Transcript
Hey, hey. Don't make yourself cough again. Hey oh live from your ESG turkey baster, it's a woke data. Wednesday spectacular here at the ESG stopping Farm. George has always by our BS correspondent, Matt mascardi. Whoo. Sure. I'm wearing a blue hoodie over a maroon hoodie. I got double hoodie today. Wow. Well, you're in like a frigate. Yeah, shed. I'm in my backyard in the northeast corner of the United States and today's pre-holiday ESG Bonanza. Scintillating ESG, giblet tidbits. A visit from ESG Tucker Carlson Yeah, I think he renamed himself, cuckold Tarling tin and some kind of sad quiz that you've cooked off for us. I do, I have a sad quiz for you, are you ready? Let's, just roll this thing. But first Yeah. Today's episode is sponsored by ESG Data Solutions. You can't play it, can't play us. The sound effect over control that the audience. Got a Bonus into it. Today's episode is sponsored by Skid ESG data solution. Paul harsh in the great. Paul was supposed to have something for us today. I'm going to blame what should I blame for his absence? British Thanksgiving. What is that? British Thanksgiving. He's he'll have something next week. It looks like he's doing something with ESG metrics and pay plans. CEO pay plans. That sounds like something I want to know. Very s gauge Paul. Yes, I like, yeah. well, what's not to like Well, stay tuned for that next week. All right, this week. Here go, Matt. Everyone's favorite Random ESG headlines that click baited the F out of me. And no particular order. That's how we do the news here at business pants. First, let's get the depressing out of the way, okay, as we focus on the S in ESG, let's do the s first. S is depressing. Yeah. Walmart the shooting at Walmart? Matt Walmart, shooting suspect was a disgruntled employee. I think he was actually a manager. Great. So that's unfortunately, that's Seven people shot a wall. There's never a story about a gruntled employee. Nobody ever tells that story, well, I was gonna ask is it redundant to be called a disgruntled employee at Walmart that is a little bit redundant. And is it is it too soon for that kind of terrible joke? That's the real question I think it is. Well, I mean, at this point in America are we totally Indifferent to mass shootings. Like it's not happens on a daily basis. I live in, I live in a little bit of fear. We I mean like we've armed everybody or not to the only reason. The only reason why I don't arm myself. Matt is that I know by day four. I will have accidentally shot myself. Yeah, but you'll buy day seven minutes of the zombie apocalypse. You'll be dead. That's true. What I'm gonna go out there and start like looking for when a fight go. Here, go find some sorry. Meanwhile there was a congressional report released this week that said that Walmart fired black hourly employees twice as often as their white co-workers at the pandemic. Start the report examined Staffing in equities at 12 companies between 2019 and 2021. They also found this Workers without sick, leave without sick. Leave left their employment at far higher rates than those who did have paid sick. Leave, which should be a surprise to nobody the first stat. You're quoting their sounds dangerously like CRT. Critical just because I'm talking about anything, that's not a white person, that's correct. You're discriminating against everybody who isn't white or those is white too, good things that are Walmart there. You know. I always think that with this incredible, incredible incredible disaster of Elon Musk that is Elon Musk and Twitter. All these other companies that we used to attack and the general public would attack regularly all the Walmarts, the Amazons, the Facebook's their sitting pretty? Yeah, they there's a lot he got taken off of them. Yeah. You literally have to be a CFO that gets drunk and ends up in a college woman's bed, to get any press. Now, That's What It Takes. Um, how many companies do you think wait for the musk disaster to news dump? Is that, is that it used to be like, Friday, news dumps, but now is it musk news dumps. It's just whenever or Kanye always dumps, 100% of them. A meanwhile, in China, Matt, this doesn't this doesn't look good. I saw, I looked a little bit of this video that looks terrible video show. Hundreds of workers, hundreds of workers, rioting At Apple's biggest iPhone, making plant, which is really Foxconn. But in America, we call it Apple's biggest iPhone. Yeah, because it doesn't have an identity. Yeah, they're riding over China's, Draconian covid-19, measures and unpaid wages. Oops, And here's and I looked into this is true, what's the propaganda here? But here's what the fox gonna actually said. They said, regarding any violence, the company will continue to communicate with employees in the government to prevent similar incidents from happening again. So yes these wow. Happy videos are real and then it is You know, from the perspective of just corporations, this