Transcript
Oh, live live live live. Live live. Live from ISS. Oh man. That's hard to say live from iss's. Isss. What exactly do we do here meeting room? On the 14th floor of its 12 story headquarters. Oh, that's an interesting floor. It's an all-new terrific, Tuesday edition of business pants, joined by and let's hold at mascara. De In today's Jamie dimon, bedazzled sun, visor called, May 21st 2024 business nuggets in the top, five lists Throwdown. Yeah, yeah. Hey, our show today is being sponsored by free flow analytics. The only platform measuring board power. Connections and performance for free people. Yeah, it's free. If you are curious, if you're a directors, actually generate shareholder returns or how big, the gender power Gap is go to freeflow analytics.com and sign up for that poorly written. Copy, you started. All right but that last sentence is terrible. Yeah. Dare you. Well, you're gonna say what it is terrible. How to say, what it is? It's a lot of things. It's 30%, dumb jokes, dumb jokes. It's been a while since we've done dumb jokes. I'm excited. We have data at the end of the show we have data actual data from analytics, right? Yeah. It's just survive, the banter. You'll get to the end, you'll get the data. Here we go. I'm gonna start off with Boeing. I got a lot of bowing stuff. Is it a shock? Nobody, here we go. in our, Boeing investors also approve. Eating rusty nails for breakfast, sleeping and boiling, spaghetti water. And replacing the sun with a piece of extra crispy fried chicken headline of the week. Boeing investors approve. CEO's pay as company faces probe's possible. Prosecution, I like me. And if that headline, that's why that's really good. in our, Overheard frequently was the question. What about your dentist? Do you like your dentist headline of the week? New Boeing chair sought feedback for CEO search from customers employees and investors, asking everybody. It just like that. That is almost everyone. They did. Who it left off government. But it's I mean who hasn't flown a bowing anywhere, right? It's all customers everybody. On the way into a bowling plane. Do you know anybody, you know, on this company? Well, how about not Dave Calhoun? How about that? First know, that one's off the table. Investors are okay with that in our Yale, Professor Jeffrey sonnenfeld. Called Boeing CEO. Dave called Hoon extra double, mega. Super duper double donut laser focus. In finding the right person to replace him at a job that he wasn't entirely sure how to do in the first place headline of the week. Boeing reelex outgoing CEO as search for replacement continues, amid safety culture. I mean, what are we doing here? What are we doing? That's a big laser though that he's using laser really big laser my last Boeing joke in our the fire was set as part of a controlled CEO celebration in response to extraordinary, sycophantic investors headline of the week. I don't know. I just wanted to pick a random mix Boeing headline to demonstrate an overall point here, so bear with me. Boeing 747 catches fire forced to land on flight from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia. That's just a headline from yesterday, I believe. I mean, it's just a headline. It's just a Boeing Seasons Boeing season. I like to think of Boeing headlines, as like, one of those like bags or you put your hand, in you, pull out a ticket and, you know, you never know, covered in line and Lyme disease ticks. It's usually door plug that Boeing investors. They seem to enjoy. They like their love. They like with it. The last one before he ended up to you, Matt. You know, an hour? I assess to vote against expired. Here we go. I SS to vote against Half of a carton of expired, milk. For company-wide luncheon, headline of the week. Oh, See what they're doing. They're only born again. But the half. Just half of it Calpers to vote against all 12, Exxon, directors. Yeah, starting loss. See that's how you do it. You just you make a decision Calpers. I mean, it's almost it's almost like Calpers looked at it and said, well, there's a lot of evidence that this is a shit board and this is the evidence. They're starting the lawsuit, the Exxon has against its own shareholders. Yeah. Yeah. There you go, although hedging Yourself by voting, a half the expired. Most good idea which happened though. That's the most important thing to me. And I, hey, did anyone notice this guy is his brother, or this other guy went to their weddings, how come this wasn't on my ISS proxy report headline of the week? Tesla shareholders, say, elon's influence makes Kimball musk and James Murdoch unsuitable for the company's board. I also have a joke for the same headline, just so just you. Wait, just you wait, just what? Yours might be just realized like it's was left off of every report before this. Well, as we talked about with Doug chai today, there