Business Pants – 2022-11-28

Hello, that's all I got. Yeah, live from the ESG. That's it from the ESG, deep baked turkey emulator. It's a Monday hangover edition of business pants. Join us always by BS. Correspondent, Matt, Mascari, I'm gravy, I'm still gravy. I still have some leftovers and they are delicious in today's Whatchamacallit, called November, 28th 2022. Sexy story, updates and sleazy academic papers. Is that true? Do you have a nerd alert today? I do. Yes, yeah, I was short one, it's a question. So one lighter, some consulting company that was trying to sell us how to increase our podcast. Audience told me that our introductions didn't, they didn't get to the point quickly enough there was His way of saying, we're two absurd. We got we got a lay everything out. I think they just take. Shut up, shut up. And get everything has to be. Yeah. Laid out perfectly for for a hot minute. We, we had my brother helping us out and he told us not to insult. Our Croatian fans. Actually, I haven't assaulted Croatian a while so if you know Croatia. Yeah, get on that. All right. Let's all right, let's catch up on some news, shall we? Yeah. He did something new today, Matt. What is it? New? I just I just wanted to stay away from all the its just oh the the grinding halt. That is the business world and ESG World which is Elon Musk. This is the grinding halt of humanity and I just started, I'm just gonna open up our articles that I want to talk about, and that's it. Instead of ESG is the devil. You don't want to talk about that. No, actually, I don't. So, Diaper, baby move. Anyway, we can talk about what they actually, if you want. We can adult news, you know, that one? Yes. Because it's Jason news. It's probably worth it. Everything we cover here is ESG. Jason it. I mean, that's the truth of it because we look at public corporations. We look at some of the controversies. We look at their c-suite and directors. Yeah, we're always believe it or not. Matt, this is an ESG focused Enterprise. Yeah, believe it or not, we are actually, we actually delve into facts. I don't believe that's all true. That's true. I even to prove it to prove it if anyone wants to do a forensic analysis of my computer to prove it I actually opened two msci, ESG ratings reports this morning. Wow. So I'm and which ones were they? I'm doing stuff which was just do the news ready? Ah, boo. Okay, do it in, no particular order, Matt covid is back in the headlines covid. Everything you need to know about. China's covid, protests and rare and stunning scenes. Thousands of people took to the streets In cities, like Shanghai Wuhan openly challenging police near restrictive? Covid, policies. We I feel like our show our company started with a lot of China talk. Yeah, but the the the what do you call the diaper? Babies that the anti-wolf anti ESG diaper babies of taking over the news taking over everything. I'm putting China back in today Well, the reason why they're gonna be back in is no, like, if they keep zero covid, lockdowns, thin? Covid 0, yes. Then nobody gets their iPhones for Christmas. So that's the, there was an article that was the subtext. Is this is going to hurt iPhone's? I mean it's that to me is the funny part. Like, they're literally people who have been for like, almost three years now. Not a lot to like, leave their home's. Because of the way China is dealing with covid. And, and just like, then when we talked about them, as this supply chain, like it wasn't a supply chain. Those are the human beings that were like in the front lines getting killed. Now, we're talking about them as our iPhone sources. Like these, protests are not good because of our iPhones. Well, they won't even call Foxconn Foxconn. They call it iPhone supplier. Oops. But that's probably one of the only major public corporations. It doesn't even get its own name in the business news. It's I know they're publicly traded. Yeah. It's and they don't just make iPhones by the way. And speaking of which, what citizen what American citizen doesn't have drawers? Full of iPhones at this point, I mean at this point, granted you're not going to get the absolute, most newest iPhone, but who buys a new iPhone anyway, what kind of an idiot who doesn't just get the free one that Verizon Chuck's at you? Because it, it's like six months old. The free ones are trying to get rid of, you know? The if you get if you have so we have to your to your point. We have like two or three that are like like paper weights. Right now we I brought them into apple and said can you fix this button? Because it works perfectly fine. If the button works and they said no you'd have to buy a whole new one to replace it. Oh, what? Yeah, the butt that must fix the button. It must be a Connecticut thing because my Portland, Maine Apple Store workers. They, they do anything. You ask, they'll give you guys. They'll give you a new hat, whatever you want. I went to the one one was super nice and she said, you know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go bring it in the back. I'm gonna figure out like, you know, if I can just code this, a certain way and whatever and then the manager came over and said, no, you're not allowed to do that. Oh, that was your problem. That was like, that was your problem. Yeah. No. There was one person who was helping and then the manager came over, all right. So it sounds like you have nothing to say about China. I let me add this quote, this. This bit from Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs, always has pithy things to say that they give the chances of China reopening before the second quarter of 2023. They give those