Transcript
oh, Yeah, you always pour your coffee. Like literally as soon as I say we're hitting record and going live, there it is. From it, took them three. Extra days to pick up my recycling Palooza. My whole world crumbling mat. Why? Oh, it just suck. It's yeah. Another manic Monday edition of business pants. Join with the Lord of BS. Matt Mascari, whoo. I am full of BS today. I went down today is rabbit holes. I don't want to talk about soggy marshmallow called July 10th. 2023 top 10 sexy story updates, and a new segment called director of the week. Do we have that? Now both those things is true. Both of those things are true. Not only are they true? You've heard us talk about something called board saber metrics. Well, we don't talk about that anymore for reasons that will remain legal. What we say in the US. It's go to float, analytics.com, and you yourself can pick your own director of the week, any week because most of its free So if anyone it actually listens to this and actually cares about what Matt's saying, you can actually even direct message me on LinkedIn. I'll we can do it together. Yeah. Show you how to get a tell us play around here. The week is the listener director of the week. I would love that as a set. You can stay on anything. You want to know about a company or direct your, I'll give you a little mini report. You could stay totally Anonymous, but let's jump into it because you got 10 things to talk about. I've got like and I was just anything. Here we go. Your favorite American News music? I don't mind it on a rainy day. Actually, I hate it when it's sunny out. Oh, that's so sunny. It's sunny music from the top threads. Now, the fastest growing app in history, with 100 million users, In just five days, that sounds like us. That sounds like our Listeners. Yeah, that's Although we were recently again we didn't pay for this and now you posted about a LinkedIn. We were recently called the 19th best Business news podcast, was it best or what was it? Yeah, we were the, it's the, the business. News podcasts to listen to. Okay, thank you were, we ranked 19th? Oh, there's the audience. I mean somebody would like a word but telling people who already know about us. How do we tell everyone else? We're 19th in the world in the impressive, higher world, we beat out the BBC. We beat out the Wall Street Journal. We did not beat out the South Carolina Business Review. We did. That's, that's good for a long time. They were 11, we were 19th, so they get the sweetened tea down there, that's what makes them so good. Uh, oh threads to overtaking chat gpt's record. So, how long did it? Take? Chad GPT to reach 100 million users. Do you think? It wasn't that five days months or something, wasn't it? Okay. Well you had to get the answer to get exactly, right? It kind of kills the conversation when you enter exactly know. It was like a story everywhere, like he was a story everywhere. You know what's most impressive about it? Is, I signed us up for Threads and for I, I intentionally. I'm off of Facebook. I'm not I'm not on Instagram, like, free floating is gonna look at the like local bagel places to see if they have like a deal, I got on threads and I was a little bit excited to be on what felt like adult Twitter like well this is what everyone's saying. I did. See a headline that said that musk is making Zuck. Look cool again. Yeah. It's not false and I hate it. I hate that it's happening. It's weird. It's really this Festival. Kids below the belt with latest Zuckerberg attacks. I think you've you've made these jokes. Actually, on this show. This is how Disturbed I am by our current world. You've made these jokes In with tug and cheek obviously. Yeah, ingest in a satirical mode, but here we go. Elon Musk. Now tweeting calling Mark Zuckerberg a cock. Oh, I would not that joke and well, we did call a Cocker Charleson. Well, that's just because we put the tea. Okay, I'm just saying and proposed a literal dick measuring contest. Those, oh, So you always refer to it, you always like, say this on the show and I always feel very uncomfortable because I hate that kind of stuff, but here we go. This is it, this is the world. This is your world. What happened when they were 13? What, what, what, what is the trauma that have isolation? Were that at the, we're at the point loneliness, where the richest man in the world and the world. And the man that has literally the largest Monopoly on communication in the entire world. Put this on Mark Zuckerberg, this is not Mark Zuckerberg. This is Elon Musk entirely not Mark Zuckerberg agreed to a cage fight though. Okay but this is like giant, this is exact reason why everyone loves Zuck again or at least likes him. Look there's this kind of stuff. A Vivic you were on the show. I invited him back because this is supposed to be ESG in Congress. I've invited them back several times Vivek. You were on the show and we asked you a question about there were more female CEOs than ever before in history. How did he feel about it? He said he didn't. Care. He only cared about Merit. Well, what is the Merit? What is that? Two of these idiots actually measuring each other's penises potentially