are an extraordinary amount of annual meetings all happening at the same time, so maybe they didn't get to that report. Yeah, they saw the last name, they're like, wow, fun and stupid people named musk. That's weird. I think it's more likely that they saw. Kimball they're like, nobody would name their kids, Elon and Kimball so he couldn't Rule. And our we are innovating on an air. Vacuum cleaner that is taking 14 years to develop and currently sucks the equivalent of 17 Coke bottles worth of CO2. Out of the atmosphere said, Darren Woods Exxon, CEO in taunting exons, incredible progress on carbon capture bison. Meanwhile, reportedly scoffed and suggested a vote against the Exxon board headline of the week. 170. Strong bison herd can store CO2 emissions equivalent to 40. 30,000 Us cars. Yeah, they they launched a new carbon capture like device out and where there was an Iceland. And apparently just takes this 170 bison. So, it does like, six times as much as they as this new vacuum cleaner. This highly touted vacuum cleaner in Iceland which comes from a company called climb works. I believe a Swiss company will pull out 8,000 gas. The emissions equal to 8,000 cars and you're telling me that the 170 bison 43,000 cars. Yeah and took several million dollars to build the valley, 170 bison. You just give them some grass. Note to the audience, I also have a joke on that headline. Later, this is exciting. We have like dueling jokes today. Yeah, well, I got a dueling one here in our CalPERS in a statement claimed to be Pro bison. Headline of the week Calpers devote against Exxon board members. I don't know what that means. Oh, I did I seriously did Darren would so get Darren Woods in the vacuum clean? Yeah, that's what I can't imagine. Is there anything that Darren would hates more than a bison? You probably just hates them. I probably thinks they're woke up. He devoted approximately 23% of the last proxy statement to Auntie bison is a bison. Just a woke hairy cow. I mean, what is what's going on? And which case are we in? The will in the milk Wars like the is the cow? Not woke. Now, I don't understand. In our governance riddle for you. If the CEO is the is employee of the company but the company is owned by a different company. And the board is chosen by the different company and the CEO is held accountable by the board. Then does a tree falling in the forest. Make a sound headline of the week. Oh, Red Lobster is blaming its bankruptcy on top shareholder and its X CEO saying 11 million dollar. All you can eat shrimp Fiasco contributed to its demise. I also have a headline, I have a headline to and I have a joke on this too. We're picking the same headlines, everything's not there. They're blaming the demise of an entire company. On a it was only an 1, 1. 0 0. What you're saying is that you was make too much money at, I think it's what you're saying. Well, in this case, the CEO of Red Lobster that shareholder that 100% owned, Red Lobster, told them to buy owned, all the shrimp and told him to buy the shrimp. So it was the company referring to what I am going to talk about later is a private Equity Firm called Golden Gate Capital. That's the owners of Red Lobster. It's awesome. It's what it is. It's awesome. It is awesome in our What if we did, like? All you can eat breakfast. Like an endless progress. A cheap breakfast. That doesn't end. I love Mr. Pelts, what do you think headline of the week? Wendy's will offer three dollar breakfast deal as Rivals such as McDonald's test value meals to drive sales. Is Pelt everything in these board? He's still there. Yeah. Helps us still there. Matthew helps. His son is still there, too. I mean I defy anyone you can drive by a Wendy's every day for 10 years, what's changed? It Wendy's what's happening. What's going on now? They're new Dave. Okay, Nelson is brought some value to that Innovative now Innovative. Okay. All right, you do something. Here we go. In our Bill Ackman. Remember Blackman, I don't want to Bill Ackman calls out leadership team at neuralink. Who's only woman is the mother of Elon musk's twins? Oh wait, that was an April Fool's joke and ended up in the wrong folder. Just please disregard headline of the week. Nora link. To implant second human with brain chip as 85% of threads retract in first. So I guess the there's complications with their first patient with everything is going wrong. And yet they're doing a second human now, not everything. Only half the milk containers that's true in our governor meatball, Ron DeSantis, introduces Bill to ban mammals from Florida headlines the way out. Time 170. Strong bison herd can store blah blah blah. Yes CO2 like that. I mean this is gonna have to get rid of the Bison, right? Because he's woke. Mfing bison are gonna ruin everything. The good news is bison. Also hate Florida. They're like manners. So they're