Transcript
Hey, oh yeah. You're just gonna like get your coffee ready after we start. I don't want to drink out of my thermos but I'm gonna have to I forgot my mug. Yeah, live from the es know. It's not what I was there. Wait, we're at the Black Rock executive helipad today. Matt really waiting for their cuz Lord knows we didn't get sent somewhere. I think we're waiting for Larry Fink's. Successor to Fly in. Oh, just planning. Yeah, it must be right. The sneer succession. It's the ESG industry's only weakly Wok data podcast. Is that even true? Yes. Okay. And featuring analyst whole man? Matt biscari man. In today's Eagles, seagull Goldfinch, See, I just, I just saw the esg's crisis right there. I just, I just redid it for them with three bird names, Eagles seagull goldfish. You know, it's the first time I've realized that I live in a Land of Seagulls. I never really realized the eagle and seagulls, really? It's the same kind of thing. Wow, that's what's an e. What's an eagle? This is the really, this is the Insight that people. What is that an electrical? What is an eagle? What does it go? Yeah, imagine if there's an eye goal, then it would be an apple owned goal in today's show called August 16th, 2023, ESG, headlines and anti-woke update and a word from our sponsor. Yes, that is correct. Let's our show today is being sponsored by ESG age. Yeah, your ESG Data Solutions provider. Paul will be stopping by later to talk about boards. I just I want to be clear to our audience, what we're talking about, I don't really care. All right, ready? All right, let's do this thing. It's your favorite music. I have some painfully boring, ESG news. Headlines this. Oh yeah, that's it. Real man, baby. Including a favor to the succession planning over discover financially. You'll see what I mean. I've, I've found their new CEO for that you did that later. Yeah, that's nice. It's nice of you. Vin fast. You heard of Vin fast. Never Mind fast shares surged in NASDAQ debut. This is a Vietnamese. Electric vehicle maker. Matt their market cap is already bigger than Ford and General Motors and can I say why I looked at all of our data? I looked at a bunch of msci data. This is the first company from Vietnam. I think we've ever talked about this, is that strange to you? That might be true. Yeah. I don't see them, and I don't see Vietnam anywhere representative, at least in the data set that we use and they went public via SPAC, right? So, so, they went via SPAC. Here's why I picked this company out, because they're a bit of an outlier, but then, again, they're bit of a knot of an outlier. But here's the, here's the part that excited me because I'm a, you know, I'm a Dork. Yeah, sure. It's a it's a Vietnamese in Asia a market that has been well documented that does not include women in anything really except for Malaysia. Did you know that Malaysia actually has A higher percentage of women on the board in the United States. I did know that. Yeah, I did. Yeah, weird outlier. The weird Asian outlier. Okay. There are six directors on this new board of Vin fast. Three of them. Matt, including the CEO are women. Wow! The CEO. Okay, granted, this is an Asian company but I made it very strange prediction that there would be a Asian female, CEO of an electric vehicle car maker this year, is this town? You know, do I win this prediction somehow? I look, I'm gonna say that. I'm starting to feel like you're predictions are real dubious. They're of course. You everything. That's one proves it. Yeah, I'm just excited because I just I I'm shocked that they're letting women run this but here's the problem. Is that they really letting women run it. No. It's it's all, it's a dictatorship. This company is owned. Founded controlled by. Vietnam's richest, man. Found not vuong, who controls after the combination. After the, after the listing controls 99% of the companies ordinary shares. All right? Okay. I know you're laughing. Yeah, but it's not just really the audience, clearly, he controls everything. But look, I I'm still gonna be excited that have to border women in a CEO as a woman. I it's look, it's an outlier, so I'm just excited about it. Well, you know what? You know what's really easy to do? No, have 100% female board. When you own 99% of the share. That's easy. Still he's doing it. He can walk in the room and be like I don't care about your thoughts so Sheldon and let's move on and do what I said. Moving on Ron DeSantis putting fingers. They call him. They call meatballs wrong. I like, meatball Ron, I like putting fingers is good, though. Is that your name? know putting fingers is refers to, I guess he was on a, you know, he was doing one of his political Things speech, whatever he was talking to people, and people watched him eat pudding with his fingers. I thought utensil, oh, that was on a plane, he was on whatever his staff was him like as I was rambling and stuttering about this utensils like me tents, I realized it doesn't matter where he was, he was eating with. That is really. That's what I like that. You are, you naming him that? Like I just putting things putting fingers, that does your name. Yeah, he says he has moved on in Disney should drop its lawsuit against him. He said to see it suggestion. He said, quote, we've basically moved