chance at 30%. Now that's information. You can use, they go 30%, anything between 20 and 80% is a coin flip know. Write anything between 20 Anything that isn't 100% or 0% is make believe, isn't it? Because then you're always right. If I say, there's a 10% chance that could happen. That if it happens, I said, well, I said there was a chance, it could happen, right? So yeah, I'm always right Bloomberg. Shame on you, you should be covering the actual controversy, gold massage, and not giving them this Free. Press about this 30% of our moving on, come on, Ready to do it. Yeah, I'm waiting for you. Who world that we're I'm staying with the deadly diseases. Who the World Health Organization says? It will call monkeypox M parks to avoid, what it called racist and stigmatizing language surrounding the disease. Matt isn't a little bit too late for this. I think it's pretty much two years into monkeypox. Yeah, no one's gonna call it Empires. I mean, I gotta say this is a major fail for who major fail all, so start with Empires and then if you want to Branch out to monkeypox, fine, start with the non-racist non stigmatizing language. I mean, the word monkey. Isn't by itself racist though, is it? Like there are not. This is we're talking about actual monkeys with an actual disease, that spread to humans. Yeah, if you ever seen how people deal with life on things like Twitter, have you ever ventured forth into that world? Know. Well, if we actually changed all of our language because what idiots say on Twitter, what the fuck, will we say anymore? What, we don't need to say anything, maybe we just never need to be on Twitter. Moving on that would save our problems. Yeah, I have achieved that moving on. Barclays CEO says he has curable non-hodgkin lymphoma and Matt. he said this in a regulatory filing, they so we've Wrote, we have talked about this issue a few times. Should CEOs. Be obligated to tell you about their medical conditions. I say yes because I want to know everything about everything they're doing. I want to know what's in their pockets and everything about everything I do. Hey, if it's a publicly traded company, then yes, I'm sorry. If you want to be private, could be private. I don't care what if they are, what if it's a bald Bob chapek, and he has less influence than the chair and he has a problem. Do we do? We care as much then isn't it isn't it? A factor of like how important their It could be. Yeah. So are you saying that Bob chapek left Disney because he had Empires? I know what I'm saying, is that what I see the SEC should call us up and say if bored saber metrics says that you are of a certain level of influence, then you need to disclose this. Oh interesting, I like this. Okay, that's fair. That's fair. Share. We'll start. We'll start with everybody, right? If you're making a blanket first and then work our way down. So if you're so what you're saying, if you're a token board, member who sits on no committees has very little 10 year deal with your stuff in private. We don't even care. If you're throwing up blood, we don't care. I mean like it it's sad but like there are no press release. We Care emotionally. I'm okay sorry. We don't care like corporate motionless and I even think that Emma would have beat you for that. So I'll just thank you. Emma moving on Instagram is the new neighborhood pot dealer. I like that headline. This is another one out of Bloomberg. Here's a quote meta, is very good at getting themselves, incorporated into people's daily routines. But here's the follow-up which I really love the metaverse. I met a spokesperson said marijuana content is not allowed on Instagram so there's nothing to see. There's nothing this way here. So so Barkley's is telling you that their CEO has non-hodgkin lymphoma meta is telling you that while there is there are drug dealers all over its platform. They're actually it's not. No, it's not there, it's not. I'm sure if I were to go on Instagram and search for 4:20 nothing would show up, right? Nothing It's an awkward story anyway, because it's practically legal in most States now. Is it not so, what do we know? They, they voted it down. I think in Kentucky, I think it was Kentucky that voted. I guess the problem is that when I hear Instagram, I think of teenagers so it's probably not the only tracking teenagers periods and whether or not they cross state lines to get abortions. They're not they're they're not as that's legal, okay? It's not legal to talk about weed, which actually is legal a lot. Yeah, moving on. Oh, China again, back to China. Oh, right, I missed them already. Congressman, says tiktok should be banned in the US back to this because, hey, don't forget what I left out in the headline there. This is a republican Congress person. The Republicans are taking over soon. So I think we're going to get a lot more anti-china stuff. Matt help me out with this quote. I didn't even realize this, I must be so out of it. I don't know if I'm like not covering conspiracy theories enough or if I'm not covering tiktok news enough, Here's the quote. Tiktok is digital Fenton fentanyl fentanyl fentanyl. Yeah, that's super Mimi drug. Tiktok is digital fentanyl addicting our kids. He said and just like actual fentanyl. It ultimately goes back to the Chinese Communist party this. Oh, wow. So I I somehow I've avoided this. So the conspiracy theory now is that that the Chinese are putting are killing our kids with drugs and addicting them with social media. Does this mean that there are no actual other drugs in America or social media? I I'm just confusing generally like what is China? The bookie man here, man. Help us out