out. It's true in our Open AI leaders. All so said, they'll keep elevating the coffee program for employees. After spraying toxic rat, poison in the coffee Supply headline week. Well, that's gonna be a harder job, open ai's leaders say they'll keep elevating safety after disbanding their existential dangerous team. So they, they got rid of all the people in charge of safety, but they're going to keep, they're going to be laser focused on safety. Laser focus. Did they mean they'll record somewhere afraid? Elevator, maybe, nothing. Good is coming, nothing? Good is happening. That's all I know, two more. These are long-winded so bear with me here in our What did you say? Who oh Kimball nah, don't worry about him. It's just a CEO's, brother. He's fine. You won't even notice him and look. It's too late. Now, there's a statue of limitations at the SEC which curtails terrible shareholders. It says, if you can't manage to vote out a sucky director after 10 years, then you are stuck with said, sucky director for life. Kimball has been on the Tesla board since 2004 he's yours now. Sorry, headline of the week, Tesla shareholders. Say, elon's influence makes Kimball musk on suitable. You are, you did this? I love it. Yeah, I mean, look, I say vote out, Kimball Mustangs Murdock, but I'm also thinking, you know what? I maybe you're stuck with them. Maybe you don't have the right amount anymore. What are you doing? Well, so there's a classified board. So he only comes up for election what every four, every three years, three years, three years. So he was added in 2004. So you had a chance to 2004 to say well they went well to be fair, they went public in 2010. Okay so let's say for 7:10 so you had 2010 you could have voted against him 2013, 26 162. Well maybe okay bear with me. I don't quite understand the science. I'm not I'm not a biology major but maybe he only became the brother of Elon like recently is that possible that is Possible. I don't know that. Yeah, I know nobody knows the science. Nobody Knows the science finally this is this is a lot. Another long-winded joke here. in our, oh, You mean that shity restaurant owned by private Equity, Firm, Golden Gate, Capital? We're only five of 44, members of the investment team are women? Oh, this same Golden Gate. Capital were nine of ten members of the administration straight of team are women? Oh yeah this is 2024. We don't take private Equity Firm patriarchies like Golden Gate Capital seriously anymore and you shouldn't either all, you can eat shrimp. Yeah, that's what boys and middle school. Dream up headline of the week. Oh, I'm exhausted. Yeah, that's Red. Lobster is blaming and sprinkles see on top shareholder and his CEO saying and blah, blah, blah. You left out the most important part. I go ahead, go ahead that six of the 44 members, the investment team were shrimp. That's why, that's what the double die. I mean, 90% of your administrative team, are women and five of 44, investors. What the hell is going on? What is this hired? All the women to the administrative team and then there are no more left. The investors shameful Red Lobster in our. Yeah, that's the last four. Let's wrap this up. Come on in our first agenda item. Today, I'm going to need someone to call Douglas rain. He was the voice of Hal 9000 from 2001 A Space Odyssey. I'd like him for the next version of our chatbot. Wait, he died. Does anyone else have any really recognizable? Actor voices that played? Horrible machines. What about James? Spader. Wasn't he? Ultron or Rutger Howard from from Blade Runner? Yeah, yeah. Is skydio. Sky, Net. Is that a real thing? We need a good voice headline of the week. Scarlett Johansson said, no, but open ai's. Virtual assistance sounds just like her. You know, there are Tagged so many articles about this, I actually haven't read it because I'm just sick of opening AI, but this is a crazy story. Like they, they asked her multiple times to voice the AI, she said, no, and they use her voice and they copied voice anyway, but I know this is like a really trivial like way to sum up my thoughts here, but, but this is why I get angry about not having guardrails over Tech and over these stupid broy CEOs because of things like this. And it's not always so trivial but it kinda is right. Like, if you take Uber for an example, they just they go into markets, they break laws and they and they get and they, they get so much Market control. That's too late to do anything about it, right? Because there's no oversight, no one's telling. These people not to break the laws. Right out of control out of control, like like that. If you had the two women on the board before who said a lot of what you're doing. Sam Altman. You're a bad idea. Does Sam Altman's? Not there to call Scarlett Johansson and then okay, effectively, stealing her voice, which they've now taken that voice down