on they are suing the state of Florida. They are going to lose that lawsuit so I will. So what I would say is drop the lawsuit. This is despite despite Matt many legal experts saying that the lawsuit brought by big Disney has a has a very good chance of winning. This is literally like a like like a trumpian moon, a seven year old like, who picked a fight with a high schooler being like you know, as you're getting closer to the fight date, just being like, look, you know, the smart thing for you to do, it would be to just quit right now because you're gonna lose anyway you this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard not to mention my, he loses the actual lawsuit, but as we know, all of his people are telling us or telling him all the polls are telling him that they are sick of him attacking Corporation or something Republican party with his anti-esg anti-walk nonsense, they're just sick of it. So good timing, right? And a Ronnie you. It's nice of you to ask Disney to drop their lawsuit when you took away, the Reedy Creek Improvement and replace the board with like a guy who says, fluoride turns you gay, right? Like, there's no way Disney's job in this lawsuit. They are almost 100% chance to win and it's real. Cute of you too putting finger your way into asking them to lose. Wendy, McMahon named president and CEO of CBS News and stations and CBS Media Ventures, where the hell that is. I'm just bringing this up because we reported a few months ago that basically, all the news, all the cable news, all the network news are run by women. At this point, talk about the glass Cliffs job, right? What an industry, right? It's an industry. That all the blowhards in the right all call fake news, right? They all attack constantly. It's a failing industry. In the sense that viewership is dwindling year after year. So another woman named to us, CEO of a news organization and I want to add that this CBS is owned by Paramount Global. Yeah. It's and it's it's worth knowing that 63% of the Paramount Global board consists of women and they control 80% of the power over there. Of course a lot of that power is thanks to dictator Shari Redstone but whatever well it's still CBS still CBS News still very much a female but sharing Enterprise shook it from Sumner right like which so this was a male absolutely still. Um, the first thing apparently that Wendy McMahon has to deal with, is they're talking about selling their entire broadcast studio in New York City and selling their Studio assets like that, desperate for cash out there. They're like, they're putting basically half of CBS up for sale. They're just like, really is on the job, wouldn't you sell all the other Studios first? Isn't that the one you want to keep? Apparently, not know. I think have fun with that. So yeah, another glass Cliff scenario in the news organizations. Up next discover Financial CEO. Roger child resigns. As board vows renewed, compliance Focus. Okay. That's the oh, really. Okay, that's funny. It interim board member who's only been on the board for a few months. John Owen will take over as interim CEO, it was fast. This move and let's be, let's be real. He hasn't resigned, he's been fired. I mean, let's just be real about. This move comes just weeks after discover announced, it would pause share BuyBacks admit an internal review of compliance Risk Management, corporate governance. A Discoverer is talking with Regulators over how it misclassified some of its credit cards. Oops. Yeah. Separately discover said it received a proposed consent order from the FDIC tied to a consumer compliance issue. This is, and this is the second time in a year. The company had to suspend share BuyBacks over compliance concerns discover last year, temporarily paused by back to after it started an internal investigation into practices within its student loan servicing businesses. So all that's going on Discover Financial, right? Yeah. Let me tell you about the board. According to freefall analytics, another sponsor. Yeah, CEO, Roger, Hawks child actually controlled 25% of the influence, but there was a power Trio. A long tenured power Trio of directors, actually controlled 41% of influence, they were all appointed in 2007. They seem to be the three people running this board. Actually that's Greg kase Mary Bush and Jeff Aaron and And before I get to tell you who should be the next CEO, Matt. Cheryl isn't seem to care about any of this. I I looked oh, despite all this going on and this is a lot, right? I mean, things like that. Yeah, enough. That it led to them getting rid of their CEO, the share, this shareholders voted for everybody. Even even the CEO, only got one percent of vote against one percent. So nobody no shareholders are paying attention to discover Financial. So, Does this new compliance Focus mean, is this? This is clearly a glass or brown Cliff alert, right? It has to be right. Doesn't this have to be a woman or, or the new season and white man taking over CEO? Yeah, it has to be, I mean Who is this classic cleanup? Classic Glass Cliff moment? Yeah, okay. And they're due their executive committee is eight white dudes and a lawyer named Hope. Oh really? That's their entire? Yeah. So there are actually due for a glass Cliffs scenario. There is one, I was