well up, apparently. So yeah, China and Mexico are the two largest sources of fentanyl in this country. I don't I still don't even really know what fentanyl is but I don't know is like a heroin, but you do it like twice and it kills you, it's like, oh, it's like it's so much worse. In fact, in the Pacific Northwest, it's just decimating places. It's why would anyone do it more than one to the second time? Kills you? Well, it's the same reason why you do any of these drugs once like you just like your escaping the horrors of your real life. So so why can't we put a label on it? That says Do it once is you'll have fun. Do it twice, you. It turns out they're not actually going through the FDA. I don't know how they're getting around it, but they're just not unlike Barclays CEO. They're not. Yeah, they're not disclosing things. But here's the funny part, the the same GOP is the one. This is the GOP that got information about kids using litter boxes in school? Yes, that was a tiktok meme, right? Yeah. Joe Rogan helped kind of property. So the GOP is using talking points that come off of tiktok and then saying that tiktok should be banned for addicting our kids just using and it's the Communist Chinese fault like I Yeah, I you know, I'm on this one because I mean I don't it's not like I want to outright banned, everything in life, but Banning Social Media. Seems fun to me. I'm kind of on board. I love it. I love it. So I don't know what this thing here. Do we really think that it's a ban on communist China? My guess is that secretly a ban on young people communicating? Because they're the ones who vote against the GOP, like the largest I hadn't even considered that if you want to piss off young people and stop them communicating like they basically use tiktok as Google like our generation's Google is tiktok sure. If you want to stop them, you know, having conversations and and like understanding things, even if it's through social media and it's probably spurious, then you ban the thing that's their primary form of communication and all the sudden, it's, can you just imagine bunch of preteens wandering in the dark, not knowing what to do, or where to vote? Do you think, do you think every day that Mark Zuckerberg wakes up? He looks in the mirror and he says, thank God. I'm not Chinese. I think every day he looks in the mirror and says I hope they don't realize. I'm basically China. Yeah, just an American version. That's moving on. Oh this is a good one. Why one Airline is Banning gray hair. And more for flight attendants. Okay, so this is Air India, which is owned by the conglomerate. The Tata group. The Tata group is a major pain in the ass okay let me yeah they see a lot of not great because the operations in 100 countries across six continents, they have 29 publicly listed companies right but when you go to a nice company like msci, there is no Tata group. You can't actually have you can't actually evaluate them unless you open up your, isn't it? Yeah, all 29. Company profiles. And you know what? I'm not going to open up 29 company profiles. It's just not who I am anymore. So this is a let me tell you about what they're doing. Matt Air India. There's a new 39 page handbook for cabin. Crew. 39 pages. Can you? New rules include a ban on gray hair, which must be regularly died. A natural shade male male employees with receding hairlines are bald, patches. Must not shave their heads. Crew cuts are banned. No beards. crew cuts are banned High, Top Knots and low buns are banned for female crew members and women can't wear pearl earrings this First of all, this sounds like the New York Yankees. The New York Yankees has all these same rules for its play. Yeah. Don Mattingly had problems with his sideburns for years. I did. Um, did they get the memo? That didn't wasn't it. Like British are that just allowed nail polish on men. So almost every other Airline is going the opposite direction. I mean look yeah good for them for standing out in a crowd. Here's the interesting part that we can provide here at business pants and free flow, is that I did the research. I needed to be done. I went to the Tata group's leadership page, I looked at their management team, I looked at their board of directors, I don't want to be, I don't want to beat a dead horse man, but I couldn't find a single person that didn't have gray hair. Oh, including including the only woman. But I found gray hair. I found it in the temples. I found it in the mustaches. Oh, I I found a man who was clearly coloring his hair but when I look closely, I could see the gray. And in fact, the only profile pic, I could find that that I couldn't find a gray hair when I when I clicked on his bio and opened up another picture of him. He had complete gray hair so, oh, I couldn't find it's 100% gray at the leadership Air. India, I'm just I'm just saying, I'm just saying out loud. I just you did mention at the top that you do real research. You open msci. ESG reports. I'm going to go out on him and say they were taught how reports now that's what I'm gonna say. Oh, that's yes. I figured it out. Thank you msci. Yes, you should sponsor us. You should not only should you sponsor us, but please dye your hair and put your top buns away when you do it. Yep. And if you if you sponsor us I guess this is a little bit of blackmail. If you sponsor us we will not make fun of ESG. Now not that we do we don't actually I'm just say we won't I know my Mike's, My Buddy Guy look man. I'm not I'm saying we never have made fun of I'm saying we promise not to in the future. Well okay I'll let Mike know. I'll these are sponsorship deals work out of not even