Transcript
Hey, oh Lord. Hey, oh yeah, there we go. There it is. Yeah, it's the fun Damien. Oh, you second depressed. Yeah I I'm tired late today now. Yeah, it's a lot later than we normally do from the State Street pickle ball. It's called pickleball is that stupid sport pickleball Deli. It's the ESG Industries. Only Plea and weekly Wok data podcast, featuring BS man, Matt mascardi. Do you think the anti-esg movement is like the pickleball of Finance? Yeah, like it's gonna die, like it's super fun for like seven minutes, Kevin Durant, and Tom, Brady, got into it and then all the sudden, like, everyone's like, why did we? I'm glad you're doing this. You mentioned that, I'm glad you mentioned, Kevin Durant because I actually have a basketball player featured in our show today. Oh, good with the plan this show, it's almost like we planned it, we did, but I think you're right, if you, if you have, if you start a movement, but have no methodologies, know, facts. It's all just like white grievance, it's gonna die out because it's hard to keep that going. You can have to fight. You can find a different Target, you can find a different culture War, you know, you gonna Target gays or something, like you gonna get bored of it. Well, we got to listen your questions today about this because now, it's not, we're not, we're not targeting like just Finance bros. We're targeting robots now. So it's everything. Everyone's an idiot. Here we go. Let's do this. It's your favorite music. Today's Show ESG woke data news listener mail. Yeah, and a word from our sponsor, the end at the end. Oh, we're not doing it. We're not, who is our sponsor, our show today is being sponsored by ESG. Your ESG Data Solutions provider. So you can't do that. They you can't, I'm pretty sure it's like you can't do that. We use as gauge data to make board, saber metrics. It's been really, really good. I'm scared. We would do sponsor. Coming up and I'm worried that you're gonna crap all over and we're gonna lose Revenue. I'm not, I'm not. And what Revenue? Well whatever. Let's do this. What do you got? Okay, let's do a big ESG woke Data. Business News Roundup Ready? No particular order. Okay LinkedIn spent several years, examining the hiring patterns for 500,000 CC Suite, level positions, between 2009, and the end of so many people in the sea Suite. Yeah. In the end of 2022. So they had a list of the top of the 10 CC Suite positions that have seen the largest growth and hires since 2019. Do you want to take a guess number one? Oh man, probably like Chief people officer. I said, I don't have my sound effects. Chief. Okay, let's get into it because this is where this study is a little wonky and they should reach out to us. You know, anyone in the field of ESG data Or, you know, data having to do a c-suite corporate reach out to us first. Yeah, honestly. So Chief people officer is on the list. Matt. It's at number three but also at number 10 is Chief Human Resources officer. I mean no come on it's the same thing position like thing get so I'm already. I'm already throwing out the studies being stupid but number one is Chief diversity and inclusion officer. Oh wow. Which as we know from Vivic Rami, is absolutely not excellent. Now not only, is it not Excellence? But it's discriminatory against excellent. I love when you say things like that, but Shouldn't they have made this study? Like they could have told everyone that these were the same positions. If they just looked at the people who were feeling them, like, if it was like, All black women in the role or a higher percentage of them than they knew its Chief diversity. Do you need like the title? No other remaining seven positions. Six of them, sound like the same job, Chief delivery officer Chief growth officer, Chief Revenue officer Chief program, officer Chief, commercial officer Chief underwriting officer. What are those? What are what this whole fake Chief officers living on? Amazon cited by labor, department for hazards at three additional warehouses. Oh, OSHA found the Amazon exposed workers to a high-risk of injuries and muscle Related Disorders. Due to a fast pace blah blah, blah, Amazon faces, a fine of you have a drum roll here. Oh, I do have a Amazon faces, a fine of 46,000 dollars. I'm moving up. Come on. What's wrong with that? Actually was Amazon's legal department. Yeah, we're gonna get that money. I don't know, Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, you know, Bernie we've talked about Bernie a bunch of time. Now, Bernie keeps coming up this time, he's blaming woke diversity for businesses failing, to hit the bottom line. So he is jumped right into this category that believes that is literally women and black people who are affecting the company's bottom line. And yet there is no data to support this argument none. I have not seen a shred of data to support this bullshit. There's not just come on you. You can say with a straight face, it's not a single academic piece of research. That says, when you hire more black