is it's scary. This video, it's looks terrible. It looks. I'm not seeing it. Yeah, I've not I've not seen it. I am afraid. I'm guessing it's because Foxconn is woke. That's probably why they're know. Apple is woke and there are woe hypocrite because they're using effectively indentured servants in China and in an autocratic regime to build iPhones, while teaching diversity to their employees here and inclusion. And why it matters? That's there's a there will hypocrite where not to mention that if you're a worker and you're fighting over unpaid Wages, that's an a woke Act. Know. Yeah, that's like so so not only are you not are you taking advantage of them? But they're writing for more rights which makes it them well too. So everybody, this is just the world disaster. Moving on what it is. Goldman Sachs, back in the news. This is another one of the, this is the one of the big benefits. Benefactors of the musk, the bus dump swan. Think this headline is decidedly less horrible. It's just born SEC. Charges Goldman Sachs for not following ESG investment policies. I, I asked you earlier in the morning, if there was anything interesting out of this story, you said, no flat out, but I did find this. The SEC has a climate and ESG task force Matt. Yeah, baby. I love a good task force. They're taking all the sacks. Know it's interesting about this story is that this is very clearly the way the SEC is going to regulate ESG. If you say you do the E the S and the g, then you have to do them in a way that you can show or else you're probably gonna get fine. That's true. The failures. Included not having written policies in place for ESG research and then failing to follow the policies once they were established that I don't like my favorite. Is that Goldman Sachs I and I think I can say this now because it's been so many years. But like seven years ago, I met with them. When I was at the mothership at msci, and we were there doing a song and dance selling. Yes, she data. And yes, she ratings and, and Goldman Sachs investment team looked at us and said, that's cute. But we know what we're doing and we don't need any of your stuff, it's not disagree. In fact, we're more advanced than you. And it turns out they did not. Thank. Listen uh correct me if I'm wrong, DJ diesel, let's CEO, David Solomon. He is one of the CEOs on our in our lists and our indexes here, that has the less is the second amount a second, most amount of influence on his board is that on his own board. That is correct. You win your eye, on DJ diesel, according to our data, he could be, he could be could be next. He could be aboard without him. Yo shareholders could house them. A lot of bad press can go inside out there, tweeting about the FED. I expect that guy come back. It's Thanksgiving so everyone's feeling a bit nostalgic and we are better times. Well, I'll just think, maybe they're thinking of pre-shooting times back when turkeys didn't kill anyone. How about this old-fashioned headline, to warm? The cockles of the heart? Matt Hyundai's first, female director, that's, that's Really imagine 605 years in and they found one they found they finally found one. Wow I see this is disappointing to me. You had a streak going Hyundai like just true just to own own stay in your lane. Like literally you making cars just stay in your lane and say, diversity is not for us. We're some of them. Or certainly not about that. And I don't want to make fun of Lee G young because I did the, I looked at the Hyundai board. She as it turns out, is the smartest person on the board Bar. None. Yeah, that is correct. She's like, like a PhD and arrow science or something. And not only is she. She has a PHD in aerospace engineering, but she is so smart that she can teach others about it. That's the next professor of aerospace engineering, but she takes to get on the board of Hyundai if you're a woman, but I will say this. She said this, she said that South Korea has a long way to go to reach, gender, equality, and corporate governance. I think that's true. No, I don't think that's true. I think they're pretty quote, right? Yeah, I don't know, I don't know where you're getting far area of expertise. So yeah, stay in your lane up next. Here's the question. Does Zuck also own Scotland? oh, here's the unhappy. Here's the headline. It's like a weird. I like to apply ESG to other headlines. You know how I call like King. Charles the CEO of the UK, here's the headline. Scotland cannot hold an independence referendum without UK government approval. Wow, right that? How is that? Not a fake public company? Dual class country. I love right? I mean they can't even have a say in their. Thank you again the dual-class country. Yeah, I yeah. Is it not too bad? Yeah. I I'm a big fan of Edinburgh. Shout out to scale and bro. It's great. Yeah. Like the nicest places I've ever been. Well I hope you do like it because my daughter is now threatening to apply to universities