for for what, what do we solving what is that? Meritocracy would she put them on another board? Should we like, what are we doing here? What Merit got them to this place. Where to do this sucks credit, he's a director only at meta. Yeah, well musk was is a director at Tesla but also owns Five other companies. So alright moving on this one's a little lengthy, but we haven't covered this and I feel like we should You know, give news to our Chinese fans. yeah, the chat which we have several of The. I'm just I'm muting some things. It's bugging me. Okay, do that. Chinese authorities announced a fine of nearly 1 billion dollars for the financial technology firm ant group, nearly three years after they halted the company's plan for a record breaking IPO. Okay, I remember that. Yeah, here's why I'm bringing up, this is a big corporate governance thing. So, three years ago, the People's Bank of China, which is the country Central Bank said, the aunt had been indifferent to the law. I don't really know what that means. I mean, in different, to the people who actually owned the company. What does that mean in different? A lot? I don't really know that one. I mean, is that like, is that like a kid that throws, like the rapper from the Pall, Malls, on the ground? Like, I'm casually, indifferent to littering and then they smoked a cigarette. I don't understand that what are the things essential Bank ordered was to bolster corporate governance? That's ridiculous in. Yeah, so the investigation into it began when founder and billionaire entrepreneur Jack ma publicly criticized Chinese Regulators 2022 and then he disappeared remember he disappeared? Yeah, yeah. He he ghosted the world for like a month. Or someone goes to him know this is for he disappeared. Really for years? Isn't he or no. Yeah he popped up and then he went back into the underground. I remember it was like a couple weeks where everyone was like, where is Jack? Ma I think we've even did some joke content around. It said he was and then couch last month. In a story that we did not cover Alibaba, which owns and group. There was a shake up at the top two long time, Executives who helped found the company were put in charge. So Eddie, Woo is the new CEO Alibaba. Daniel Jang, stepping down in the new chair, is Joe sigh. Well, so owns the Brooklyn Nets. I believe so. All that's going on at Alibaba, they're restructuring the company to six different companies. Each one with its own CEO and board of directors, which I, which to me does not simplify. I know that this is meant to bolster corporate governance. To me, this makes it all the more difficult to understand what the hell's going on. Feels very tabli. Doesn't, it doesn't it doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah, it's like North Korea or South Korean tables. But the Chinese government's concern was, was a monopoly, right? So it. Yeah, Monopoly the Chinese. I know this is where our computer this is very, this is why I like at least like to try to cover this story because these are, you know, these Chinese companies are rated by typical ESG ratings Industries. Are they not? I don't think it's a monopoly that they're concerned. I think it's a competitor, right? Like, well, who's competing, what do you mean, Ollie? Baba is like, the what the largest provider of, like, a whole bunch of stuff in China, right? Like and and they grown to such a state where they're wouldn't, they be harder to government role, right? They kind of a government competitor in a, in a sort of adjacent way, not a direct way, but it does feel that way it Group, which processes digital payments right call. They own a platform called alipay serves over 1.3 billion users which is essentially is the population of China. With the law and I can't pretend to know the nuances of the Chinese market. And but I do know that that Chinese government does seem to step in whenever any company gets too large. They did the same thing when there was a lot of conspicuous wealth amongst you know some of the founders of some of the larger companies in China. They were tamping down what they could say how they could say it. This is Jack ma among them. I think there's a there's an effort to like you don't upstage the government. You're not bigger than the government that we. It's like we don't want a musk here. We don't want somebody who just says whatever they want buys, whatever they want, does whatever they want and then basically becomes a, you know, a cult Yeah, I mean according to I'm looking at the msci report on Alibaba. It's it's not technically A government controlled company. It's a privately held company which I think a lot of people in the West. kind of sneer at and mock, but I guess. I mean really? They're acting no differently than The current FTC commissioner. Her name is Lana Khan. I believe Lina Khan she's going after Amazon currently. Right. And meta actually is it any different than that? Uh no I'm when I look at their board on freefloat analytics.com, there's 60% connected and it's really just two people. It's it's Yong Zhang who I think the Americanized version is Daniel Zhang and it's it's Joe stepping. Yeah, Zing is