so, I was looking at all the first I looked at the internal candidates, there was actually a president of payment services, Diane offerings, but she just stepped out the end of June. And really do you want and internal hire after all? You need to get out. Yeah. So I searched partly through our data partly. Just through the, you know, the semester, I did whatever you want to call it Google. I found the next CEO of discover Financial. Do we need like a prediction? Sure. All right, let me prediction music. Um, here's your prediction music. Oh, I like it. This is named executive officer. MasterCard, she's the chief risk officer. Karen Griffin, what MasterCard? She she's a member of MasterCards executive leadership team for the past eight years. She served as Chief compliance officer, remember that's good. Discover Financial is vowing renewed compliance Focus, Karen Griffin prior to joining MasterCard in 2014 Karen served as Chief compliance officer for visa and MasterCard. How was she not the next CEO of Discovery? Because here first, she's not directly associated with the companies. Somehow like we have to run a network analysis to see like whether she golfs with them because if she does you do that, you do that. Get back to me on Friday because really I don't know how it's not caring for and you're welcome to discover. I just did your your CEO really amazing work. I love that we can do that, that kind of work for companies now. You know about this one environmental young environmentalists in Montana. Won a ball. Mark, climate change. Really? You know? Right one. Yeah, this is a good one. A marks. The first time, a court in the US has declared that a government. Has a constitutional duty to protect people from climate change. Yeah, who would have thought? What a ruling? And part of this is a bit odd because Montana happens to have a highly protective Constitution by refusing to consider its highly protected to the environment. Yeah, the Montana Constitution, right? So so Tara writing out a bit of an outlier, but but the judge ruled that this, that it violated Montana's Constitution by refusing, to consider the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, when they've approved, coal mines oil drilling, a new power plants. Do you see what I'm saying here? I do see this in Montana, put themselves on the map early this year with a blocking of ESG investing. They, they called it a pro-freedom pro free enterprise blocking of ESG that was pro-freedom and they, they, yeah, they changed the procurement Rule's such that, I think it was Montana, you cannot consider the environment when building a thing that was like their new rule, right? So well, according to this, This decision stands Montana officials will no longer be able to legally to legally. Ignore the huge contributions to global warming made by fossil fuels. Although Whether they're going to do anything about these emissions. That's the questions, right? Like, they just because they can't ignore it. Does it does it mean that this ruling will actually have a positive effect? I don't know. I don't, I don't know. This seems like a supreme. It's gonna go to the Supreme Court. It seems like their their gonna argue. You don't have a constitutional right to like understand this and and then like Clarence Thomas away in Yeah, it and I think what is impact eventually will be will be much more than just the state of Montana, right? Because other states will pick up on this and then this you're right it'll eventually go to a federal level if it goes to the federal level then it will set a federal precedent which will mean that like other states can use it and other activists environmental activists can use it. Absolutely. Next special counsel Jack Smith You Know, Jack Smith. Yeah. Oh obtained, an extraordinary array of data from Twitter about Donald Trump's account from direct messages to draft tweets to location data newly unsealed court, filings reveal how location but But it took a bruising battle with Twitter's attorneys. In fact, a judge in the case held Twitter in contempt of court back in February and the judge also was I guess yelling at Twitter for taking extraordinary and apparently unprecedented steps to give Trump advance. Notice about the search warrant. So I is there more gonna come from this story? Is this is this where the story ends about Twitter? Because this is it's a bit of an outlier and on our corporate news. Right? It depends on if we decide that that judge is woke and Elon Musk starts tweeting at the judge that there are woke jerk or something. I, you know, this just seems you don't pay his his rent like yeah, I feel like you know, responding to a subpoena. It's not really something that he's gonna do. That's like even lower down on the list and like pay rent, well they something respond to what they fought the subpoena quite vigorous. And again they were having this, they were held in contempt because they refuse to give it Up. Even after they were found that they had to turn it over, right? Like it's a, it's a warrant. It's, I don't, I mean if it's a legally executed warrant, here's the thing I don't understand about like the anti woke thing or the or the Twitter thing it's like If you believe in the rule of law then wouldn't illegally executed