there. So maybe yeah. Relocate the next choice and if she does go there, I have some friends who are in University their neighbor's wife. Well, luckily, the Applause, Was too loud for me to hear. So I'm just I'm just gonna assume the horrible thing. He said about my daughter was just continue. Your back at business, Disney Disney? Where I talked about that, here's an article called, see how other Boomerang CEOs Affairs term. Here's a here's, this is from Jim Citron. Who leads, Spencer, Stewart's, CEO, practice. I don't know what that means. What you think? That's not a thing. You practice being a CEO. He said that boards tend to look to boomerangs CEOs when those leaders created a lot of value. Over an extended period during their first stint. I think, honestly, Spencer Stuart, I think you're missing. The biggest part of the picture which our data has, which is not just that the, that they, the leaders created value the first time. It's that there is a, the leaders left and a considerable power vacuum on the board when they left. And that, is that they the session planning is not finding CEOs, that people care about or listen to. And this is why the boomerang CEOs, come back because they can, it's not, it's not about you there, they're leaving voids of power. Thank you. We have a data to prove it, I'm not just talking we we found that 15% of CEOs. Actually underperform another member on their own board and of those in the large cap groups. We're talking about companies where they've had, not just Boomerang CEOs, but rotating CEO problems. CEOs can't keep the job is because they're just not influential enough. They don't consolidate the boardroom. So and this isn't a bad thing in a way. It's bad when there's a Boomerang, but it's not bad when they don't have the most influence because that means shareholders do isn't it? But it's, but but there is a negative effect which is that the guy who's been there for a few months is walking away with 25 million dollars and the new one coming in getting another one that's a bit of a waste of shareholder value. Um, and by the way, I'm actually excited about our own company because this used to be the thing of snarly telling, this used to be ESG storytelling a little anecdote, we have the data to back up. What? I love that you, you got excited about it now like, it's it took like, we would do this for three years, you're excited? So something here we go. Speaking of Disney SPF over FTX, that's Sam bacon fried because he freed the FDA world. Yeah. He wrote some letter to staff blah, blah blah, still apologizing. Well, here's the main takeaway. He said I would give anything to be able to go back and do things over again, Matt. This is the perfect recipe for Bob Iger. This is a new series for Disney Plus Where where villain? CEO goes back in time to save the company. He loves. Wow. Alright, this is beautiful. That. Wow he also said man that yet I can't believe you just said that out loud. You should have opted it first. We know why you're listening. So call us, you know. Yeah, yeah, call Matt because I don't answer my phone. He also said he said, quote, I didn't mean for any of this to happen. Oh, okay. Oh well, that makes the dude. Yeah. The dude who ran this Empire, the CEO. He's just his apology to her consists of just claiming ignorance about everything like he didn't know. Yeah, that's not gonna work. I'm sorry. That's really yeah. I actually think he would work in this case. I think because unlike in other cases where like, you know, they parade a CEO in front of Congress and they're like, I had no knowledge of anything that was happening at my Corporation and we're supposed to think that they're professionals. This was a kid who was basically on a bean bag, chair with his girlfriend playing pong and running a multi-billion dollar company. And when the turnaround CEO comes in after They crash. They find that there is not a single record there, they're writing things on napkins and sending love notes to each other. I think he legitimately didn't know what he was doing. I mean, I don't, I don't think it's like, he has plausible deniability, like he can raise his hand, and be like, look, all those other CEOs are like, professional CEOs. They had boards and all that stuff. We didn't know what we were doing and nobody told us to do anything. They just gave us money and then we just kind of did stuff like I oh I don't I honestly of all the CEOs that I think she'd go to jail. I don't think SBF is one. I think he has no idea what he's doing. I think he's, I think he's a moron, okay. I think he's like, MIT for turning out more ones. Yeah, and Stanford. Professor parents like, I mean, he lost his luster overnight. It went from Goodwill Hunting to SBF, I mean, come on MIT. Yeah, that's a tough transition. All right, I'm gonna do. Oh no, I want to, I want one. I got one more. I want to end with this. Come on. No, I do. I do. Uh there's a Twitter must