stepping down a CEO. He's stepping down currently. So those they were, they were the controlling parties. So the data looks like they're, they're independent, but they operate in China, we are. We know that when China says to Google shut down access to something Google shuts down access to that thing. That's not, it doesn't work like you say, no to the government. So when The potential Market is a billion people, right? You don't say no. So that's what's going on over there, Alibaba? I don't know, it was for a Chinese fans, I know that. Yeah, blah, blah, blah, BTC, CEO Philip Jensen to step down. Beatty. Here's why I pointed this out. Yeah. Why I want to spend because and we should I like to talk about these European companies, this is a telecommunications company out of the UK. I'm looking at the free flow analytics stats. This is our stats. Their current CEO Phillip Jensen, and stepping down. He is number three in total influence on the board. Chair. Adam Crozier is number six in total influence at 7. So the you UK boards, Chinese boards. They're just so different than our than what we're what we come to expect here in the US, that I just want to throw a few into the news headlines. I like that. I like I like a week. CEO chair combination running my board. That's British Telecom, right? Is that what that is? Yeah. BT group. I like that, I'll tell you this that if anyone cares if you're betting on this, that there are two independent directors right now willing to our data are actually perform. Quite well. They are Matthew David Key. And Ian Michael Cheshire, they're both about 60 years old, they both outperformed their peers, by wide margins across, all of our performance metrics so maybe BT groups should look at those two as potential. Successors successors. Oh sure. Wow. That would be if there was a meritocracy you might do something like that. Well, you listening Vivek. Yeah, let's see what happens. One of them. I think it was, I think it's key was actually a former CEO at a telecommunications company. So, oh, alright, moving on. Bob Iger, likely to seek a contract extension Beyond his current one. It's supposed to expert like we were once again back in the succession planning disaster at this, like we can't escape it, it's really weird. Like why? Why only Bob Iger the current chair of the board is Mark Parker. He is the executive chair at Nike also so it's not like To do former CEO and former CEO. Just ahead of the nominating committee. What's wrong with Parker? I'm sure they must ask him and he said, forget it, there's no way forget it really, I don't, I don't get this. I, I mean, it just seems to be A big thing was a disaster, we can't do an internal succession plan again. And you know what, the amazing Tigers gonna swoop back in. You know, the worst part about this is, is it's perfectly set up to be a glass Cliff, right? Like right now, the conservatives in this country are like targeting Disney. Oh, yeah. Because they're so woke and all that stuff. Every headline is about, you know, Park attendance, not being high enough and Disney losing money in their movies, because they're so woke. So, they're set up to what Eiger steps down, whoever replaces him, it's going to be terrible and they're the likelihood that they choose a woman or a person of color now, is much higher than it has ever been in the past because we're open to that sort of thing, right? And then we're gonna get used to be super woke and that person is destined to fail just so I can. What come back again? I think I heard just avoiding the inevitable, he's playing the political cycle. I bet you. This is a, this is him being like by 2024 the Election won't, you know, we won't be out of the woods, right? We're we're gonna be squarely in the middle of this and we need to find a successor in an environment where we can do, we can hire the best person. And that means actually looking at, you know, Other people that white men. And therefore, we can't, we can't hire anybody other than a white man without being accused of being woke. So, let me tell you this, maybe that this Disney As we've reported here, several times, Disney is a female LED board with female lead influence. They've leaned into that. That's yes. Susan Arnold chair, just stepped down. So, those numbers are gonna change a little bit as you said, Mark Parker now the chair. So, these numbers, you know, are going to swing back a little bit towards men, but this is a company that should its next CEO. Absolutely. Should be a woman. Glass. Cliff not withstanding. I don't know what you're doing at Disney, if you don't appoint a woman, really? Because maybe you do need a woman to get out of this mess. This like leadership mess, maybe we got to get Beyond ego and well, do we do something else that if the CEO of Twitter and Tesla and all these places was a woman, we'd be measuring our penis size. I am going to get go with. No, I'm moving on this story. We talked about before, I was, I used to make fun of the CEO of the United Kingdom. King Charles, A lot because he refused to talk about climate change. Now that he was the king, because I guess the Kings aren't allowed to talk about politics. But