I know is thank God that the Business Roundtable is now. Stakeholder focused instead of sharing. Well, can I just say to all of you amateur sleuths out there? Can you please finally join us? We do this every day. I know it's not always gonna be a murderer. It's not gonna be a murder thing, God, but we're doing this constantly with all companies. It's, I, I know, it seems incredibly nerdy, but it's kind of fun to dig into this stuff, which you're learning. Now, you don't need a gun. You don't need a gun in Murder to make everything relevant in your lives. People, the best slew thing ever done was realizing that the board of O'Reilly Automotive, all wears the same uniforms except for like one guy. Yeah, join us. That's great, join us. All right, let's move on to good list of the week. It's hard to find good list these days. I know, I try I got one and Jason really. You want to go first on yours. Yours is a little silly. Mine's a bit more, seriously. Yeah. So this is the headline Mattel suit over Wicked dolls with porn website, link? Yeah, you see, suing them for that. Okay, so a mother in South Carolina is suing Mattel. So if you bought Wicked, the, you know, the movie based off the musical, based off the book, based on blah blah, it's breaking every, you know, office record right now. But even though no one goes to movies anymore, it's still like them. The biggest grossing movie, even though it's, even though it's incredibly woke, right? Wasn't it like created by people of color and women and everything? So I thought well doesn't work. I thought one far right commentator. She was saying that like she's so tired of white people being portrayed as dumb, you know. Like is that what's happening in Wicked and went on to call area on a grande called her Hispanic even though he's Italian. Sure. So, I know, even I knew that from my Starbucks knowledge but it's a big deal. Wicked's, big little girl goes out. Buys, you know, the, the doll, the wicked doll brings it home, like one of the characters and Glinda or whatever brings it home. I guess. Is looking at the box and in really tiny print on the bottom says www.wicked.com and she really, she actually looked at the box and went to this website. This is real. So first child. Yes, the child did this by herself apparently. So first of all like how old is the child? None of my kids ever go to a website about anything like it's impossible, them or typing in the website name. Like that's never, it's not. It hasn't happened since 1997. Apparently, what happened was? They meant to write Wicked movie.com wicked.com wicked.com is actually a porn company.com. Sure. Now, I, in the name of research, went to wicked.com. What's this funny? Because I went to Wicked movie.com. There is no nudity on the landing page, for wicked.com. So yeah, which I'm sure the daughter did. The daughter has her own little, like she has her own Goldman Sachs Carter. It was, this is actually, if I'm honest, they had like, you know how like you know, when a movie comes out, they have all those little Scrolls on the bottom of the page saying like one Sundance award one, whatever. This one like 30 Awards. This company wasn't like 30 pour in Awards. Okay, for that. Yeah. But they're now suing Mattel. Because the daughter went to the tiny misprinted URL. Allegedly didn't see any porn, but it was a porn site. They say, they suffered mental distress really. Here's the goodly part of it. Yeah. You can't they obviously recall the 20's that had the wicked.com and they replaced them with Wicked movie.com. But you can buy The Miz printed packages on eBay for up to 450 dollars. Now, isn't that fabulous? That's like the do you remember the the baseball card, the Cal, Ripken know what was in Cal? It was Bill? Rick. Yeah. It was Cal Ripken, Billy Ripken Billy. Is it Billy? Yeah. It was Billy Ripken. The school brother that he's had a bat and on the bottom it said like Foo or something. Yeah. And and that card became like the card for like 10 Years. Everybody wanted the foo card that's this. I love, it's fabulous. You know, we've complained about the past for their, they have an outside gender influence on the board. I think it's currently at negative like 15% and it's run by two dudes and Enon critz and of all things a Dolan Dolan family member, Michael those two control 43% of the influence on a board. A company that makes toys for kids people. Play these two, these two weirdo, men, sorry. I mean sorry to join the kid right here was detail-oriented enough to go to wicked.com on the board. That's what you should. Here's my point of suing the company. Why don't you blame some board members and try to get them voted out. Oh, look at you, look at you. All right, so my goodness of the week I'm actually focusing on black women fighting back. First was Namibia. Namibia. Has once again, you know, the United States is a loser and maybe Alex its first ever female leader. Wow. Like that her name is natamo nandi, date wah and she was a member of the country's underground independence movement in 1970s and all. So the black Mayor of Carrboro North Carolina, her name is Barbara foushee. The headline is North Carolina town Sue's Duke Energy over climate change. Oh so she's accusing the