warrant sort of be the rule of law that you followed? I don't. Well it's just once again that the Elon Musk is just a goofball which we all know because care he does because Because despite the fact that he proclaims Twitter now known as X to be a to be like a free speech absolutist company. He does say repeatedly that he respects the rule of law in whatever jurisdiction that Twitter or acts operates, right. So if they're banning free speech over there in India or wherever he doesn't care because that's the rule of law. So you're right. He is just constantly kind of a hypocritical goofball because you would think in this scenario, He would just comply to the law. I don't know. I just bring this up because I don't know again. Twitter is a private company. It's a little bit different than the companies we usually cover here. I just don't know if this is have any future ramifications for the company. I think that's more future ramifications for judges that Bryn Mawr, which is where the judge went, right? For Barrel. Howell yeah. Went to Bryn Mawr, for her for bachelor's and and was appointed by Barack Obama. So I'm gonna guess that like this is one of those like oh she's a woke, liberal Justice things. That's what you know, what I was gonna go. There is a not-so-secret thread or undercurrent a lot of the stories we cover here, and you're right. The point out that the judge is a woman. The judge also in Montana is a woman, I was working on a little study, they're talking about eight states, the US states that offer now offer, free lunch to any student to anyone K through 12, right? And I was looking at the leadership of those eight states, four of them are women. Despite the fact that, you know, less than I think it's like 12% of Governors or held by women. So there is a pattern here with women in leadership, right? Which is they seem to just do good shit Right. And I guess the anti-woke will come out and complain and get all hand ringing and get scared. But look. I've been talking a lot about, like, like off air to my wife and to like, I was talking to Jesse about it the other day. And I know men have seemed to Define masculinity as like, you are weaker than me. It's like in opposition to somebody else. Like it's always like, you know, I am this and you are that and there's like you just build these silos and say, oh you're a woman there for you, do X, Y and Z, and I'm a man and therefore, I do X Y and Z like defining masculinity by tasks, but I think it's time to stop to finding masculinity by tasks and allow women to do the things that we men used to define as ours like run States and rule on shit because this is what happened like they you get different decisions. You get thoughtful decisions. You get like yeah, stakeholders are actually. That's yeah, that's where you just Lost. All you lost Vivica I did. Oh, so stakeholder. He's not gonna come back on anymore. Finally here's a report at a Bloomberg Banker's hate saying this G. Yeah, but our hardwired it into Finance about 2/3 of respondents. And a survey said, The anti-esg movement that started last year will force firms to stop using those three letters and conversations with clients. However, they'll continue to incorporate ESG metrics in their business. So we're really just this makes me laugh because all they're gonna do is just drop using the acronym, come to. Yeah, that's it said, we said on this short funny this show is about to be four years old and and almost four years ago, we wanted to kill the acronym because it was pointless and misleading, Gonna Save the whole industry, all this nonsense disappeared, we just said it's data. We said that four years ago and he said it when we were both at msci and before that, right? And now it's like yeah, of course. They're just gonna stop saying is she, but you cannot unsee the data. There's way too much of it and it's got too many uses. It's not just for greenwashing people. It's you you over marketed a concept that you weren't really clear about in the first place. And then eventually, of course you got people pissed off just like, if you over marketed cigarettes to be a great lifestyle choice. Right. Mean, you gotta like, calm down a little bit on the market like but that's the thing. It isn't just for the marketing and the green washing the well. Actually, I said this to a reporter the other day. The anti-woke movement is not is actually really good. It's cathartic because what it's showing you is sort of like the snowflakes on the ESG side who never can work at that, convicted about the data or didn't know how to use it or build a quick product to make a quick Buck, they're all the ones. Vanguard, you think Vanguard was like real serious about ESG when they joined the Net Zero Alliance, they had no fucking interest. They were joining the alliance because that's where all the clients were and they thought they had to be a part of the conversation and they were the first to drop themselves out and now what like that basically shows that they never were serious about it. But everybody who was serious about it, this this article proves it, he's rewired to not say, ESG because they're using it. They're just doing it anyway. They were just doing It before I move on to you, Matt, I'm going to repeat my favorite part of this story. 