Transcript
Hell yeah. Hey yeah, whoa, that's how we're gonna start. Itchy yeah, I'm always itchy live from your CEO's second beach house. It's yet another manic. Monday edition of businessman's joined by the Lord of analysts holes. Fresh Off The Highwaymen Scotty. I am actually fresh off the highway, I just dropped my kids off on the highway in today's bingo card called August 14th 2023, top 10 sexy Monday stories and BM of the week. Yeah. Board member of the week. And you know what? We have a sponsor for our BM of the week. Free float, analytics.com. Matt, I use free flow, analytics.com. I used it probably 25 times this morning, putting together, the pre-production notes for our show. So, I use it. No, it's yeah. I use that. I use msci. I don't actually have access to anything else, but those are the two things I use a lot, you know, it's a little bit funny, is that you thought some of the data on free flow, analytics.com was wrong. And so you and I went, okay, research, it was wrong. Well, you were, you were suspicious of it and it turned out to be, right? Go to free float, analytics.com, sponsoring the show today. Sign up. There's a free login and you can get all sorts of board member data and they're sponsoring the BM of the week, this? Yeah, pay attention later in the show. Talk about Kraft Heinz because there's some interesting things you can learn, wonderful, thank you for analytics.com for your continued support and by the way before I get started, Matt, when I asked a question when I say something like, why would this person have this amount of influence that that's not. I'm not suggesting. Anything is wrong. You just said why? She said, I'm just saying you were wrong. I didn't say the date is wrong. How dare you? Let's come on. What do you say 9? I don't even talk about any of our release favorite people. I don't talk about Vivek. I don't talk about Elon. I mean, this guy, but you just ruined just now just a second, no particular order, Sam. Bankman fried, what a great name for, for an idiot in jail is being sent to jail, man. After a judge revoked, his bail over alleged witness tampering previously released on a 250 million dollar Bond. I mean, the crazy thing to me is that they let him raise the money for that Barn. In the first place, he should have already been in jail who covered that. Like how does that was that somebody else's? It was all money associated with the, you know, some of the original investors in the company and some of his his parents Stanford. Cronies it was all staring for area money. Yeah, gosh. The Stanford's the libertarian University does protect its own good for them, a glass Cliff alert. Oh, we're already on. Number two, we're gonna fly. Yeah, that's the alert. We always talk about women being promoted at companies, where to shitshow, I saw an interesting one on CNN.com. I wasn't doing show research, but I was just looking at the news. Seeing on.com CNN, announces, sweeping new lineup. Okay, now, we've been, we've been talking about CNN a lot. Remember, CNN owned by Warner Brothers Discovery, right? David zasloff? Yep. So there was a shit show over there at CEO with their CEO. Yeah, not great. Yeah, we've talked a lot about Barbie this summer because Warner Brothers also distributed Barbie but here's what happened. She can the new CEO, didn't? They did like yeah, everything's a mess. You know, is a disaster. But here's your new lineup, your Prime timeline up on CNN 7:00, a woman. 8:00 a gay man. I mean okay there is a man there. Okay nine o'clock a woman Cooper though right? Yeah nine o'clock a woman 10:00 a woman. 11 women are taking wow alright good luck with that. Wow, good luck with that. Wow. But that's their version of a glass clip. That's all you. Can you imagine the pressure though, that's literally like okay, this ship entire ship is sinking everything. The boys club is done has been wrong. There's still running the show but you women should come in and clean up all of the Prime Time lineup going into an election cycle in which we're talking about like indictments and incredible. It's disaster of Elections. They're gonna get a hell of a lot of negative criticism. How are they supposed to win? They can't not win. Like, you can't have Trump on. You can't have him, not on you and they're like, they're gonna get destroyed by the right. And there are going to get attacked by the left for not being harsh enough on the right. They're just gonna get attacked by Everybody like vivix already making it. Oh I got my, I got I got my email from this morning and he was talking about how it was like laughable that they won't have a mom to debate anymore and he's the reason why Donald Lemmon got fired and like he, you know, like that kind of shit. I think from the our reporting Don Lemon is the reason why he got fired don't limit himself. So this weekend, I dropped my oldest daughter off at she's doing Outward Bound for the week, which is very cool. I mean it's a way that mean she has a cocaine habit know but but on the way we're listening to podcasts and this this podcast popped up in the like random feed and but she is like she we listen to Pivot. Um and then we listen to some of business pants and I'm pivot. They had will heard who's running for the examination. And when business pants is playing. She