sure anymore. I don't think so. I don't think I don't think I think he must tell us that you don't blackmail the advertisers because they just don't come what I'm trying to point out here is that Tata group is a maybe one of the greatest leadership groups I've ever seen and yet they're bad right here. That's what I'm trying to say. That's that's the joke. No you did. I got the joke you did manage to move on. Miriam Webster's word of the Year, fittingly, Matt, because we have been you really, you personally have been covering this exhausting anti-woke War, which you rightly labeled as performative theater. Just bunch of bulshit. So what's their word of the year? It's gaslighting. Wow, I love that. Good word of the yeah, we're maybe four years a bit late on. It but I think you're right. I think there was a shift in tone this year and they said it was unusual because there was not a single event that drove Spike's in and looking up the word just a, it's just a culture. Now, it's just the gaslighting culture and I like this now makes me feel great. They said the gaslighting was pervasive All right, let me wrap up on this. This, this is got, this is definitely up there. One of my favorite stories of the year. Here's the headline. A man won the legal right to not be fun at work. A French court has ruled that companies can't fire their workers for failing to be sufficiently fun. Wow, the court The ruling comes after a man. He was fired from a Paris consultancy firm in 2015 for refusing to participate in after work drinks and team building activities. Oh wow, I would have got fired long ago. I hate team building. Well now you can hate it openly. There you go. That's they fired him for not going to after work drinks. Yes that does seem weird. It does seem weird. Yeah. Like what? He got a kid want to go home? Yeah, maybe retired, French. People have kids. I don't know if that's, I don't even know if that's true. All right, let's let's do something else. You ready? Do something real? Let's do something real. I got two things for you today. First up is a bored bored bit. Wait, what a board? Aboard bit? So either, the first one is board, is in yawn. I'm bored or the second, one is boarding on board, but one of them is the board of directors, but most importantly, one of them is just This is really boring. Yeah, this is pretty important, right? Here's what I saw. Yeah, this was over the the press release wire, one of Warren, Buffett's million, press release companies. Okay. Um, Carnival Corporation and PLC because Carnival decided to do a list and the UK. And in the, you knowingly, with the same exact board and dual class shares, and one of them Carnival Corporation and PLC announces changes to board of directors, Boards of directors, because they technically two boards. Here's the Top Line, quote Carnival Corporation the world's largest cruise company announced that Sarah Matthew. I'm going to say Matthew because it's one t, I like it. Yeah, retired chair president and chief executive officer of dun and Bradstreet was appointed on November 14th, 2022 to Carnival Corporation and plc's Boards of directors effective. Immediately, first question I have for you is effective immediately, isn't this an alternative democracy? How can you effective immediately? This, this is one of those long debates in this world, right? That the, why does the board have the right to to appoint someone before shareholders ever say because it's, you know, it's leading shareholders that when they get their proxy and they see this person's already directors. They think. Oh, they must be, they must be fun. They must be good, right? No, not only that but if they're on boarding her from now until next proxy season, which is like February for a carnival, that's a lot of time to do stuff. That's a lot of times she's getting up to speed and what you're gonna fire her? I mean, no, not a good choice. I'm with you, Matt, unbelievable. All right, here's what they say about, Sarah. They say Matthew was leveraged for significant strategic and operational, expertise to drive transformative growth at large International companies throughout our career, during your 12 year tenure with Dun & Bradstreet, she blah, blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah. Before joining she blah, blah blah blah blah. She's amazing will serve in a non-executive capacity as a board member, and will also serve on the audit committees. I'm just, where you going with this. I'm intrigued, here's what we know. Oh, about Sarah, Matthew, who is replacing Sir? John Parker, who's leaving the carnival board? We know that, hey, she connects back to the carnival board at least three different ways through multiple channels. Oh, here's an example. What I what we know not Matthew knows Andrew Bonfield because they both sit and or sat on the record bang Kaiser board. Sure and Bonfield knows Sir John Parker who's leaving the board because they sat on the National Grid board together. She's one phone call removed. From knowing the board of Carnival, a member of the board of Carnival. She also knows, Randall wise and burger because weisenberger was on the board of Valero with a man named Ray Wilkins, who was on the board of caterpillar with Andrew bondel. So she knows two of the carnival board members through at least three degrees. And then, she knows another Carnival board member Arnold Donald five different ways. Through Bank of America, State Street, and William Paris, and Campbell Soup boards. There's a lot of different connections. Here is what I'm saying. Okay, so that's thing thing. One, we know B, we know that she is actually a near-perfect