because she had to sue them of course for for effectively stealing her voice. Yeah. And not to mention the fact that they made the responses of the chatbot basically, like a giggly Flirty Girl, like like, oh, that's so that you're making me blush, you, it would say stuff like that when you're asking it like Advanced equations. So I it's bananas. What they, what happens? When you put a bunch of white men who hate women in charge of a company to run without guardrails, right? With no guard rails, no guardrails. Yeah. No oversight. Speaking of in our these assholes stole, what we Rightfully stole. This is Injustice headline of the week. Sooner pichai says open, AI might have breached YouTube's terms and conditions to train its Texas video models. Wait, what? YouTube is mad at. Somebody, You Tube is mad at opening YouTube. The company that basically, like, Breached every copyright known to the universe. Like every time I go to YouTube, I'm this like, what is this? This is How it's like the seven Tech Bros. Who stole everybody else's. Eat each other. Yeah. They're like they're like you stole my stuff that I stole know you stole it. No, I don't. I'm excited about it. Two more, right? Two more. Yeah, come on in our, we are now announcing we're downgrading our super alignment team, which had planned to be super aligned to humanity to be a slightly angled team, which plans on being 30%, angle to humanity for the fish. You for seeable future headline of the week, open AI just dissolved its team dedicated to managing AI risks like the possibility of it going Grove. You know, here's another here's another trivia thing upset about today. What's with tech Bros? What using the word super Like super, they have a super alignment team that they fired right at open. A Elon Musk. Just fired. His supercharger team at Tesla. What's going on? Why are you firing things that you're calling super in the first place? And why do you need so much control? Like, what why do you have to get rid of everyone to? Why do you need to exert so much control in authority. So they did have to abandon the word Uber, which they wanted to put in front of everything because Uber crashes, super in the new. Uber super is the new Uber? That's all that is. It's a bunch of Middle School, boys. And finally, in our, this is just light and stupid. Okay, here we go in. Our also, in the works, a billionaire silencer, headline of the week, A group of college kids may have fit just figured out how to get leaf blowers to shut up. Oh Matt this is like the greatest thing ever. This is the thing I hate most is leaf blowers I hate. First of all, where the hell is your rake, second of all? What, what do you what do you know about this? Like what are they doing? Are they just put a silencer on a leaf? Blower it's that easy it's it was that easy they put like this cone at the top of the leaf blower and it silenced it by like an exponential percentage like some massive percentage, Stanley Black & Decker already bought there. Oh this is the best news. I just love the idea that it was like it took two college kids being. Like I hate waking up at 7:00 in the morning to the stupid girls in their words and all they did was put like a cone at the top of it. That was it their engineering students too. I would like to their solution was a rake. And well, Stanley Black & Decker would not have bought that. They wouldn't have a million. All right, yeah, let's move on. All right, wrap up the show. We got we got some data. Oh wait, we don't get exciting music for the data as well. Oh no, I gotta turn off just, I gotta turn off the other music and then give us one of these. All right. Okay. I love and entering to a Gong. Every week we're trying to highlight some of the data is available through free flow, analytics.com, or available through us. If you reach out to us. I, I like I kept mine simple as I always do because I am simple. So I I looked at companies with the most pointless directors. You gotta Define pointless, though. So what I did is I okay, pointless, meaning anyone, any director that our data can deems having less than 1% influence? Oh my one. Not much. Yeah, so I looked at the 1500 largest US companies, okay. Um, the overall winner is financial services, companies CME Group with 7 points directors, which sounds big, but but that's they have 23 directors of CME Group, but that's still a third of the board. That's essentially, third two, direct your groups. They are very complicated, but it's not, it's not surprising to anyone that there's a Superfluous directors at CMA group, right? That makes sense. No, not surprising. But here's here's my favorite and I and you can't make this shit up. I love this. My, my favorite is a company named Extra Space Storage is that way, does that? This is why you should use our data for stuff like this. Where 31% of the board? That's