said, well, do you guys have presidential candidates on your show? She really asked you, I'm not, no, it wasn't a setup. I'm really, I'm dead serious. She asked me that question. And I was like, actually honey. Yes, you know what? I, I'm glad she raised that because we did reach out to Vivica. He did come on our show, but it does beg. The question, why? I haven't we extended that to everybody. We should that's the. That's the herd was really interesting. That's my time. I was gonna ask him. Yeah. What do you think about this article from fours? It's entitled women. Do you want to become CEO since for women to get into the sea Suite? Not only the need to be in the pipeline of succession? I don't know how they got that. Yeah. Okay. You glad hand your way? Yeah, but the biggest piece of advice from the article writer is to gain. P and L responsibility. Oh yes, what is this? Yeah, that's all they need. Is this helpful. Matt, what is this? Okay, so according to our data, yeah, or I should say data from free flow analytics.com and sponsor of the show 23% of female board members on the S&P 500, perform in the bottom, third for earnings, right? Like so they oversee companies that are in the bottom third of earnings against their Global peers. Yeah, according to that same data 23% of male board members perform in the bottom, third for S&P 500. Okay, meaning there is no difference. So women getting p&l responsibility, you know, men suck at that too. Like like has anybody ever said to a man before he got a board member, we'd really love for you or or CEO role. We really love for you to have more p&l experience before we choose you. Yeah, strange. No one. No one says that. No one says that that's stupid. Hey obviously you should and should probably have p&l experience but are we asking women or holding them to a bar different than men and sort of constantly which means this article is stupid and I hate it boomerangs CEO alert question mark or maybe just we're just gonna fire someone questioning the question mark. Yeah we we have been predicting for a long time. I mean we're not the only ones but based on our the new, the articles that we tagged, we've been suggesting that maybe DJ diesel David Solomon over their Goldman Sachs and trouble. Yeah, here's a, the latest headline X, Goldman CEO Lloyd, blank find phoned his successor to complain after taking a 50 million dollar hit on the bank stock. So, Lloyd, offered to give diesel more advice, and floated a return to the company, according to the New York Times. So he was floating his own Boomerang. Get out he's angering, but didn't we didn't? We, I think we talked about that. We thought that this would be a great boomerang opportunity for Lloyd. So the New York Times is basically reporting that we were correct. Yeah. Well that's not shocked that we were correct. Thank you, but, but it is shocking that he would want any piece of this. What blank fine wants to come back? I mean like does boomeranging really ever work? Well, it works, it works. As far as your the stock granted to you, to come back. Yes, you get more of it, right? So you get a big golden reload or whatever it's called. Hello again. Hello golden. Hello again. I think Paul coined that golden, oh Paul. Hudson is a great escape, go check out their data. I think this is a horrible idea, what I think, I think it's a horrible idea, grinder. Grinder employees. Grinder is a publicly traded company, man. I know. I know grinder employees working from home. We're giving two weeks to decide to move across the country to work in person or lose their jobs. The companies employees are suggesting that it could be retaliation for trying to start a union. Yeah. But not. Grinders interesting case. Yeah, they said not. Okay. I mean, I don't I don't buy that. It's, it's not a, I don't know. I don't necessarily buy the companies stance, but they said it was a coincidence. That's what they were saying. Grinder is an interesting case for us. Unfortunately, we don't have A full data on this because, you know, it's really up to Executives and the companies of what they're willing to disclose but according to Grindr they are a majority lgbtq board. It's got to be the only one that we know of. No, yeah, that's probably according to the proxy includes four, gay men, one lesbian and one trans lesbian again like it might not be the only majority lgbtq board but they're the only ones that have disclosed. This I mean they actually have a vested interest in disclosure because their cohort is the gay community. Yeah, but we say this all the time in the board, often does not reflect the cohort, right? No, that's that's correct. I get a credit for this. The only thing that they don't seem to have from for any, for the, at least, for the four gay men, the one lesbian, the one translator lesbian and all the other straight people. They don't really seem to have any labor or HR expertise on the board that might deal with. You know, these types of issues that are just really, I'm just saying, so maybe they have a skills Matrix. Well, that's really what it comes down to maybe. There are other ways to consider diversity. This is just one way, but representing your, your stakeholder constituents is probably another way to represent diversity and and their own CEO. Who I don't even