clickbait barrage out their thousands of headlines, but here's the best. That's just wanted to tell you. Oh God, Twitter employee says, the New York office cafeteria is serving two types of mac and cheese but grilled shrimp is off the menu. Oh, actual headline, from the business news about the Elon Musk, okay? All right, sorry. I will say, I had that in of all the headlines about musk. That one does not bother me. Like, you don't need fucking Grill. I would never eat grilled shrimp at work. By the way, I don't know, it wouldn't trust. Get out of here with grilled shrimp. All right, here we go. I got something for you today, that I think this will make you happy. Okay, I'm already in a pretty good mood maybe the last day we're working this week. But yeah, that's true, we're not here. The rest of the week hat tip to a listener who forwarded me this report. This is the, I read this report called the tolchin Stuart ship report or told him made up. Okay, I'm here. It is a report based on 35 an interview with 35 chairs of UK based companies foot c100 companies between June and September of this year and then they did a couple of follow-up interviews with some other people senior reps in some institutional investors got it. I actually picked five quotes out of this report We're gonna play a game called rate, the whiny, okay, rate The Whining. Oh, but if it's UK, it would be rate the whinging. Wait? Okay, we'll play rate the whinging. Okay. Damian is the only contestant. This, this is zero, is totally reasonable. And 10 is big fat Diaper, Baby, whinging? Okay, okay, love you ready to play? Yeah, all right, here we go. Quote number one. Yeah. The public company model is broken, you have a large group of very talented and dedicated execs and non-execs getting together, 10 times a year and 70% of the agenda is typically governance and regulation directors have to worry about whether their gender pay Gap has gone up or down and what that might mean and what will be written about it in the Daily Express? That leaves little of the 35 days a year. A non-exec normally devotes to a company to think about other things. Oh my God. This is like, this is A high level of which. So just just to summarize that quote, Saying thinking about the gender pay. Gap takes so much time. They can't think about how to run the company, that's what they're saying, right? But I guess paying your employees is not as no longer a function of running a company. Is that is I suppose I suppose also keeping your employees. Keeping them happy worrying that your employees are treated equitably. Is not a concern of the, I mean this, let's just say it outright Matt, this this guy. Yeah, okay, guy. Yeah, sure. Clearly has no idea what it's like to be a director at a public company. Post 1964. Well I'm gonna I can't I can either confirm or deny that. Yeah. So I'm gonna give it a seven. That's a lot of whining. That's a lot of whingeing. That's a seven on the whinging scale. All right. Number two. Are you ready for this? Yeah, I like this. Quote, we're moving from a world based on trust and into a show me world where you gotta be kidding me, know where, where boards and management have to check against rules to show. They have done the job. That's real quote, that's a real quote. This is the SBF you. This is basically describing what you just talked about with us like right now. I mean that's a full a full ten. Wow the whinging scale so they're saying Now we have to now we have to prove it we're doing now. Yeah even know what he's saying? Where are they say? I mean you used to just trust us to do our job and now you're asking us like are we doing our job man? The men in there. Yeah, the men used to just get stuff done and the women would cook the turkey and clean up and that's so that's a 10 on the winching scale that? That's a bad. Look, that cool. Here's your third quote. Are you ready for this? Yeah, well I think boards need to get used to the idea that shareholder democracy means that the majority is a majority, okay? And we have to think about what a good majority looks like. The good old days of the chair being re-elected with 99.95% of the votes are over because there were always be a protest view about something this then forces the company to provide a grown-up board and engage with core investors more fully. I mean why does this person not work with us? I like this person. This is a I'm there's no whining here. This is a zero zero on the winching scale. Yeah, that's great. One. I picked this one because I love that, it felt passive aggressively like I guess you're right. It felt like it. We have to get used to this idea that we're not gonna get 100% of the vote anymore because someone's always got a problem with us. Well, my reading is that this person's already caught up with that and he's he or she is trying, probably as she is telling the rest of them. Come on. Get like get up. Like come on, grow up this one could go either