2/3 of respondents said that firms will stop saying ESG but keep doing It's so stupid. It's stupid thing is so dumb. All right, I have some news and not too much. Oh my God. My news. Is hey, I just noticed that news. Um, in which I like to note the stories where people, just notice things that have been happening for a while, including this, okay, popular sweets, brand risks, boycott after woke, lgbtq plus packaging makeover. The brand in question, here in this article is Skittles whose tagline forever has been Taste. The rainbow does gonna say before you even begin because I love Skittles. It's rainbow coloring. It's rainbow. It's just rainbows. And it's so not like woke to like gettles that like Marshawn Lynch would throw Skittles as he scored touch. I mean, like, it was this the thing, right? Like, like there's no one anti Skittle except for Now that they what they've done since 2017 is change their package from a rainbow to a gray to like a black and white package during pride month in order. Like it's just like whitish, grayish like no colory kind of outline in order to say. There's only one rainbow that we're celebrating this month. That was like its it was a clever little tagline. Yeah. And the anti woke just realized that this is happening. They just realized, they're, they apparently are very unhappy and they're talking about boycotting Skittles now. Oh, no. They're gonna boycott Skittles gonna boycott skills. Like Skittles is owned by Mars corporation, which is the fourth light, largest private company in the US. So we don't really cover them a lot, like our sponsors. Don't have a lot of data on Mars. So I did find though using good friends of ours, a site called Goods. Unite us that Mars is real woke. 67% of their political donations in the last two years have gone to Democrats. So they are, they are woke Corporation for sure. But that makes you just by giving to just to give it a Democrats, make sure you woke up. Yeah. That's isn't a half of it, right. And that what we're talking about? I've met a lot of Democrats. They don't seem very well. They don't all seem that woke to me. No, I agree. I mean, most of the, like, all the Democrats in Congress are aged 69 and up, right? Yeah. They're all like multi-millionaire. Yeah. Oh, are you? So, whoa, yeah. Um, but yeah, I just love that. They, they like woke up yesterday and they were like, oh my God, they like gays at Skittles. It's a reasonable package. To all the strive fans listening. Now that to listening to the show and now that you hate Skittles, you should call call us. Because I'll give you a long list of things you can know. I like, I love that, you know, it's not just Skittles, we should start generating that list just for fun. Anyway, all the things that you should never buy and see, which is basically everything how useful it is, because I'm not really sure what's not woke anymore other than like again, like there's a couple there's like shotgun Soup company. There's like right, there's like yeah, big big man, Muscle Milk company. I don't know. There's like a couple of companies, but like, if you go to Public Square, there are supplement companies that make like supplements and they have advertised it's like organic sourced, Big Bear Trail Paper Company. The the there's a there's a, a group called like seven week coffee or something. Neo Nazi vegan Burgers. Seven week coffee is like in the anti-wolf, like We are all about the right to life and all this kind of stuff and they they fair trade their coffee, right? Like, isn't that woke are we talking look? You know, my favorite kind of company is I love anti-choice men. Running Coffee Company. Yeah, that's what I like. I like that's what that's all I look for. In other you just noticed that news. Here's a headline NYC, pension seek to dismiss lawsuit over fossil fuel Stakes. Oh yeah, tell me about this one. So this is from the Great Sage location. Bloomberg, apparently, the Americans for fair treatment, which is an anti-woke oil front. They sued the New York City. Pensions, they found like three pensioners in New York City and they cosigned a lawsuit because New York City, pensions divested, largely divested from fossil fuels, and they sued them saying you are, you know, bucking your fiduciary duty. That's what they said, you shouldn't be allowed to divest from these companies. But in but in the lawsuit response where New York City pensions are looking to throw out the case. First of all, they point out the lunacy of three out of 60 like 69,000 or 600,000 say like what did they find? Like the three last people in New York City who still support like Giuliani? It's literally like there's three people they could find to cosine the lawsuit out of 600 thousand. It was like some absurdly small number. But in the lawsuit itself in the, whether they're looking the motion to dismiss. They point out. This quote, the total lack of Precedence supporting plaintiff's, legal theory is no mere happens, dance, public Pension funds, exercise judgment every day about which companies in Industry investing or not. In fact, Texas divested from pornography in 2006 Tennessee, divested from marijuana in 2019. Oh those decisions? And countless other discretionary decisions, public Pension funds. Make