know how he got there in the first place because he used to run like car companies, CEO, George Harrison Harrison. Yeah. He came out. Basically saying that corporate America's response to the lgbtq backlash is too timid. So he's already put his flag into the stakeholder capitalism, kind of things. So I'm just saying, I'm just, I just want to talk about grinder, right? Leave me alone, George Harrison, not related to Mickey Harrison, right? I don't think so. I don't see, I didn't see any of that connection. He's from he's, from Georgia, the Republic of Georgia. Oh the Republic of Georgia, or Georgia, the Republic of Commonwealth of not the, it's all very confusing. All Right? Moving On. Better.com, I remember better.com. Wait, that rings. The bell is. Didn't they wasn't there? Like some sort of pandemic Shenanigans around them? The headline is better.com, improbable IPO proposal is approved. So they're about to get over a half, a billion dollars a money. Somehow, despite the fact that this this deal has been extended three times, Because among other things, they had Mass layoffs. They cut 91% of its Workforce over an 18-month period from Wow, from 10,000 employees to only 950 employees and you're right. CEO. Vishal Garg became Infamous for firing. At least 1000 those workers over a zoom call. What? That's right. I forgot about that. Didn't you like then apologized for it? Like quit temporarily and temporarily came back. Yeah that's him. That's all the same company that lost almost a billion dollars in 2022 and continues to lose in the first quarter of 2023. So this show, this is the show does about to IPO. Who's buying that? I don't know. But I end up on an index somewhere and everyone's Gotta Buy it. That to me is the big the big underlying joke, right? Yeah. If if you can IPO and get a bare minimum amount of like shareholder support and I'm sure they're going to dual class this somehow or I haven't seen the S1 or the registration statement yet but I'm guessing they're gonna give the founder you know control and they'll be some sort of control Arrangement then investors who have bought an index will have to own this and they won't have the right to vote. They just have to sit on it and let the CEO fire. Everybody via Zoom leave and come back and fire everyone. Some more you fired himself on Zoom. That's the thing that makes me think probably the most pissed off about the anti ESG movement, is that, you're right, once a company becomes publicly listed, right is traded on the on the exchange, then you kind of have to we're not allowed to do. Any ESG stuff anymore. So you kind of have to just sit there and deal with it, right? You just if it's on your index, you're stuck right? You're stuck. All you can do is vote if they allow you to vote and most don't want you to vote anymore. But what we're being told from the, you know, from the, the Geniuses over companies like strive asset management, is that you're only really allowed to vote against people. If, if a, they're a woman, be, they mention the word ESG in the proxy or C, there's a racial Equity audit of some kind of those little things that are bad, I think, right? Strive vote entirely against the board and management of better.com because they cannot they have not demonstrated Financial excellence in any way shape or no. Actually any company that is, that is actually pre-revenue, effectively our pre-professional that has gone public. Should get unanimous votes against from structure to mention that cutting 91% of your Workforce over an 18-month period that has to be the opposite of Excellence know, isn't that in the dictionary, doesn't it? Yeah, I think there's a picture of anti Excellence right away. I don't want to get on a ramp, but strive asset management. But I am getting a little sick of one thing. They they constantly position themselves as the as an anti ESG company, but they are square in the center of ESG, they are absolutely an issue company. They all they use ESG data to support all of their anti-esg theories. Yeah. Of course they do. And yeah my problem is their inconsistent so like they vote they did. In fact, vote. At the Uber meeting in May of 2023, they voted against approximately half of the directors, but not the other directors who are also responsible for the company not being profitable, right? Like it wasn't like they vote against all of them. I I, well, they will vote against joke. They usually SG that they are effectively ESG saying they're not ESG, their internal. Memo came out saying they like were too political and they don't even really vote for excellence, which is what they say they do. I should hate to break it to you. Once you go on to the proxy and do a keyword search for the for the word, ESG for the acronym ESG. And then make a decision based on that voting against all the compensation committee members because the competition policy talks about, yes, you are effectively and ESG analysts that. Are you just did it? Analysts are not, we're not biased direction, we're just correct, you are. Yeah, ESG. Yes, I'm moving on federal court. Speaking of the anti-esg, anti-world a federal court, dismissed, a lawsuit, accusing Starbucks Executives and direct. Yes, a violating their fiduciary duty to shareholders by supporting corporate diversity. Policies. Matt, this