Transcript
Back baby. Yeah, here we go. Come on. I'm here. I'm here for it. Matt, we have a quasi new person working with us. Is he required to listen to this show business pants. Yes, good. That is, that's the only contractual obligation. We need the downloads live from dum, dum land. It's yeah, another manic Monday edition of business pants. They'll be asked mascardi. Back from California, I guess. Are you? I am I'm back from sunny California, which look, I was at the, you know, social Innovation Forum. So you say, so you say that I or Summit social Innovation Summit. That's what it was. Social Innovation Summit. Yeah, never heard of them, it was. Yeah, it was a little weird. Because they had the social Innovation Summit, which is like about you know, like social justice and and directing Capital to things like that. In the ballroom, where they have the Golden Globes every year. Oh, There was no irony about that, okay? Like so it felt a little weird to have like you know, like someone who got out of prison and starts this, you know, start up where they're doing like Social Justice Reform and they're out like standing on stage where Ricky Gervais was blasting. People for getting plastic surgery that many people were intended. They were probably six, seven hundred people at least. Yeah. It was a decent crowd, but there were actually some really cool people that I met there. Um, so I was very conflicted. It was really how I hope they're listening today. I hope I hope they're new, they're not no good, they're not. In today's listening today. What are we doing today? I don't know. And today's soggy tater tot, no wonder whether calls June 12th, 2023 sexy story updates and sleazy academic papers is there Monday is what we do on Monday, know it's our Monday. Let's do it. Let's start off with a major trigger for the anti-walk with anti issue. Wrote George Soros. Yeah. Oh I was gonna guess I was just gonna say what was your guests oros Transit Soros. This is that's it. Those are the two, right? Flag, the rainbow flag, trans all that stuff, and Soros and Soros. There's none. There are another's. I guess you could replace Fink with Soros. But same difference. I mean, level two on the anti-wolf trigger is like brown people and women, right? That's so level one though. Level one is trans Surah. If George Soros was trans. There. I think all of their heads would pop simultaneous. Well, looks like it's about to get worse. George Soros, right? Famous right-wing Target in, philanthropist handing control. Of his 25 billion dollar Empire to a younger son, Alex. He's a self-described center. Left thinker, which sounds like a perfect person for the ESG industry. Really? Sure. Yeah. Who grew up self-conscious of the family as well? I don't know if I really believe that. He wasn't thought to take over the Empire here he is. He said, in his first interview that he was ready for this broadening, his father's liberal aims. Oh no, Embracing. Some different causes including voting and abortion rights as well as gender Equity. Oh no. Oh no. He's gonna make it worse. He Nepal baby Dei and he calling himself he's more political than his dad. So Vivek. Yo, I think you lost Vivek, I think you should step down. Well, wait a minute Vivint didn't lose because he accepted George soros's Brothers, money. That's that's been whitewashed. It's been woke washed off of his Wikipedia page. You don't know that. You don't know, anti-woke washed. It got it. Moving on Partners at a prominent Finance firm in London have said its founder Crispin OD. Terrible is leaving after sexual assault and harassment allegations. Wow. Oh wow. Are we shocked by that fell as follows a Financial Times report, 13, women at accused him in Mr. Conduct over 25 years, tells you something about the culture there, right? This couldn't have been Fresh news, this was a hedge fund, he founded in 1991. This is a man who was known as a prominent brexit backer who claimed to have made a hundreds of millions of pounds. As Sterling plummeted in the aftermath of the referendum vote. So he did there. Yeah, I see that. Yeah, I got it. I mean on that joke. So what Odie Odie Partners has basically severed ties with him saying he will no longer have any. Economic or personal involvement in the partnership and it kind of a version of a glass Cliff scenario. They said that they will also undergo a complete Rebrand of the partnership in the near future that seems like a good idea, right? Oh yeah. It's I, Well, it can't exactly call them like Odie partnership ODS at Management Group anymore, right? No, you gotta know. Here's the thing. There is no glass Cliff here. Matt, they couldn't even find, they couldn't find a member to help with the glass Cliff, because so three men are kind of taking over the role that this guy leaves behind. I looked at their people. I, I did a little bit of a board shape of metrics. Dive on them. They had six portfolio, managers all six white, dudes, three senior researchers. They're all three dudes and a management team of 13, which is 11 white dudes, a female lawyer and somebody else but they couldn't even find they couldn't be. There was no one to clip. There's the culture over there. That's amazing. That's actually really good work for them. They, you know what? We should celebrate the fact that they're not doing the glass Cliff. They're not putting a woman and clean up, right? Actually. But they put to be fair, they couldn't find anyone. I mean, if we ignore the fact that they had no women to begin with because they didn't like them, then we should celebrate the fact that they didn't class cliff. It's like a weird day of these are. Well, weird stories today, Silvio Berlusconi. Remember him. Former prime minister generally, Italy. Yeah. Controlling. Shareholder of media set which was edius which was Italy's largest Media Company. What? They're now owned by media set is not in our database but media for Europe is