whole town is accusing. Duke Energy of ignoring data about climate change, will increase, use of fossil fuels. So there you go. Two, two women. So yours like real. Yeah. But mine might be funnier. Well, I look there's no, there's not a competition or maybe it is a competition. It's all competition. I don't see how yours is good. I'm voting for Namibia. That's the only good one. Yeah, us lose it again us still can't elect a woman to be unbelievable. All right, let's do asshole. Yes. Oh boy. Get it over with okay. Because we don't get it over with now. We're flying through the show. Sort of maybe we're not sort of flying. Yeah, all right. Well, I got four. So the first as holy murder was a murderer. One of them. Investor governance analysts. Here, this is going to sound a little crass, right? Everything you say, sounds a little crass. I mean on the edge of wrong. Sure. But it is about Brian, Thompson's murder, sure. Because like governance analysts I was just at a conference. I just talked to governance. It was the conference. Again, the ri USA 2024 welcome. I was in this conference You're not important enough. There were, there were a lot of analysts there, a lot of new there, a lot of other way, thinkers there, a lot of interesting folk there, all that kind of good stuff. Now, this is one conference in a thousand, right? Like there's a lot of conferences that go on all the time. You would think that like a governance analyst say and ISS analyst glass Lewis and whatever. Would be thinking deeply about the people who run these companies, right? One would think, yes. Not come out with statements like Nelson. Peltz might be good for the Disney board, right? As their recommendation, they might have, like, done deep, research and done some thoughts. I I kind of sort of secretly admire the Assassin. Oh boy. Because yeah. If an investor was an investor governance. Where's my buzzer? Yeah. Actually did as much research as this guy did. To kill. So first of all, think about it. He where Brian Thompson was allegedly. We don't we were guessing these things about this. Yeah, it does seem like this. All the evidence seems all the evidence points this way. Yeah, this way, right? Like, I'm not saying that. I know I'm saying, like, if I got my 10 foil hat on and my logic had on at the same time, this is where I get to. He knew who Brian Thompson wants and ano. Not the CEO of the company who must also be at investor day, right? He targeted the CEO of the division of the of the company that was most relevant. Yes. What he did, right? So how many people if you are an investor, a governance analyst could even name? Brian Thompson. If you're an investor, be honest with yourself, very few. Could you have named Brian Thompson before he got shot? No zero zero zero. They knew where he would be. They knew at what time he would be there. Yeah, they knew that it was investor day at all like most people who investing these companies. Don't even know about well that's yesterday because 96% of the vote. Yes, automatically anyway and all directors. So they don't even need this. They don't care when investor day is they don't they don't need any new information. They already made up their minds and I don't know what the what this says more about the Assassin or the market or what but the pre if you invested in the company, pre murder, You made money post murder on the side when I'm not kidding. It was up 1% during the day. I don't understand that. So I have to like kind of like not admire anything about the murder, but we're going with this. Yeah, who's the asshole here? The asshole? Here is why can't governance analysts do like one tenth of that level of reason this people. And this is what I want to say. I'm gonna pretend for for a moment that a lot of people listen to this show. I'm gonna pretend that we don't pretty big audience, but this is why you should join us because Here's here's something. Also, you might want to know about United Healthcare. First of all, they have a sizable, another company, with a sizable gender influence Gap, minus 16% which, which is a bit outrageous, considering how many Healthcare decisions are probably made by the mothers, and women of families, because most men are pretty useless when it comes to making big decisions about health care. But the other thing is that the man with the most influences, the former CEO and current executive chair, his name is Stephen Hemsley, he has 32% of a board influence. And one fun fact about this man. One among one fun fact among many is that this guy used to be the CFO of one of the greatest failures in American accounting history at Arthur Andersen really, oh, I was CFO of Arthur Andersen the company that is now defunct involved. With the Enron Scandal. I mean people it pays to know who the people are that run. These companies. I know people are resisting but it's important to know who's on your board and whose running has that. Yeah, production notes that the seat currency CEO, Andrew, witty, isn't even the most influential know, it's the former CEO. The guy who was Matt, he was the CFO at Arthur Andersen of all places. We talk about being rewarded for failure. It look the the fact is it does. The I don't like having to