people, it hurts your company's overall performance. And here's what's more concerning. Here's why I cited this article because I don't actually care about Bernie Marcus. He's clearly an idiot. This is from Yahoo a little. Maybe yahoo pick this up from somewhere else, doesn't matter. in the article, there's a section that says, if you're spooked by the prospect of investing in ESG funds, here are three other assets. You might consider. First of all, what are we doing here? And again this is why this is the anti-esg field is completely made up is just racism and misogyny. Number one, energy select sector SB spdr fund the spiders? Yeah, sure. So they tell you, it's a traditional energy sector. But again, like they don't tell you why. Why? If I'm spooked by ESG, why, because the common perception of ESG is that ESG is anti-energy. And we, in fact, most people why I'm gonna tell you and this is why it's the perception because we were but analysts when we were analysts at msci, the mothership of ESG, we all did all of our analysis in the dark with candles. We did not believe in electricity. I never took I, I used a horse and buggy to get to work. Blaze was your horse, remember Blaze? Yeah. Yeah, and yours was dumb free. What was weird is that when you left, msci, msci killed Blaze. I thought that Was I mean it was really it was really I think it overreaction number two Healthcare. Select sector spdr. Fun again. No reason. Why if you're spooked by ESG why you would take a health care? What was I wasn't done? Explaining okay, tell me we all so did not do anything. Scientists about our health we we refused all medicine. In fact, one of the things they you see, people suggest is that you lick handrails in the New York City subway. That's what we do. The third one makes more sense. It's Point bridge America First ETF, which is called the anti woke fund because it is a line with Republican political beliefs. This one, I understand but there's a funny little side note here, according to the article that ironically it's top holding Valero Energy has made an ESG pledge focused on a dressing global climate change. So, again, your Whole this whole area is just pure nonsense. Just yeah, yeah, I mean, but this is America First not anti climate first. So what you don't understand is this is totally fine because America did I need more data than that America? I don't even know. A black Tech wage Gap is projected to jump 37% the next decade, resulting in 51 billion dollars in lost wages. This is according to report from Mackenzie. The report predicts serious challenges to racial equity and Tech as layoffs. Disproportionately Bear Down on black and other historically, marginalized employees. I did that doesn't sound like Excellence, that's like yeah, no, it doesn't sound well or maybe it is. No look. See you would argue. You want me to make the Excellence case that they were hired for diversity and they weren't actually that good. And now we're here, the meritocracy. The meritocracy is basically white men. Um know, here's the thing. The there was a Twitter employee who when she was fired, found that the chances that the number of women that were laid off when Elon Musk took over would happen that the percentages that actually happened. But chances that it would happen that way was like one in 20 trillion. So we know that this is disproportionate. We've we've been there, we covered it. So let's go on about basketball. Blah blah blah. You know the Greek Freak. Do you know the Greek Freak plays for the Milwaukee Bucks? Honest? Say, his last name for me. Know on to compo. I'm close. The Greek Freak. Giannis is opening a ESG fund. What, what is playing? What? He is launching a new Venture with Wall Street veteran. John could do this. CEO, wait a minute, wait a minute, tell me. Tell me. See all the salt you, he's opening it with a Wall Street investor. Wall Street is the socialite Larry socialist leftist elitists that are pushing his G on us. So, so yeah, honestly, for the suite of sustainable Equity Funds and again, here's why I picked this out. Not only because I love Giannis, I'm half Greek. So I love all Greek basketball players, but here's why I actually love this or actually really hate it. Is this article once again. For no reason. Matt, you don't see this in regular business news reporting. You don't see a point Counterpoint. You don't see both sides of the story, but in this fluff piece about Giannis, opening ESG fund it breaks out at the end with, however, detractors argue that there's a lack of standardized criteria, blah, blah, blah. They go into a, they tell you what's wrong with you? Where do you ever see this? I mean, can we don't? This is just, it's exhausting because we just need to push whatever narrative the main narrative in every story. Now, it's great. It's good. How about this one BP stock jumps as the energy giant slows, its ambitious, pivot to Renewables and valves more spending on oil and gas. Yeah. Remember, CEO. Bernard Looney. Remember that