lawsuit was brought to you by your friends, the national Center. Yeah, public policy research. Yeah, although I will say that this is clearly gonna be appealed eventually to the Supreme Court right. This is where this is headed. Yeah, sure. Except that like what they the what I'm more worried about is the that The what Ed Blum is doing is trying to find like, workers there who can say discrimination against them. So you find a white person. There says you're discriminated against because you had to do minority training or some bullshit like that this lawsuit was a shareholder lawsuit saying it costs them. They they it was they were going against their fiduciary duty it cost shareholders money by doing this but Starbucks can easily say we're increasing our talent pool, right? Like there's a lot of arguments against a shareholder derivative lawsuit. It's the employee ones that had blooms cooking up. That are much more dangerous, but good start, good start. Speaking of bullshit McDonalds is removing ESG from Parts. This is according to fortune.com, from parts of its website and made a conservative backlash against woke capitalism. The reporting says that the purpose and impact website, recently removed several mentions of ESG, one web page that was titled ESG. Approach and progress is now labeled our approach and progress and another one. Called performance and ESG reporting is now called goal performance and Reporting. And finally they have sub the phrase environmental and social issues for the ESG abbreviation. What do you make of this? Isn't the joke on the headline writers and the concert no one considered McDonald's as woke or like Like, did anybody go out and they're like, you know, who you know what, company embodies ESG investors more. It's definitely McDonald's. What to like, like, A pig who has lipstick on right to give him that pig. Like a wipe, a makeup wipe to remove the lips is all they're doing is just removing the ESG. The lipstick from the baby. What is this accomplished? So I don't know, the acronym itself is the Boogeyman, so that so we don't they're not gonna change any policies. I'm guessing, are we? Like when we're done with this? Yeah. Will the woke people be confused. That McDonald's suddenly like is a like a basically a diabetes pedaling monster or will the conservatives look at this and be like, oh now. Well, now we can eat them nonstop again because like they don't say the word ESG. I don't know who this appeals to. I don't know, is that yeah. McDonald's by itself. Is not exactly anyone that like no one thinks McDonald's is like, you know, woke not. Well, everyone agrees that it's real terrible for you. We shouldn't need it once again. No, you know. You notice the once again, ESG is being translated into environmental and social issues. No, tell, they're like kind of everyone's quietly dropping the everyone quietly. The governor is sort of Quietly ignored somehow you know that's what and that's the only thing that the E and the S is really just a function of G to begin with, right? Like so they should only say governance and let somebody argue that, no one should be governing anything. That's what they should say. Drop the in the S and just talk about governance and talk about governance of e and s issues that are, then you're onto something. I hate to bring it to the anti-esg and I woke crowd. The world's population is never going to draw environmental social issues. They're just never because a they're alive and B, they live in an environment in their environment in a society. Yeah, they're gonna drop these things. I don't know really what this game is anymore fizz. The company Fizz formerly called Buzz. Could be the next face book on college campuses according to fast company.com. Yep. Already racked up thousands of student users across 80 schools, as well as 41 million dollars in Venture funding thousands that's not. Well, it's start. They're suggesting maybe this is a new Facebook. Here's why I pulled this. Well, first of all, the one difference is that supposedly the users are entirely Anonymous, which scares me. But yeah, but here's here's the interesting thing, the app was created by two Stanford dropout. Wait. Wait. Don't don't hold up the punchline? Yeah. Both Stanford. Dropouts are white men? Of course. And the article on to say that like Facebook has already been controversy. Privacy breaches concerns about the anonymity. They gotta jump start on that. There you go. And finally in today's news, August 14th 2023. We have two new S&P 500 announced today that's full unusual. Yeah, two one day first PayPal announces that Alex, Chris will become the new CEO in September. He's replacing Dan Schulman, Schulman controls. 