sympathize with a murderer? Obviously, that's not really my goal here, but when you do have stories about like you know, the AI automatically denying benefits. You mentioned that story it all. And when we talked in pre-production it made me think of that. Jamie says the Jamie Diamond quote. I found what I think is the quote quite as I remember it. I remember him saying something about pitchforks, I remember him saying about like yeah, but the court I found was quote, the fault line is inequality and it's caused is staring Us in the face, our own failure to move beyond our differences, and self-interest and act for the greater good. He said that on April 7th of 2021. Okay? Following the George Floyd, you know, riots and all the problems from covid. All of that stuff. He said, he said many times about inequality, this is like the living embodiment of it, but there isn't An investment analyst, anywhere who's actually researching the people who run, these companies, know where know, where except on free flow, analytics.com. That's the closest you get. That's the closest you get. So, how about the your executive chair? The guy with your most influence, he he was involved with back dating stock options as one of his past jobs, so is so back dating stock, okay? All right. The same thing just saying, So that's number one. All right. And that's number. What's number one? Our governance analyst got include me. That include me. Oh, I'm a governance analyst, okay. Yeah, you have a kind of. Here's number. Two are ready for number two? Yeah. Anyone who calls a company woke you and no one should call any company anywhere woke. Like even talking about obviously traded company. I'm talking about a company of three like people write publicly trading, okay, LLC, and Atlanta, or something, even elf. Beauty, who did a wonderful campaign about too many. There's nothing woke about makeup. I hate to break a to you. I mean, that's kinda woke makeup, they in in elf beauty is too many dicks on boards campaign, they do. We love the fact that they had a dick on their board. They had a guy named, Richard on their boy, didn't mention all the all the problems with the Cosmetics industry in the first place, but we're not gonna get into that. But here's the headline White's this week. Disney agrees to 43.3 million settlement in suit alleging at paid women less than right. It just as soon as I saw that, here's the quote, I thought of quote, why do I have to have a Marvel? That's all women, not that I have anything against women but why do I have to have do that? Why can't I have Marvels that are both know else? April 3rd 2020? Well this proves that Disney at least systematically systemically it did have something against women, right? I mean if that's the, so if they're agreeing to a settlement, they did have something against women. So what are we talking about? We just spent years talking about how Disney is too woke. In fact, even Wicked. The movie there are commentators talking about how it's too woke. Yeah, because there's a Hispanic, not a Hispanic woman and a black woman who have roles in it, right? Like don't get caught up in it. Matt, it's gonna just mess you up and they are literally paying settlements because the company pays women less than men. Remind me? What the woke up. None of these companies are woke. Companies are not woke. They are profit-seeking, they will sell you anything they can sell you. There is no public, large cap publicly traded company. That is out there doing something for your personal. Good. They might be, they might have policies that benefit stakeholders in general, but that does not make them woke. They're not woke. They're not. Well, let's, let's get off. This, you're already making me. Give me a stomach a cause we all know that woke Dei ESG, it just code for women. People of color gay people. That's correct. It's just backlash against the progress that they've made in our society over the last 50 years. That's all it really is. So number, that's my number two asshole. Anyone, if you calling companies woke your fucking asshole. They're not. And by the way, why is it bad to be Hispanic? Quote, unquote, not Italian. What's the difference between Spain and Italy? Oh, why are they different? Why is it okay if she's from Italy but I'm just saying in general so she's awoke, okay. I don't know if any of you are aware of the geography of the of the European continent but Spain is just a country. That's a few countries removed from Italy, right? They both hugged the Mediterranean Sea. Why is it woke to be from Spain, but not from Italy. Can you? Please explain that to me the reason why the farmers so confused. So they looked at Ariana Grande, they looked at and they thought she was guatemal or something, he's from Mexico and that's what they mean by that. All right, number three. Cowards and Liars. Okay, third option and I'm just gonna read for headlines. Okay? Ready. Coca-Cola accused of quietly. Dropping its 25% reusable packaging Target. Yeah. You're a liar. Yeah. How about this racial diversity falling among new corporate director directors. Conference board reports unfortunately does not surprise me. Yeah, AT&T CEO. If Trump slashes taxes, we will invest more in American infrastructure, one killed me. I that one really riled me believable. We have literally 30 years of history that says, when taxes trickle down the series, yeah are cut. No company. Invest in infrastructure. They invest in BuyBacks themselves. That's all they ever invest in. I mean, if you're a proud American company, should always be investing in American infrastructure, unbelievable number. And then the, and last The Texas. It's not a headline, but Texas and the GOP States Sue BlackRock Vanguard in State Street. Yeah, there's 11 states. I believe. 