daily do not end up in court because courts are not the right place to challenge them. Well what let's be honest Matt, everything you don't invest in your portfolio is really everything you're divesting in. Yeah, that's correct. If you choose not to invest in something you divested from. Yeah I mean, come on. What are we talking about here? This is just decision, is the lawsuit in this case is saying, like you've bucked your fiduciary duty, but it's like they didn't notice and just now or noticing that and like anti-wolf places have not invested in things that they don't like, like marijuana on. Pornography, like Texas doesn't invest in pornography, can't you argue? There's no bigger growth industry as we move to Ai and like immersive technology, then porn. There's no bigger growth industry than that. plus this isn't Bit cruel like Tennessee home of Nashville and Memphis like come on, you know, you know, you're not investing in weed. Come on. What are we doing? I can't imagine Nashville without the waft of weed, that's just doesn't seem fair and my third story. Here, here's the headline, Republican controlled States like Oklahoma are rushing to invest in clean energy, even as conservative groups push for more oil and gas. Well, this is the point we've always made, right? I mean, why, why not just make more money? Why not just make money off of this? Isn't that the whole point anyway, but for sure Duty and pro shareholder. Blah blah, blah blah. Well, you've been on. You've been harping on this for a while but just as a reminder here Oklahoma, which they named in the headline, Did come out with a they called it, the energy discrimination list and they blacklisted working with certain asset managers and Banks. That Financial companies that were there, the state's no longer allowed to work with because they don't invest in, or they don't like how they talk about or invest in or think about oil and gas companies and they listed 13 companies. This was in May of this year, it was the energy, discrimination elimination act so that's what they call them. Yeah, that's like an animal. That's I think it kind of is, and I love how. So now this is a critical assholes are rushing into clean energy. I love how like the the one thing that we all learn, even for those of us who don't know anything about, you know, investing is divest is a Divestment the right word. Yeah, a diverse portfolio. Where you were? You invest into men. What does the world? It's a yeah, it's your diversification, a diversification of your portfolio, right? Like, the one thing that we all learn, like, you don't put everything into one industry, until one type of stock and I love. Now that the the modern day, Republican the modern day GOP, their whole thing is to eliminate all industry from your state. But one basically let's write let's not look long-term at all. Let's ignore everybody's warnings and just stick right here with this one industry. No I mean, Sage Angels article points out very clearly that those are political talking points and even as they passed the legislation, we talked about here last week but before also that this is Kabuki theater to the healthy degree because just like Rhonda even when they ban yes, she the language is no yes G. You know Roar scores ratings whatever however you can use the SG if it's if it's material right? I was going to say it's what we talked about strive all the time Vivid and strive is that it's the it's it's a ESG company pretending that it's anti ESG uses. It uses ESG data. Yeah it's all theater. It's all my wife about a second life which was the ETFs that they just closed that were anti-walk ETFs. One was like the America defended fund and they only they it was like a gun, you know, supporting company index or something. And I told her like, oh yeah, this company created their own rating and then made these ETFs, and they now have to fold because no one's investing. And she's like, isn't that cold ESG? Isn't that just absolutely, I'm glad you know what I do? Yeah. And finally, in my list, here's the headline, an embarrassingly simple solution for industrial emissions. Okay? This made me giggle Because that solution that they're talking about that. They just noticed that might actually save us from tremendous amount of emissions. It's called thermal batteries. So they effectively use the same technology from a toaster, which is okay. Now I'm listening, you know, and heat capturing bricks that is quote a version of a system developed for use alongside blast furnaces about two centuries ago. Oh they heat These Bricks up and the bricks, hold the heat with a 1% loss for days, they hold the Heat. And it's that like 1500 degrees Celsius. This is after earlier this year, I got a solid laugh out of the idea that there was a Revival of quote, wind powered shipping, otherwise known as sailboats for shipping things around the we are just now noticing that stuff that we did hundreds of years ago. Actually just have less carbon explain this to me. What application would one use a thermal battery? What does this mean? So, like if you preventing the heat from escaping a battery. So, if you operate a smelter, right? Like you need to smell which, you know, why you do that, what you're doing to do after this, if you were to