that's the new controlling entity of media set and it still majority owned by the Berlusconi family. In fact, two of them in our database his kids control about 46% of the influence there so what did Sylvia do he died? Oh, that was a lot of lead us. He's like the Italian Trump. It's very exciting. I feel like it's exciting. He Yeah, no. He's the more successful version of trump is a failure. I'm pretty much everything seems like he's thought about things a lot more like but he's but you know, he was arrested for fraud involve all these sex scandals. A liar a jerk, you know sort of who hasn't been come on. Okay. Come on but he's like I just as exciting because he's the original like jerky controlling blowhard, I don't know. I do, I do like those. In fact I'm getting a whole the theme of this. The early part of this show does feel very like Leon black. Well, it's not over. Yeah. Remember who was that a fun manager who said he started? I can't remember the company now. It was one of our favorites early on her favorite assholes, but he gave us in front of a conference and said, like coaching sales. Yeah, he would approach sales. Like going to pick up a woman at a bar to remember that guy? Yes. And then said like all sorts of inappropriate Things about picking up women at bars, like I can't recall. That was I feel like his name was Jeff. I can't recall anything more than that. It's just go with Jeff but you're not wrong about that. But this these stories keep getting, they keeps they stay. Keep staying in this Roman again, I didn't. This is not my fault. I just covering the biggest stories in the ESG and business. The next one. JP Morgan. Chase said it has reached a settlement regarding victims of late sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. Oh, wow. This is this. Yeah. However, the banks litigation with the US Virgin Islands and his claims against former CEO, just Staley are still active, according to the New York Times. The bank is prepared to pay $290. Is a bit. I'm gonna say something probably controversial. It's a bit weird to yell at the bank. For. The guy who did the horrible thing, I mean, the bank should suffer ties with him. Yes. But it seems like the only person who's really been held accountable right now, is the bank. So I guess Epstein is dead. Yeah, but I mean like we have like princes and politicians and all sorts of other people who are actually involved in the heinous, heinous stuff. Directly who are not yet held accountable. Well, it's waiting for those. Am I Wrong? Is fine, am I wrong but the settlement agreement suggests that JP Morgan Chase thinks. It would have lost that. This is a yeah. So they must they might not agree with you JP Morgan. They might think that they were up to some Shenanigans. Maybe know these settlements, it might have been true that they might have lost but these settlements usually are because it's more expedient to pay to like this is a parking ticket. 290 million is supposed to write nothing. Moving on. Remember the meadow whistleblower for Frances Haugen. I do I Francis? Yeah still around. She's still doing stuff. She's back. She's just had a interview in the UK press. She has a book coming out, she has a very flashy headline this morning Meadow whistleblower says, tens of millions could die in the coming years. If social media is not overhauled. Wow. She what she's blaming is a continued lack of transparency which is really well. Double talk for saying what we always say is that we can't allow Mark Zuckerberg to sort of control everything with no oversight, isn't that what she's saying? I think she said governance and disclosure will kill 10 million people. I like that. And here's part of the reason why she's like here's why she's saying this, Matt part of it is base in 2018, the United Nations investigators said, Facebook substantively contributed to the Myanmar genocide Oh, through it go through like various disinformation, and yeah, various blah. Anyway, that's where she's get exciting that farm. Yeah, but Facebook Instagram. Facebook Zuckerberg just appointed. A task force to stop pedophiles on Instagram. So, isn't there? Just a task force that can put this. They can just task force. Here's where I include this story. Here's what I'm hoping is that all the the nude Nicks who are going after tiktok will will Francis will help them realize that this the same lack of transparency. All so exists at other social media Empires. It's a bit banana. What are we doing with tiktok? When we have our own dictator going on in a proxy fight that we've basically ignored because proxy fights. They seem exciting map but really they're kind of quite boring know. Yeah. You keep doing them on every Wednesday show? Well, this is on a Monday because aluminum is announced that CEO Francis de Souza is stepping down. After a long call icon. Here's how the here's how it worked. It's a little confusing. This one. So Carl. Called for for voters to vote against chair, chair John Thompson and CEO Francis D'Souza Cheryl is decided to only to vote out Thompson and he left. Somehow listen, he loved. Okay, listen actually got 71% of, yes votes, but he, he stayed for a month and then he's now he's gone, he was leaving. Oh, I don't really get this one also, 806% of Voters said, no one say on pay. I again the reason why I bring this up is I don't get what works in this realm of the alternative to Marcus. He why, why do some things work? Why did they listen to Icon here and say no one Sam pay. Why did they vote at the chair? But not the CEO. What why? I don't get anything mad. Here's my real question about this. They voted out the Sousa. Effectively got voted in but left and they vote out Thompson, but they left Then according to our data, the second most influential person is Bob Epstein. Yes. It was D'Souza and Epstein. Who were your like power Duo? Thompson is a close, third, but why do you what steps theme doing like? Why is