11 states. Attorneys General, did it and here's a quote from inside it. Now, remember, all three of those companies with Drew from the climate action 100 plus in a full show of cowardice, it was a brilliant about face on everything. They said, they believed in, right in climate and climate risks, and all that stuff, you're not going to be part of an organization that does does that, because you're so afraid that someone's gonna Target you for being part of that organization. Here's the quote from the actual lawsuit that was filed in Texas, rather than individually wield. Their shareholdings to reduce coal output, therefore defendants, effectively formed a Syndicate and agreed to use their Collective Holdings of publicly traded coal companies to induce industry-wide output reductions. So they're saying they're trying to reduce coal output using Collective influence to be sure earlier this year, Black Rock and State Street publicly proclaimed that they would Drew from one of the organizations that they previously used to coordinate their anti-competitive conduct climate action, 100 plus. But formal withdrawal, from that one organization does not change the reality, that defendants Holdings, threatened to substantially reduce competition and violation of The Clayton Act. So, effectively with their saying, is, yeah, you fucking cowards. You you stepped off of that one thing but we don't care. We're suing you anyway. Yeah, because we want to. Yeah. So, what did you step off for? Grow a spine and stay in. This is what's going to happen. You're drop out a Dei. Do you think that ends it? You think it's over? You think then oh no one cares. No one's going to pay attention. You think you, you leave the climate action? 100. And oh, yeah, conservatives are going to leave me alone. Now, I'm not gonna get sued. Yes, you will. That's not what they're that's not the point of this whole thing. The point is to make a political statement, that's it. It's to make a political statement, stop being cowards, have a spine. So number three was cowards and Liars. All right. Well I'm only doing three because I had a fourth, but it was lame. I'll tell you. What's more? What I just a demonstrate what you're talking about. The odiousness of the odiousness Odie. We're good. No. Do you listen to this first line? This is a, this is the text part of the, the complaint of the Attorney General that you're speaking of. Although this this is the first paragraph of the introduction of this case. For the past four years, America's coal, producers have been responding not to the price signals of the free market. But to the commands of Larry Fink that the first, yeah, they're already rolling out the boogeyman, the tropes, the anti-semitic, the, the globalist, the Scotland. They're already naming Larry Fink in the first sentence of the introduction of this. He's the boogeyman. And the brilliant part about this. Sorry. But I'm saying right through, I'm seeing right through, they have a table of the Consolidated Holdings of BlackRock State Street in Vanguard right. Like, so they're showing like, 30% of Peabody Energy or whatever, like they're showing the Consolidated Holdings in a bunch of coal companies that are based in their states and they're saying, They're wielding like, tremendous amounts of power over these companies. Have you ever looked at the voting records? Oh, it's just like one fucking vote. Are they? They actually have a mechanism to wield power over these companies. And they don't, they don't do that out a single. We have the actual proof of it. Here, this is not, and we're not anecdotal evidence of anything. This we have actual proof of their voting records. They don't, you know, they don't vote against them every shareholder proposal. They might have voted for that, would have won a majority of votes. Let's say in the event that that happened and it does occasionally happen, you know, those are advisory votes. Correct, they don't have to do the thing that they said. Well, in fact, most of the time, they don't do the thing, they don't bother doing it. The way you asked well by, that's why as you sow is doing second things saying, we asked for this report you gave us some other report. Give us the numbers that we actually want. Well speaking of investors like as he's so in the nuns Example BlackRock Vanguard state tree. It's not like they don't put up their own Cheryl proposals. They they could themselves lead campaigns and they probably would be highly influential if they actually LED these campaigns they don't they don't do any of that. Nothing. Do any of the things that you're actually and you rolled out, Larry Fink's name because