operate a smell, their, you need a tremendous amount of heat to melt the metals and and and then configure them and like whatever you do. It's he requires heat, most of that heat comes from burning, coal or fossil. Fuels, which releases a tremendous amount of heat, too. Sure what they're suggesting is effectively. You can capture that heat in a thermal battery. And you write, okay keep it warm and just reuse the heat from the battery to the shit. Wow. I mean, I'm glad I'm glad this is something that they're discovering but that took in this long-distance, do we ReDiscover this seam? So there's a massive. There's a there's been a, the company that they interviewed for this article. They, they just said they just got like 60 million in funding. They're working with like, Saudi aramco, like major corporations are working with them, their CEO just came out and said it's actually in like in that is a quote embarrassingly simple, our technology. Yeah, right like sure because he's basically like, you know, we've been able to do this forever. I don't know why. No one's no one's done this, and we might be able to capture or avoid tremendous amounts of carbon and keep doing stuff simply by using bricks that we've had. That sounds of years, Before we move over to Paul just say that sounds very woke to me. I don't It just sounds too smart. It just sounds like bricks or woke now, right. That's too much too. That's right. So, let's let Paul in yet, Paul, Paul from ESG Age, The Great Paul is going to talk. What's he talking about today? He's talking about, think about board size. Oh, why don't we even, why can't he just tell us? Tell us what you're talking about. Go hello Hudson here with skates statistic of the week. This week, we're going to look at board size. Comparing, both the Russell 3000 and the S&P 500. So, one of the big differences is the median number of directors, between the two indices. The median. Number directors in the S&P, 500 is 11. while in the Russell 3000, it's 9 which kind of makes sense, you know, more complicated companies to run would need more board members rather and Wider range of expertise potentially. So it kind of makes sense as far as that's concerned. There are also a lot more boards with more than 12 directors. For example, in the S&P 500, then there are in the Russell 3000, there's only 6.6% to the Russell 3000. Where is this 17.3% in the S&P 500? Another thing to note is that board size has changed, very little since 2018, which was the year. S gauge started collecting statistics for this kind of data and really, I mean, the medians are the same nine for the nine, for the Russell 3000. Sorry. And 11 for the S&P 500, all though, there has been a bit of a shift towards larger boards in the S&P 500. Certainly there's back in 2008, there was only 15.8% of boards had more than 12. Whereas if you remember in 2023, it's it was 17.3 and there's even been some small shift in the Russell. 3000 to those very large boards, which are often Banks and Bank holding companies, Sure of boards size at the moment and back in 2018. So on, I guess what we need to remember is that bigger is not always better. Better is always better. And next week, we are going to have a look at the frequency of board meeting and do a similar comparison between the SBI 500 and the Russell 3000. So this is Paul Hodgson signing off with ESG statistic of the week. Bye-bye. So, thank you, Paul, for that. I before, I just signed this out because this Show's gonna be seven hours long if I don't know, why are we talking so much today? I have, we were just talking in pre-production about you had a great turn of phrase. Which was why don't people use like free flow, analytics.com data, or skhs data, to create board. Vacancies, And it strikes me listening to Paul that if the median board at the S&P, 500 is 11, people strong and it hasn't changed in five years. It basically doesn't change at all. That is you know, roughly six thousand people that have steady state sort of size jobs. Like there's it's like like think of the NFL right. There are only 56, what is a 52 people per team. And there's 30 teams, that's it. That's all you get. so, if we know that, then why shouldn't we be creating Vacancies, in order to actually improve the teams like why don't ya, I mean, why do we think of it as aggressive to vote against somebody when we should be thinking of it as exactly creating an opportunity and opportunity to improve that team? Yeah, because there is look there's High turnover. There is high turnover in general in the corporate space It's Not Unusual for directors and Executives to be changing and leaving and all this stuff. So absolutely. Create a vacancy, we should see as an opportunity to, to find a more diverse, you know, Viewpoint more diverse skill set, whatever you want to call it. So thank you, Paul for reminding us that board sizes mean there's an opportunity to flip the idiots and replace them with something good. That's all we got. That's Damian Ross. I am your Analyst at. We are free, float. That was woke Wednesday for the 16th of August, 16th of August. We will be back again on Friday with a wrap of the week. Hopefully if I have someone to watch my kids, oh, I might have to do it at home, but we'll be back then until then goodbye.