way. I figured there was some whinging in there but you gave it a zero. So go to zero. This next quote is on proxy advisors Okay, this is specifically about proxy. Advisors i s s came out devil a bunch of. Yeah. If you're the chair of a board you hate ISS the way this works. Quote, the problem is the agency in particular, the agency being ISS Doesn't recruit the right people. I don't have a problem in terms of what they do, but it would be helpful if they had people who were fit for purpose and were prepared to put effort into understanding companies and sectors. They cover. So, is this like a Charlie Munger like English? Professor Swarthmore is this about like a person woman person of color that this person doesn't like, what's happening here, I don't have a problem with you being a proxy. Advise, this is what you weren't full of moron's. Then it was a full. This is a very uncomfortable 10 or not. I'll give it just made me feel uncomfortable. I don't get right to the heart of our job for so many years. I actually did I ever tell you I got asked by somebody when I said msci for my resume to see if I was qualified to write them was it your boss know. What would have been that would have been, was he Henry Fernandez, it was The company that a financial company that I was rating in the woman who asked it is an ESG person. She's well known if I said her name. People listening to the show, know exactly who she was. She asked for my resume because she didn't like the way I rated. Did you give them your resume or John R Tyson's resume? Which well, they had, they had to I I did not wake up in bed with a college-age woman because I was drunk. So, I did not give him that resume, but I did have to go through. There was a whole HR conversation about like, wow. Do we have to like there was a sales rep involved. Who said don't feel compelled to do that? I was like, what do you fuck you talking? I'm not doing that. I didn't actually hired. They are, I don't, they acquired, you know, they yeah it required me from Miss metrics yeah. So there you go. Um, and the final quote on the whinging scale quote, I have sat in meetings with investment decision makers where they say, they agree with me about the company strategy, but their hands are tied by ESG. Oh, and the ESG people in the room are clearly, not holistic, thinkers really, not, not thinking about matters, such as shareholder, return, and taking simplistic positions on highly controversial issues. There are many trade-offs but these investors are trying to make the trade-offs for you and tell you what to do. On the basis of limited competence at the least I would call to account what I would call Bogus ESG based on virtue signaling is this is just run to Santa's. I don't. What is this? This one like started off passive aggressive and just ended aggressive. They just got aggressive. Yeah, I don't specific questions. I don't know about the whining here but this is just a. Can I give it a nine for anger? Yeah, nine on the Win jinger's, scale. Sure that you. That one does depressing one, I got you on a depressing one. That is so our average whinging here. Just doing a quick tally. Sure. Do it and 36 makeup is a 7.25. That's our average morning information. Uh, but here's a fun aside. Here's yeah, I pulled this quote, another fun aside. I mean, we're really, we've been 26 minutes of fun aside, I've got two more fun aside. Actually this one is actually another quote from the same report. This one was from an Institutional Investor. So not a chair and it was on ESG. They said, quote we are making this up. As we go along, there is no single standard, but we hope a more coherent framework and accounting standard for ESG will emerge. Who's who's the Institutional Investor? That they got a quote from about. Yes. She said, we're making it up as we go along, that was I thought that was a fun side note. Well, I guess that's sort of isn't that? The sort of the basis of knowledge in general. Isn't that what we're all doing here? Everybody's making everything up all the time. We're just, we're trying to make sure for us because here's what I did next true. If you ever read a survey and don't think about who they surveyed where they were, and he information about the company that did the survey, then you're an idiot forever, quoting the survey because board saber metrics back to the day. I pulled, they listed the name at the beginning of the report of every chair that they interviewed and then they did all the quotes anonymously. So you don't know who's quote was who oh really but still that's a listed old chairs. Okay. Like this I pulled the list of 35 chairs. In our board saber metrics data. and it turns out, 21 of the 35s know each other. Well, of course, As in, they sit on boards. With each other like one board for you. Sit on another board with the chair. somewhere else, for instance, Tolchin interviewed Christine Hodgson who's the chair of Severn Trent. I