stupid, I, he's ditching tradition Matt and he's talking about climate change with the CEO of America, Joe Biden. So there you go. Oh well that that deserves some tepid flapping. I don't I mean I can't believe this is like tradition as I, I sit on Friday I went to this large conference in Toronto which will be talking about our conference experience. As this one's day, Ari and Jesse will talk about greenfin. I'll talk about Collision a little bit. My experience, I went to several Dei. Classes, master classes, talk speeches master and I felt like it was 1999 all over again because really the headline was like, we need to talk about diversity. We need to talk like right. I mean, like that's I just feel like no, we haven't progressed at all. That's what I feel like by this headline, these stories that they're excited that Charles and Biden are talking about climate change and we're screwed, right? Like that's the excitement that they're just even talking about it. Like I think we're just 20 years behind here. No, I mean you got asked like you know why add diversity to the board. Proved to me that it matters and that was when 15 years ago like we're still like that. Now we're just threading water conversation and now we're fighting off all the crazies, all the like crazy viveks, who who think that a woman means that they're not the most qualified to be in the role just by hearing Female or woman, he automatically swings to. Well, it can't be a merit-based decision. So what? Now we're fighting that off. So we're just screwed. I I just do you ever watch the show The Witcher on Netflix? You ever seen that? I'm gonna say no. I have like I just know you watched TV. This is I don't really even but I read I wanted to know whether it was any good. So I read worth it or woke. Oh, so you're so put on the low score which then, I know I'm gonna watch it and it was like, they the big lament was like, oh, of course, the girl, that's 90 pounds beat up, the big strong, man. How real is that? That's so woke and I was like, okay she is like, Matt. She's like, we're really upset about that she could throw a fireball fucking real estate supposed to be Starbucks violated federal labor law when it shut down. A United store in Ithaca New York. A US Labor judge. Just ruled last week. He said it was done in large part to discourage unionization efforts in Ithaca and elsewhere. I mean, Matt, three stores in Ithaca voted. To unionize and Starbucks. How did Starbucks respond immediately? Shut all three stores. Yeah. This Starbucks not getting more. Yeah, they did get some shift for this. There's an entire quote unquote woke generation that love Starbucks goes there every day. How do they knock it more crap for that? I don't understand. I don't, I don't really understand like it's ugly embarrassing. It really, it's really, really stupid and it's and it's ideologically. Stupid. They wouldn't shut them down. If Howard Schultz, The founder of Starbucks did not ideologically oppose unions for his entire tenure, like, historically, this is stupid. Diet. Well, I like this one. This is this is like this is like a stakeholder capitalism headline. I like this one. This is talking about diners in La saying that they are shocked that there's a 4% employee health care fee. I love that now, right now you I remember a few years ago, you were noodling with a system. It was like a cork. What was this? Like a scorecard. It was like, you know, where the nutrition card. Yes, the nutrition about card. So I really my dream. Well, our Collective dream is that you could go to, like, a Target and on the side of the building would be like a nutrition card that tells you all about, like the company like the, you know, the percentage of women that work there, the percentage of women in Senior Management at the percentage of like CEOs that wear, you know, salmon colored shirts. Whatever. Like interesting stats, we could get But I love the idea of getting like a receipt that says, like here is where all the money you got. Here's how it like what we did with it, all that stuff putting this on there, just shows how fundamentally stupid it is that in this country. Like there's no other way to get health care except to bang your employer for it. That part is true but the part that gets me is that so I'm guessing diners would not be shocked. If part of the fee for their bill was like get better glasses or right, like get better plate wear, but they're shocked about the. It's part of the cost is going right to the workers Healthcare. I mean, it's as if why is it a problem? It was easier to pretend that you were not paying for their health care when the bill was just for food like that 4% was just in the food, right? Like so when I get additional, you know, pasta cost like 20 cents to make a yeah, like, oh pasta All right, but a good restaurant is gotta be homemade. You might be getting up to a dollar per Bowl, right? We're not talking about huge amounts of money for a bowl of pasta, but when you get charged 20 dollars for it, where do you think that doesn't just go. Like there's 30 people there that have to, like, cook the pasta. Make the pasta bring you the pasta. Say