he wrote a letter, Larry, Frank, write their first sentence Larry Fink So cowards and Liars. So those are three options and investor governance analysts not doing their job. Well, assassins do. Do the job. Yeah. Anyone who calls any company, anywhere woke and cowards and Liars. I just stick with the theme of the show. The murder of Brian Thompson United Healthcare. I got to pick investor governance and I like it. I just hate the controversy. You know, we struggle with this constantly. When we have one-on-one conversations with people were frequently able to get them to feel engaged with what we do they respond quite, you know, readily to to the types of material like we cover in the types of types of the ways at which we attack some of these stories. But it takes a murder. Right? And for the general population to care about the corporations that are, I mean, we are living ostensibly in a choreography and it takes a murder for anyone to pay attention and yet people will complain for days and hours and weeks about whether they're their Netflix, you know, stream was good for a horrible fight between a 60 year old, Mike Tyson and some influencer that they'll complain about Ad nauseam. But it takes up takes a literal murder for anyone to pay attention about who's running these corporations, what they're whether they're they're, they're stakeholder friendly, whether they're shareholder friendly how much they're making. Yeah, and but like I pay for Netflix and I could not see the fight because the streaming was. So there you go. You what lines winners predictions And get out of here. Well, what are where are we headlining? The headline is headline? Yes! Oh I guess I mean I'm Gonna Let You Go first because I think mine is one of the headlines ever. So I'm gonna oh, I'm gonna let you go for some, I think mine Trump's yours this. One just made me giggle. I don't know why Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume reportedly booed by workers after telling them he didn't live in a fantasy world. Now what's this reference to this reference to the strikes that there's a, there's a straight going on a Volkswagen right now, right? Yeah, he he's clashing with their trying to roll up. Hey, cuts for fact and they're trying to lay people off or try people off their pension plans, all things, he promised they wouldn't do. I just like that a CEO has to get in front of a bunch of people and say, I don't live in a fantasy world. Like, like, he's like trying to convince them that yes, not in a family yet. Literally his life is a fantasy world. I mean, right. It's like the class cars and security and hotels. Giggle, private jets and private islands literal fantasy world. Okay, ready for this one, Matt. This one is just crazy. I don't think this is a company that we cover in our Database. All right, actually it is it is actually no more, of course it is. We cover everything. No more CEO takes pay cut after employee. Tried to kill clients. Oh no. So this, this club? This guy stole money from clients and set fire to their house. And so the numero CEO kantaro okudah. It took a pay cut for this and all. So nine other nomura directors, and Executives also will return 20% to 30% of their pay actually, gonna claw back their pay because one of their workers tried to kill clients. Timmy, is that one of the crazier headlines I've ever seen? This is the reason why They're getting their pay is getting just because they tried to basically kill their clients. I just find this one crazy. You know, another interesting thing about this no more CEO. Oh Cuda the second most influential on the board to Executive chair Koji nagai who slightly more influence than him? So Okay, yours is better than mine. I just like the idea strange reason for taking a pay cut, right? Why did we get less money this year? Daddy? Because well, because one of our workers tried to kill one of our kill the clients. Yeah, no. So strange impulse of the worker. I don't know. Maybe, maybe this story has lost its luster. Like I remember sharing the story at the beginning of the week. This is before the murder of the United Healthcare. Yeah. It's not a loss. It's lost their now. I mean it's not like yeah, because this is we'll say it's dark week. It's a dark week. Yeah, who won the week though? Oh, I'm looking at yours. We were aligned here. I don't know if you looked at mine. I my winner was amateur ESG conspiracy theorists because you were speaking because you were speaking about social media going crazy. This the alleged murderer of this executive seems to be a disgruntled stakeholder. Everyone's talking about everyone's digging in to the proxy statement. They're digging into paying into investor decks. So I thought, you know, this is a moment for amateur ESG conspiracy theories. Unfortunately again it took a literal murder murder. Yeah, I just professional ESG conspiracy. Who are they us? Are we the only one? It's, yeah. I mean, there's I feel like there's a, few of us out there somewhere. I did break it to Matt that one of the few areas where I'm willing to to dip my toe into conspiracy theories is in this corporate world. Like I for instance, have for I firmly have Believe for two decades. Now that the former CEO