career board performer across four separate boards. Do they play in this? Yeah, because this is this is unique data to us know. So what we do is we figure out how influential she is on every board that she's ever sat on and then we assign her, the performance relative to her influence of the companies that whose boards she was on, okay, meaning. She sits on record Bend Kaiser her she sits on State Street, her influences about 10%, so we can assign her 10% of State Street. Sure, performance. Effectively Throughout her career on four separate boards. She has lowered carbon emission intensity. She has increased TSR nice. She has seen higher worker productivity. She is one of the rare cases that has lowered CEO. Pay relative to me an employees. Yeah, and she's increased women in management. We know this. This is amazing. First of all, this is great. It's amazing that we know this. Second of all, what are the chances that she has? All these positives that this is just seems rare to me? It is very rare. She is nearly a, she's a stellar board member Wright. Which brings us to the third thing we know. See she will basically have zero real influence. Oh, aeboards congratulations sir. Here's why Mickey Harrison runs the company. It's a family firm. He owns 12% of the common stock, 11% of the overall voting power and 60% of the influence on the boards for Carnival. It's a Mickey Harrison's show. Mickey show she will be on the board where at least three of the directors, sit on other boards with each other. So she's already kind of an outside her. They like know each other even better than she knows some of them. She is the third woman on a 14-person board. And the second person of color and just to put that in perspective. Yeah, there are Two people of color. And two people on the board who are knighted to white men, who are knighted sir, so-and-so. Okay, yeah. Nine of 14 members are white men and her expected influence number is between 0 and 3%. So, here is our big. Congratulations to Carnival hiring a stellar director. We cannot argue with the choice who will have limited to no influence and like being outside or no one will listen to them. Congratulations Carnival. That's why we got out of that headline. I love, you know, analysis and I think you're dead on. But what does this say about Sarah? This sounds like just a page check. No Sarah. It's what it's what it says about. Sarah is if you're hoping to make a change, there are probably better places to go don't just go because Mickey asked you and he owns the Miami Heat and that's kind of cool you should Always we dabble with the thought of forming a board of eventually, what? Sarah should join our board? Yes, Sarah. You're Stellar director don't settle for Carnival. Don't, we might be the only Enterprise going that can prove. She's Stellar. Don't set. If anybody out there is listening and has you know, proxy access put Sarah on a different board not this one or if you know, Sarah get us in touch and yeah, let's help us become friends. Let's talk which brings me to We'll end the show with a quick know there's alert. A quick nerd alert. Are you ready for this? Yeah, I'm psyched. I love a nerd alert. This one's really short, it's from a paper that was released on November 10th. So, two weeks ago, why didn't get to do it in the show because we didn't have shutting Edge. We are a paper is by Roman Lanes, Grant Richardson, Chelsea Liu and Ross McClure. Here's the title of the paper. The impact of corporate tax avoidance on board of directors and CEO reputation. Oh interesting, like that. I mean, kind of like the second part. I like, I like any kind of impact on the, the board and see is reputation. The tax avoidance thing, I'm a little little puzzled by. So I read the paper, but the gut shots, right up top in the abstract. So if you want the gut shot, I'm just gonna, here's the quote, from the abstract, you ready to be thoroughly disappointed. Our regression results show that when firms engaged in Texas avoidance. Both directors and CEOs on average are rewarded by improvements in their reputation as proxied by an increased number of outside board seats. Honestly, I've been in this field for way too long, I have no idea what that means. What does that even mean? When they're good at tax avoidance, they get more board seats, outside of their company, that's what that means. Oh, I want to follow up on this because maybe can, we can our data provide some additional Insight on this. We can find out how influential they are. Yeah, we got, we gotta reach out to them. No, we don't have a listen to companies. This is a big analysis. So my, the point here is that tax avoidance is good for your rep, but you listening Sarah. Go, avoid some taxes. That's all we got. That's all we got that same roles. I'm at mascardi. We're free float. You like this tomorrow is Corporate theater. Oh, the corporate theater show, right? Yeah we have a bit of a yeah we do. Let's just say yes. We're going to say yes because I don't know what's coming. We have a whole week of shows. Let's just say come back on Wednesday for woke Wednesday. We are the number 19 business news show in the United States of America. Yeah can I just say that? Thank you Apple for telling us that and I can I just say that? Is it a statement that, that excites us? Most people want to be in the top five number three, number one, but we're okay with 19. What is that? Okay, with 19. Look, I was like, I was like, 12th in my high school graduating class, I don't have high expectations of myself so you know. Okay, so we got come Back tomorrow. And The rest of the week and we'll see you then goodbye.