four directors are themselves Extra Space Storage and I'm looking at you I'm looking at you mark Sue. Joe and Jeff. You are Extra Space Storage at Extra Space Storage and know before you ask. Matt this is not a dual-class company with crazy. Voting rights. This is not a dictatorship controlled company where one person owns more than, you know, like 50% of voting power. This is just a normal company with some Extra Space Storage in human form. That's all that's all it is. I, I can see the Throwdown War already. I'm not lucky. I got lucky on this bag. That a company called Extra Space Storage has four. Four pointless directors and I gotta say that that this is high. Like, I don't think there was even a company with, with five or six. You see me group, had had five, several had four but but it's not. I mean this is really they were in the top five. This is amazing. That's an amazing poll. Dig deep for this one, to have four directors with less than 1% and the company name is Extra Space Storage. Mine is mine is also built off of new data that we've been working. This is, you don't have yet. If you're on free full analytics.com if you want it, you know what this, why would you not want this? So we mapped the knowledge that directors have and we base the knowledge off of the industries that they've worked in as Executives, the titles that they've had through their careers and degrees that they've attained. So if you got like an engineering degree and you work in Aerospace and you were the head of product design or something we want to Like my take all those things, we match them to the databases that are full of these titles, have these knowledge require this level of Education, all this kind of stuff like that. So we went through and did this big exercise. It took us a couple of weeks and we have knowledge Maps. So what I did here was, I wanted to find which Industries at the highest level the industry on average have the most engineering influence on the board. Knowledge required is engineering on average which Industries have the most directors who have engineering knowledge. Something really simple. Like, so right off the bat, what do you think in Industry with that required? Engineering knowledge. Is going to be right? Like something in Aerospace or yeah, exactly. You think Aviation building something really Extra Space Storage, maybe that's, that's full of pointless, knowledge industry, in the first place, like storing things just like extra building. Empty building to store stuff. I love that. That's an entire sub industry like not that's more than one. Oh the humanity yeah what do you got? What do you got? All right. Number five on this list is the Environmental Facility Services because the industry with the 5th, highest amount of engineering experience. And amount of engineering influence on the board. These are, this is, this is where like engineering has some power on the board and we're talking about their 167 Industries. So this is number five out of 164 ish or something like that example, companies here at Casella waste Doug, Casella himself actually has a lot of engineering knowledge of course, clean harbors. Where Alan McKim has a tremendous amount. These are these are companies that effectively go out and pick shit up out of the environment. It's good. That's what you want some engineering experience, but to be Innovative number four, Commercial Printing. Commercial Printing. What is even commercials like commercials? What is the know? That's like actual printing of stuff on papers and signs so okay, so now we're getting into. There are 160 sub Industries. Commercial Printing. Wouldn't have been in my top 50 guesses like printing signs know. There is an engineering required for that, but why are Engineers spending their time? On these boards example? Companies are tapan a Japanese company hodaru, Morrow Rock Sewell, another Japanese company yaksu. Yeah. So printing Market, yeah, they are all over it and this Keith Walters there has a lot of engineering knowledge according to surprising. Yeah. Number three. Now we're getting back into, okay? I might have guessed this but probably not but close. Security and alarm Services as a sub industry. I don't think I would have guessed that. Yeah I wouldn't necessarily guess it but you're talking now about drone technology and sensors. And yeah we're talking like Mission Impossible, stuff, initial, impossible stuff. Yeah we're not talking about like getting a dog to bark at the male. Exactly know. And like seven guys named Gus walking around with coffee saying get off of this probably like we're not talking about that but the average engineering knowledge in the sector is 1.6% that's it. Well most of the people on these boards don't have it right but this is the average. So the average skewed up because you're usually a couple people on every board