hello at the door, get you out like you're paying for the people and included in the people is the healthcare fee. In fact what they should do is they should stop calling it surcharges because it makes it sound like they're adding this on top really what they should do is do receipts of the charges that are incredibly granular. Like this was for that stupid shirt that says, welcome to Porky's. Exactly. Right placemats like what those little things that you put under the table, so it doesn't wobble like this was slams that we put in your pasta right like that. I want that level of granularity what's odd to me is that you could have, you could have just raise the prices, I guess by 4% or whatever math that you need to do to, you know, raise the price of the spaghetti. Or are you tell the diners that they're contributing to healthcare that they're and then they're shot. And then they're appalled in the fuck out. Like, why am I paying for your Health care. What do you think this is? You either pay for it by paying for the bowl pasta and then the owner has to pay for the health care or you pay for it by paying taxes and the taxes pay for Health Care like it gets paid for one way or the other. Like how do you think when you go to work, you have health care because when we were at msci, selling ESG data and rating and the ratings was the cost of me and my health care. I'm sorry. That's what it is. Vander delicious marinara sauce. We should show that on the receipt. It would be like your data actually costs 40 cents. Then we charge 400 thousand dollars for employees in healthcare. And what percentage is the CEO get how much is Henry? Get out of that? I mean, for every transaction, my dream was and part of what I worked on for the nutrition card was to say for every transaction, every dollar, a million dollars of things that get bought from this company, how much goes into the CEO's pocket. This is why I bring this up because to me, this is like the great side of ESG data, right? Is that we just want more of it. I want the restaurant to tell us every breakdown, all the percentages. I'm happy to look at that receipt all day long, it's it's good reading material for later, and if you're on a date, you can discuss the receipt. You can talk about, maybe which allocation to you, appreciate what you don't. It's good for everybody. Actually my my shock and anger would be why did you only show me the health care fee. Show me the entire employee cost fee. Show me the management fee show me, don't show me that one because then everyone's outrage that, I paid four pennies at per dollar for healthcare when really like 30 pennies per dollar, Was to employees, 20 pennies per dollar, was the guy who owns the place. Like, I want to know, or what about the guy who owned the building that you're paying rent to? I'd be supervised to see the other charges. This one would then look pitifully low compared to everything else. I love this. Show us all your data. Norway's new phosphate deposits are so massive. They could guarantee solar power and electric cars for the next 50 years. This is covered 77 billion, tons of phosphate Rock. Whoa, I like when we discover our Rock, it feels so archaic. What is Norway? Get to have everything good. They only have like six million dollars. Wait, back up. Two things about oil. No, Yeah, the entire country is built on oil, they loved those. Now they find 77 billion tons of phosphate Rock for their 6 million. People know they're gonna sell it everywhere, but they Norway, because it's like, why are they, why are they so lucky? They lobbied against calling gas, natural gas. They it was gonna be excluded from one of the sustainable, the sustainable sort of Norway in the Texas, one of the people that pushed back on it and said natural gas should be sustainable, low, polluting or low carbon false. Number two, Norway in. Our data has the highest gender gap. Gender power gap of any country in the world, they have a mandate of 40% women on the board and they have the word they give women no power. So yeah, they get stuff and then what they do with it is they look good and don't actually do the thing. I'm not I'm less and less a fan of this game with you in countries. I'm absolutely with you there on that one and finally, it's Anne with an apology whiz are heard it. Publicly traded company just I, you know, falls into our category. They are apologizing to a Ukrainian soldier with an amputated leg because they kicked him off a flight. Oh, why do they kick him off? I guess because he couldn't sit down properly. So for safety reasons, they had to give them the boot. Did they put them on another flight? Or they just be like, sorry what? I guess. Because of his press his, his fake leg because I can't pronounce that word for such thesis. Yeah, prosthetic leg. Yeah, he couldn't sit down. I'm trying to picture this leg. Maybe it was like a joke giraffe flag and they got the right. I don't know what's going on. I don't really get why? Yeah, I mean, why can't he Take the leg off and put it in the over I think. Now you're in territory. I think where is wait. Where's where's that bad? I think it is. All right. I want to do something now. It's my turn and I'm gonna build it off. The story that you just covered about Starbucks. I was hoping was there come on. No, I didn't hear this is the director of the week, brought to you by free. Float, analytics.com. Go to free. Floating analytics.com, sign up. You can see right? 