Epstein? Like, no one cares about that guy and this is why Carl needs to use our data. I'm actually not joking because if he had us our data he'd know that not only he's the is he the longest serving director and the chair of the nominating committee? But yes as Matt points out I had the second most influence so he should have also been a Target. Definitely should have been a Target. Yeah and does this all mean to Susa is on the Disney board Thompson's on the Microsoft board if you don't like them for alumina, why do we like them for other boards? This is what we're trying to figure out here. At least they stink at their job. Do they not stink at the other jobs that they have when that are substantially the same job? Just somewhere else? I like it, like it, the other the other wrinkle here. I don't understand. Once again, I don't see, I don't get these proxy fights. I don't get shareholders, I don't get anything Carla icon. Also, put up three nominees his own nominees One only one passed with 59% of the vote, and another one fail with 91% against so, but I don't really. But why? I just don't get why, I don't get why one, I just don't get anything. I mean, and I looked at them, they're all the same guy. I mean, they ran there's a range of Ages but they're all just people who work for Carl Icahn essentially. So I just don't really get why anyone cares or why they make these decisions. I see I I think what ends up happening here is like one. I SS class Lewis, one of the like proxy advisors says, okay, you want three directors? That's too many. Okay, you won. Here's the one. And then they write actually out of a hat and then they say you want to get rid of three people. Well, you can get rid of one and they think that name out of a hat. This is why just didn't get picked out of the Hat. That's all. This is why even I SS needs to use our data? In fact, have we tried to sell the ISS yet because they are data would be extremely helpful for these types of fights these and I love the fact that the one that they put on Andrew tenno. Yeah and your Tonneau has according to our dad, I'm looking on our platform which we roll out next week, people. Next week, we roll This. Yes, he's on three other boards. Oh, and he's got 09 and 10% influence on these three other boards. See, I wish I looked that up because I thought that they just went with him because he's young, he's the youngest one. He's busy. He's just busy. He's a little like this guy. Yeah, I don't want him. Come on. You don't want you don't want you. This is, this is ridiculous. All right. Also, in a category. Oh, no. Before I get to that, no, I'll do that one first. Oh, and I'm gonna end on a light know, I'm gonna go with this one next in a category. Usually, I usually reserved for just dudes, and bro, is the failing upward category. I have a new one. I have a woman, a woman felled up woman. Oh that. Oh wow. So this is congratulations. I don't even know who it is. I'm just glad they got a shot to fail up. This is the former co-ceo. oh, theater. Yeah, it was a good show also but okay, wait to hear the story. But I agree with you. I'm kind of proud of her too for failing upwards. This is the former Cosi EO of failed us lender First Republic, right? So first, this her name is hafizi. Sorry. I mean, I am butchering. Her name is a Gaye, erkan, she's Turkish. So in January of last year she abruptly resigned as cozy CEO even though she was tagged to be the to The Heir Apparent. A First Republic Bank? She was only on the job for seven months and then of course maybe partly by her doing, I don't know the bank fails, okay First Republic fails, then she took over as the boss of Greystone. Matt, she lasted there for four months. Oh, not even four months. And now she's a point of the first woman to run the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey. Oh well let's know you miss a fail up, I mean up that is failing up. This is a fell down. I like this. The thing about failing up into a regulator position is it's not the same as failing up into like David zasloff. Like failed with CNN, Chris Licht and kept 200 million dollars of compensation for himself. That's what failing up feels like, that's what people that was like. Yeah, I don't this one feels like failing adjacent. I think the crowd should take back its cheering you're saying it's gonna be a lot of hard work but what about the I'm guessing that there might be some opportunity for some good old-fashioned corruption. Yeah. Not to mention the fact that she worked at a bank that utterly utterly fail and now she's leading all banks by as a regulator in Turkey. I'm not for a very for a very corrupt prime minister. I just think there could be some good grass coming here. I don't know. I like to check the right later. I was gonna be some serious checks headed to her way. That's all I like it before. Let's do a nerd alert. Oh, wait, before we get to that. I do want to wrap up on this. I thought you'd get you'd be tickled by this cops in San Francisco yell at a stalled. Self-driving Cruise Car, you know, made by GM by General Motors to get out of the way during a mass shooting in San Francisco. Video show the car stalling in the street as police shout for it to move. Wow, well I just I don't know why I shouldn't be laughing at mass shootings but I just I like that. The future we're heading towards, it's just like human. The humans that are left that still have our vocal cords and can still make decisions on their own are going to be screaming at objects at get out of the way, right? I mean this is our future was there a person in the car or was it just drive? Oh, I love this. Oh, this is, this is actually. All right, come on, move on. All right, let's do this thing. And the headline of this nerd alert is we as in free float board? Saber metrics are correct. The paper? Yeah finally we have a show right here. Can we just yeah, that's the whole nerd alert. Here's the