that has some engineering knowledge example companies. Here actually include Brinks which is you know the big money trucks and whatever Rick Ross, Michael hurling and Mark Eubanks there popped in our knowledge database seacom, which is another Japanese company one. Thing I did notice is the Japanese and Engineering on boards is a thing right? Like next, I got to look at Countrywide because the Japanese seemed to put a lot of Engineers on boards. Number two, now, I would have never guessed this ever. This might have been out of 167 Industries, 159 on my guesses. This is going to be like, Red Lobster or something. What's going on? I wish it was Red Lobster. At least shrimp engineering, makes some sense to me. Well, it actually is a quite beautifully engineered body this room. It's about, that's what I mean, they swim. They were propelled them. So the water it's quite. I think it's fabulous but no in this case it's human resources and employment services. Oh, I would never guessed well, but What there's there's a lot of Engineers on human resources for boards and I don't this I like this is why they're not as many on on Aerospace boards that they're all in the Human Resources sector. That's probably why. I, what this points out to me. First of all is I don't understand anything. But second of all, you know, people often, you know, they accuse us of being negative with our data like we're like, it's, it's hostile to Target directors, both them out. But but, you know, there's, there's a lot of other uses of the data, which includes this one that, if you're the type of Industry that needs engineering, we can help you identify which board members that you might want to call to put on your board after you vote out like the CEOs cousin or something. So don't look at it as negative. Look at it as creating a board vacancy to actually get a skill. You need and we can help you. It sounds like, although yeah. That said, yes, where the hell are all the engineers on the industries that you'd expect them. Right? Like so that's where we can help, right? We can Target. We can Target those companies that need things, right? One of the things that we notice in the data, when it comes to knowledge spaces, is that the bigger, the companies are. The more Consolidated. The industries are the more. They actually focus on economics accounting skills. They want to make some cash, they usually consolidate, whatever the Core Company skill is with the CEO and the the rest of the board is really just about maintaining market maintenance accounting law. It's playing Services playing defense for the CEO, right? Protecting the CEO from outside protecting from outside investors. You looking professional? Like it's hard to say no to an investment bank or from Morgan Stanley or bored. Like it's hard to say like me but for the, for the normal people. Yeah, you're an investor you're looking at that being like, one of us is on the board. That's great. Like I feel like an investor is there but what has happened is they put all investors there. So really the Only person with knowledge. That the company's actual operations tends to be management, which is not so good. That's you kind of need something else but the number one industry for engineering skill, is not going to surprise you at all. It is biotechnology. At least they seem to have gotten it right in biotech, right. The average is 1.8% knowledge influence on biotech boards, but it usually is almost entirely a couple of people who have a lot of engineering, like Tara, Matthew Rabinowitz at Galapagos, Paul stoffels at zylabs, Samantha do. There are lots of Biotech companies with a tremendous amount of engineering experience on those boards. So that's that's all I got. That's my, that's my short. Little human resource and employment services. They have a lot of Engineers engineering on their board. Here's the smart play. Yeah, you know that those people have bored experience. You want Engineers on your board and you want somebody who's got bored experience, go raid the human resources, Absolutely. Just put on the boards of Aero space. Believe me, they're gonna take your call, believe me. Yeah, that's all we got. That's Damian rawlas. I am your analyst home at miscarry. We have free float. Come back. We have a weird busy week. This week. I'm gonna do proxy countdown. Probably buy myself tomorrow. Good to me. Just me Damien's. Gonna be because, remember, in jury duty, aren't you? You're like, I was supposed to say, I'm not supposed to say, he's, he's locked. I'm actually not supposed to say, I'm actually. Well, I didn't say you didn't say anything. Yeah, that's right. I didn't say, I didn't say anything. So I said a thing. And then, on Friday, we're gonna have an early morning show because it's a long weekend here. And here, we got stuff in the afternoon but otherwise until then good. Bye.