don't know what that is, but it's company. Who sat on the board in Severn in 2020, with Andrew Duff. who was also interviewed for this and is now the chair of the sage group and Duff sits on the chair of sage group or sits on the board of change group with Annette Court, who is the chair of Admiral group and also interviewed. But in this Basically the Deep whiny thoughts that we just went through. And we'll get circulated. Everywhere is really a brown network of chairs who all know each other and have one unique thought. Yes, it is. It's an echo chamber with no deep understanding of the subjects that they're whining about And now a word from cocoa tarlington. The mainstream media is telling you every day that the Red Wave was just a red Trickle and Liberals are reveling in what they say is their big big win, but was it What if I told you there wasn't election fraud per se, but instead, I told you that there wasn't not election fraud and it wasn't not conducted by a secretive insurance company. You probably didn't know existed. I'm cuckold Tarleton and this is, are you terrified their Just look at the election results, they say. But what if we did, look at the election results. If I dare question the election results, I'm a fraud and a liar. I'm undemocratic and unpatriotic. And as if some avocado toast, California knows anything about my patriotism. But what if I told you the election was stolen, Know, there is an evidence for it. But what if I said it wasn't elected officials or China or Russia stealing American elections? You wouldn't believe me, right? Yeah, what we do here is we follow the money and when you follow the money, you realize there is one company that might be behind the red Trickle. And that company isn't who you think. Let me take you back to 2009. A company called Staples Street Capital was founded in 2009 by a man named hutan jakub today. Who had worked in private Equity at Carlyle Group among other places. This is a fact and in 2014 an insurance company that you've probably never heard of called, Travelers Insurance invested with Staple Street. A bit of an oddity giving how small Staples Street was compared to Travelers, who had a 44 billion dollar market capitalization. But this is a fact. And in July of 2018, after the election of Donald Trump, Staples Street bought Dominion voting Systems Corporation, the company that makes many of the voting machines used in this country. This is also a fact and if you don't see where I'm going with this, I don't either. And you notice something strange about both Staples Street and travelers. Travelers is a woke Corporation. This feels factual ish, Travelers discloses on their website, their political donations, and lobbying amounts. And in those disclosures, you can see that in July of 2018, the largest campaign donations made by Travelers were to two recipients, the Democratic Governors Association. And Gavin, Newsom, the woke anti-capitalist. Progressive, governor of California. This is a fact. Travelers isn't trying to hide their wokeness in the last year, the company has made it public commitment to discriminate against American coal, and they won an award for lgbtq BLT with mayonnaise Focus. That includes quote, a conscious inclusion Workshop, we're Travelers requires all employees to complete an education program, that explores biases and their impact in the workplace, as well as how to be more intentionally inclusive. If that sounds like it might be CRT, that's because I'm implying it. Travelers CEO Alan Schnitzer even sits on the board of the New York City Ballet with leftist, Sarah, Jessica Parker, and Michael Bloomberg's wife, Diana, Taylor, these are facts. So let's put the circle in the Square a massive and quietly woke insurance company Travelers finds out their elitist, presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton lost and they invest in a little known private Equity company that owns and runs. One of the few providers of voting machines in the United States. And over the next three elections Democrats in this country win over and over. Coincidence. Yes, but do you like thinking there's another large woke Wall Street? Giant pushing the levers of democracy in this country. Was it a red trickle? Or was it a Wall Street bullfight? And if you don't think these coincidences add up to facts, then how about this one for you? Do you remember where I said Hooten, the founder of Staples Street worked before, That's right. He worked at a private Equity Firm called Carlyle Group. This is the same private Equity Firm At the same time that Susan Arnold, the lesbian chair of woke, Disney Corporation worked. So I'll ask you. Are you terrified yet? That's what we got. That was woke Wednesday. That's Damian Ross. I'm at Scotty, we are free float if you like this. Come back next week. We are off tomorrow. We are off on Friday. It's a holiday in the US and finally Damien will get warm until next week. Goodbye.