500 directors for free. How they perform. And who's powerful Starbucks has been doing some union busting and works. Right now, I am looking at one of the directors that you whose name may be. You should know. Now, I'm not saying this dude, Union, busted, but I will say that this is somebody who's been on the board since 2019. He's part of the board that brought back. Howard Schultz, he heads the audit and compliance committee and he sits on the human capital committee. He listed in the skills Matrix so I don't know if you've ever read a company skills Matrix now Damien. I know you have. I'm talking to listen. Oh yeah, I love it. When you go to a proxy statement that these companies issue, these are public statements, they actually a lot of them now will list out the skills of each of their directors in categories. He listed in his skills, human Capital Management managing people. That's one of his core skills. Good skills. No shit. A company like Starbucks. Yeah, such an Adele's sits on this board. Starbucks did not list human Capital Management. Ran as a core skill makes me a little nervous. If you're a Microsoft employee. Double side note, Starbucks lists and its skills Matrix as one of its skills. Gender ethnic or national diversity. Is that a skill? Wait say that again. What's the skill? Starts lists, gender, ethnic and National diversity as a skill and it skills Matrix, it doesn't have a separate thing for that. It's not a skills and diversity metrics or skills and skills Matrix. So now you're triggering the right now. You're going to trigger the right? Well, I'm just saying they did put a check mark next to all the women for that people that identify as a woman as gender skill. I I'm just confused Starbuck's, you can separate those things. You can have skills and you can have gender, and I think diversity as separate goals, it doesn't have to be a skill. But the person I chose today, is the VP and CEO at Nike and Drew kampion, oh, another Nike. Another Nike person. Where's my, what about Andrew? Oh, there is everybody, Andrew. Our data has Starbucks is a totalitarian board. Ronald Isley, X founder Schultz, he has 68% of the influence on that board. I don't want anyone to forget that schultes. You know, I know there's been a new quote, unquote new CEO, laxman Nera semen. Schultz is still on the board. Still dominates this company. He still, he is the company. Still, it's a joke, if you think, because he stepped down and made laxman step down where he went down to the board to tell everyone else what to do, okay? So we have them as a totalitarian board. The the team strength is earnings. They do good job earnings, but their weakness is controversial business activity like a history of union busting. The team win rate is 0.155, which is abysmal. The batting average is one of the worst in the S&P 500 and can't be on has three percent of the influence on this board and a team worst batting average of 0.404 just below average but not great. I I did this that for Mississippi, 500 company again, that the operates in the public eye. You know, in the right in the woke world, right? Yeah, they're Square woe. They are, they are just shockingly without female representation on their board. Only two, only two directors and and not only the only two out of eight. So that's what 25% of the board. Yeah, they only have 10% of influence, but only two direct. One of them is the chair. Yes, Melody, Louise Hopsin, but still that's shockingly. They have a 15% power gap for between women and men on that board. Fifth, which is two, which is only two women in general. Just seems, I don't, there aren't many S&P, 500 companies. These days that don't have at least three women. Anyways, not great. That's your directors of the week, Andrew Campion. But that on your wall and whenever you read a Starbucks story about union busting ask, what did Andrew have to say about that? He actually sits on these, this is one of his core skills. One of the things I love about free flow analytics is that you can click on the directors named. First of all, I love that. When I go on to Starbucks I can see how much influence Howard has immediately. Yeah. Okay. This is not a subjective thing. We have a object that objectively we've captured this data, but when you click on Andrew Campion and you open up, you get a beautiful picture like a little baseball card. Yeah. And you know what, he looks like a cross between Bob Iger and Vince McMahon so I I think he should be taking more seriously. That's all we got. That's Damian Ross. I'm at Scotty. That was a Monday Roundup of something or other. We're gonna be back again on Wednesday. We have a really busy Wednesday because there are Congressional hearings on ESG because this ESG month because there's lots of anti-wolf stuff happening and we got to do a conference Roundup. But until then, We'll talk to you later, goodbye.