paper. It's diversity equity and inclusion. It's by Alex, edmans Carolina flamer and Simon glossner. It was from May of 2023 and it's part of the National Bureau of economic research papers series on diversity. So what they did, here's the, here's the upshot Quote, we show that Dei is only weakly correlated with traditional measures of demographic diversity, such as percentages of women and ethnic minorities on the boards in your management CEO position and wider. Workforce translation. Yes, counting bodies is not diversity. Yeah, that's why we I mean Hello female power Gap, we're here for you. That's what we did. We in fact we I actually offered Professor Edmonds, R data, he was already reached out, I love that. I know I reached I reached out to him before he did this paper because he was looking for data on diversity and I said, take ours, we have you know what a ton. And at that point he said, by the time I reached out, he said we have some go, the thing with yourself away. Yeah, okay. But now it's time for him to come back to us because they found that companies in strong financial positions that's like they have strong sales growth over three years. They give out dividends and they're one year, stock returns don't matter, they go up, they go down, nobody cares. They actually have a better focus on giving people, you know, diversity and inclusion. It's stops being about demographics and it's starts being about power. And in actual actual, you know, like diversity. And having diversity at the top doesn't actually matter. Women in Senior Management is better for diversity. Like, true diversity, not demographic diversity but female CEO board. Members isn't necessary, you don't need that. Okay, this is confusing. But but other stories do suggest though that having women in board members it does sort of trickle down right throughout the organization. Well, their point is that the percentages of diverse people may increase when you have more women at as CEO or on the chair. But those people's power or Comfort or if feeling of a conclusion does not necessarily and I can understand that. But I would also say that that probably is true in the short term. But in the long term, I'm hoping that that will change know after being at the firm for a while. Well, the average, I mean, how long does that last? If most of you get that job, you're glass. Cliff see. Well, they can't do very Much right and you end up then you end up running the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey. Yeah exactly right where but if they're starting premise is of the companies in a strong financial position already, right then diversity is more likely to happen, right? You'll inclusion is more likely to happen for real, for real, everybody's feeling good. So let's let's like, open the barn doors. How can we say? I mean them, say that paper saying that having a female CEO is not actually correlated to diversity. Yeah. But how many of those female CEOs got the job when the company was in a strong financial position? Right? Most of them get it to clean up from the Bros that just left. Right. Exactly. So it's not exactly, like you can say that, you know, having women at the top, doesn't matter, right? But they found that actual diversity includes a feeling of inclusion. By employees, is positively associated associated with seven of eight measures of profitability. Wow, body count is not so well. Um, the methodology they use, they looked at the great places to work survey data. And this is why I said you've got to use our data. We have real data, we didn't go out and like, take a paycheck from a company to give them a survey. We're not like conflicted like that right plus, I mean that's the best you can come up with great places to work. That's the name of come on. You could do better but they did pick out of a 58 questions. On top of my head, you could have been like very, very, very, very good places. That mean more, you could have been above mediocre places and places. You don't want to shoot yourself. He's places where they do clean up the toaster oven when they're done with it. Oh yeah, they identified 13 of the 58 survey questions. As in the questions look like, this is a psychologically, an emotionally healthy place to work or I can be myself around here. Basically. They got to the feeling of inclusivity and get to actual power. We have power but they Come compared. The feeling of inclusivity to demographic and financial return interesting which is why? Yeah, in conclusion, Alex for your next paper. Use board sabermetrics power data. Because representation is not power, but even the feeling of inclusivity is not really power. You want your power? It's time. I'm actually gonna set aside all jokes for like 20 seconds and say we'll see. Say yeah, say yeah, yeah, yes, here's an actual real opportunity. See, no matter what, I think of this the results of this paper. We do need more and more studies like this, but yes, Matt, you're right. I am hoping that our data. Spawns a bunch more. Servings bunch more research like this, right? I mean, it should be everywhere, right? I mean, self-serving so yes, of course. All right. Maybe I was joking. I don't even know you. I don't like, A like two idiots in the 90s or aren't sure casting anymore. Someone has to try. Someone has to try to further the research in our field. That's all we got. That's Damon Raul's. I am the Lord of BS and I'm back. At least for now just because nobody asked for ESG to point, oh doesn't mean that we can't create the data that support, he's already done. Look out for our platform, we'll have more announcements coming this week but we are free float. This was business pants until tomorrow. Do we have corporate theater tomorrow? I'm gonna we'll see what happens. We might have something tomorrow. Damian is very cryptic, just start over whether or not, he wants to have a sandwich. Instead of doing this job until then,