22% of the board influence according to free flow analytics. He he actually will be stepping down from the board at the 2024 annual meeting so. Oh wow. Yeah. But still, there's usually a transition period like this so but he's not staying around his chair. He's not staying around, executive chair. So from what I'm seeing in our data is that this company is going to be a free for all. I mean, I don't know, there's not really gonna be anyone in charge on the board, which, which I guess could be good, right? A true democracy over at PayPal. Yeah, it's still ourselves that can continue, but also maybe a boomerang CEO Target. And finally, Kraft, Heinz, Names. Carlos Abrams Rivera, as its next CEO. Unlike at PayPal, the former CEO Miguel Patricio will stick around as chair. Oh, for how long did he say? Or just in perpetuity? Yeah. It sounds like in perpetuity and maybe more importantly. What is our data show about this board? Not. All right, let's shall we just jump? Oh you want to do that? Yeah, let's let's just jump right in because why not? Here we go. Oh, same, same thing, music. It's always the same team, I don't have other things even Mark a change. What's the transition here? There was no theme music before this segment. So this is your BM of the week. That is your board member of the week. Who's gonna be? Because we're gonna talk about what free flow analytics data. Says about the board of Kraft Heinz. Yeah. Um, first of all, this was one of the rare companies where the CEO does not have the majority of the fourth. The fourth highest amount of influence was Miguel Patricio. That's correct. So we're talking about pretty low which means this is very it would be glass Cliff if there was Such thing here but this is very boomeranging or our blood. What do we call this? A recyclable CEO or fungible CEOs? I think. Oh yeah. I I think more importantly this is like a couple of old dudes who can just control things and do what they want. I think we call this a plug-and-play CEO. So let's let's send out a big. Congrats to Carlos, Abrams Rivera who's coming into possibly the most plug-and-play CEO role and that is because there are two, there are three other people. But two, that I want to talk about one that I'm most interested in who have the majority of influence on this board. 61% between two of them, the two board members of the majority of influence are Greg Abel and if you recognize that name because he is a Warren Buffett Berkshire hathway. Acolyte and well, he's he's supposedly the next CEO next year. No. Next in line, right? Yeah. And Tim See and Tim Kennedy was the reason why I reached out to Matt this morning because I was basically like, who the app is Tim Kennedy. And why does he have so much influence on the Kraft? Heinz board. So, Tim canisy is your BM of the week and here's why, because he's a sneaky, a sneaky board member with a tremendous amount of influence. So on its face Tim Kennedy shares the comp Committee of the Kraft Heinz board. He will be the one that the new CEO will suck up to to get a giant paycheck, right? And yes that comes with a certain amount of influence but that doesn't come with all the influence, you know. It turns out that Tim Ken is he actually is the CEO of a company called medlife medlife I believe his name of the company and that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire, Hathaway? Yeah, it's the all Berkshire. Yes, that's correct. You can clap now it's the old Berkshire influence for it in the reason why Berkshire Hathaway has so, And Warren Buffett have so much influence over this company. They own 26.5% of Kraft, Heinz. They are the largest single shareholder, although it not a dominant shareholder but they pretty much whatever they say goes and to ensure that they put both Greg Abel and Tim Kennedy, who's been a Berkshire? Subsidiary member for 22 years and prior to that he's worked at Berkshire houseware, right? He's worked at just Burger companies. They put him on the board as well. Tim Kenneth Tennessee is the board member who you don't know, but probably should whose helping Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett control all of Kraft's and which means, which means these are the people who chose the CEO. So less, you think that this new incoming CEO Carlos, Abrams Rivera who comes from into it is entirely a new entity from outside of, you know, some outside company. It was entirely chosen by two people who work for Berkshire, who owns 26 and a half percent of the company. This is the part of our data, the free flow analytics. I love the most because there are these sneaky companies like Kraft Heinz where they are effectively controlled companies because with your 27% Holdings Berkshire, you're already having just an incredible amount of influence, right? You basically control every vote but that you also need to put on two people on the board. On the one, being the next CEO of Berkshire is basically cementing your control, but you don't, you need us to unravel that. This is as close to a real public. One share, one vote, fake public companies. You can get, this is what that is. Well, they real fake public company. They're also makeup too, apparently. So your BM of the week is one. Tim Kenneth Tennessee. See, I'm saying, Tim Tennessee, Kenneth kneese, I don't know, whatever. And that was Damian, Ross. And I am the Lord of analysts holes which I don't know how I feel about that still Madness cardi. We are free float. If you like the data from the show go to freefloat analytics.com and sign up. It's free right now pretty soon. There's gonna be a paywall up and then you can pay a little bit more and get all I have to pay for data and stuff. Yeah. How else are we gonna make any money? At somebody's? Got to make some money because we're certainly not come back on Wednesday for woke Wednesday in which we will talk about woke things. Until then goodbye.