of Enron Ken Lay didn't actually die in a car crash that he just, it was staged and he's somewhere, he's in some Island somewhere living out his golden years. So maybe. So maybe in this case, you know, maybe I was thinking maybe this executive Knew Too Much about United Healthcare, maybe they hired someone to get rid of him or I don't know. I'm going to a Steven starter in my head. You are somewhere else. You have a prediction, I don't really believe that, but that's just where my head went. My prediction, this is an easy prediction. We're gonna see sea Suite security spending rising to unprecedented and levels. Yeah, statements, right. Could we, we used to see only for certain CEOs like usually Tech or media CEOs, you know, the, the types of CEOs that need to be famous, they, they want everyone to know about them. They want, they're just have access well and excess. Property and the Mark Zuckerberg types, but I think clearly, now we're going to see a shift. We're going to see a lot of all other compensation being devoted to all types of c-suite members. Now, do you think it gets you know, like when when a new executive comes in they release an 8K and you get to read their contracts, right? Like a publicly traded company named executive officer, you can read their contracts. Do you think which we do into their, which way? Yeah. We're the one. We're the only ones. Yeah. Do you think it gets put into comments as a line item? Now, absolutely, I don't see it that much, because if you're the company, is that practice good disclosure, they're going to put everything in there. They're not just gonna like, they're not going to not mention that. I can't, I can't tell you how excited I am for that. That's not nothing to get excited about. I want to know like a like on a like, on a market cap relative basis, like what's my security leverage on my, you know like because if you're paying a lot, so if you're paying a lot for security for your Executives, what is that say about the executives at? Well, I was gonna say, yeah? Right. Like, it's either means you're in an industry that you screw over enough people, I want them killed. Write my thoughts. Yeah. Oh, that their you think that they're incredibly important to not have be killed? Well, there's a third thing or or like as we see in America, they deem it so that they deemed themselves. So important, That their pay is often 500 times greater than the median pay of other workers that you're well. So you're already you're creating an error of disgruntlement, right? I mean you're you're you're you're you're you're taking so much wealth that you're you're, you're drawing attention to yourself. You don't see this in Asia, you don't see this in a lot of Europe, you don't see Executives already, you know. So differentiated in pay that they look like Emperors, they look like people, they look like they're making themselves, targets is what I'm trying to say, just like, you see a lot of professional athletes, both football players in America, soccer plays in Europe, you see a lot of them, targeted for robbery, because we know how much money they make. We know where their properties are Executives. In America are the same way. It's the same class of opulence and wealth. You're making yourself a Target. It's actually your prediction is obvious, but I know I know, but but the implications of it or what's fast fascinating and I just changed my prediction based on it. Because I had originally that Texas was the winner because they both Sue BlackRock and they'll probably get to hear musk's new pay. So Texas is winning everywhere but I think the real winner the real prediction here is I think we see gun control in the United States of America for the first time ever. Because now you have now you have a situation where you can't go to an elementary school without lockdown drills for because they're worried about mass murders at schools. But as soon as you mass murder Executives, that's true. What their you think. There'd be a gun anywhere in this country if they shot like executive, if you've been executive thought like I can't go outside without fear of getting shot. That's how I feel sending like my daughter to elementary school, right? Like because you never know when this country like Newtown is is 20 miles like west of me, right? Like it's not far and it's the same type of people who live here, right? So Imagine like if security costs keep going up at some point, doesn't it get cheaper to just Lobby for gun control, have gun control and remove the cost from shareholders of security and like, remove the fear. I think this is the greatest idea I've ever had. Or you could, you could stop pissing off your Stigler so much, I'm not blaming pay. Holy for this. But what if your pay was just capped at like, 10% higher than your, than your highest paid employee. Your socialist, that people would like you more, though. That's Damian Ross, hazelnut Ross. I'm your analysis. I'm sorry. We are free float. We'll be back. Exhausted. Too much murder. I don't like this. Yeah. This was not a happy show. I will be back next week though, show me background Tuesday. I think we will be well, maybe back on Friday, who knows? We'll be back next week. Goodbye.