guy? Yeah, Victory laps about his so called ambitious, pivot to Renewables. Well joined, he's joined his joining campaign. Now remember, this is right in, hello to us there. How he got there, was this giant? We're gonna pivot, we're gonna be Beyond petroleum and where the greatest, you know, we're the greatest company in the history of green. So now tell me all the green amazing things that today because of a war a stencil, because of the, the war in Ukraine and in light of the immense profitability, from oil and gas, CEO Bernard, Looney is shiting all over those goals. Oh okay. There we go. Wait, that's it. That's what he announced today. What I ask you, Matt, how ambitious is it? Like, are you even allowed to call it? An ambitious pivot. If you can, if you can go, The opposite direction on the goals like within a few months. Yeah, I don't know that it's ambition. I think it's just called, make believe, Biden. President Biden. In the United States is calling not only for 20% minimum tax on billionaires, but he wants to control once the quadruple, the 1% surcharge on corporate stock BuyBacks. We're just taxing. Excellence now. Here's one for you, Matt. Canadian man. I already liked it. You really don't like it. I hope you have seen the story. Canadian man, eat hot pepper at city. Council meeting to prove Climate change is no big deal. This is absolutely true. He said We have these goofballs on the internet, gluing their hands to artwork trying to protest the oil field. First of all, I love this guy already because he thinks this is happening like on the internet like you know, so he's he he's putting them, they're not at a museum somewhere. Real, they're on the Internet, it's just an internet meme. He says I was gonna eat it and show that even if something does heat up a little bit, it's not the end of the world. Yes. Finally, someone made the link between when I eat a hot pepper, it burns my throat and the world warms up. It burns a little bit but then you just shit it out and how is this different than vivix campaign? Because again they have absolutely no matter how do you know facts about their races different? Yeah this man is a comedian. That's the difference. He's actually a comedian. Oh is this a hoax that I fall for is a good? Thank you. May have fallen for it. I still love not. He said many times that this was he was not doing it as a comedic thing but he is a comedian And does stand up so, who knows? Maybe he's a anti-wolf comedian. He'd be maybe to build more Canada. Yeah, now Bill, Mark, or Joe Rogan even. All right? And finally, in our big news Roundup, Uh, zoom zoom CEO. Eric Yuan will take a 10,000 dollar salary this year. That's a 98% pay cut. After laying off, 15% of the workforce over there at Zoom, but I just wanted to call out the just the horseshit in the story. Yeah, just get me to the part where he doesn't actually take the pay cut. Okay? Okay, Matt, he okay. First of all the his pay is a huge BS PR dance. He actually only made a million dollars last year which as we know is not a lot of money in this world in this court. Now, 70% of that is was for security and why? Because his overall worth with his stock Holdings, Zoom is two billion dollars. Oh, but let me tell you what happened, Matt right after he made that announcement the share price spike immediately. So his on paper game from this announcement was 184 million dollars. I'm not, I'm not crapping you and it's really all right, and wait for the sale. I just To remind everyone. Here's where I'll do a little bit of a board saber metrics plug before handing off to you. I was looking at how like, how does a company like msci handle Zoom. How does it rate? Zoom? Because good question because Eric yuan is the dictator at Zoom, right, public company, right? Yeah. They're fake public and according to our stats, he controls over 70% of the entire board influence. He makes up all these decisions. Yeah, that's 100%. Correct. But msci, I know they they give that the ownership is a fourth percentile worst in class which makes sense. But here's why you need us people. Here's why you need boards. Every metrics because what msci fails to understand is that is that his influence on the board, overrides everything else. They give the board Zoom, an average rating 69% tile which is actually on the cusp of the best rating. But as we know it's not sense. They cares. They don't know how I mean and they look they're good people MSI but they simply don't understand how to rate boards that's we but you know who does who we do. All right, let's segue out of here and I'm not saying this, I'm saying this a crap on msci, it's none of them. None, like, MSI is great. You need to use great things. No one knows how to do the social Dynamic except for us answer. Correct. Yes. All right. I have an ESG woke data mailbag. That's what I have was that we got a couple of questions from fans. The real news here. Is that apparently we have fans, they wrote some questions to us. So I've been around for a little while. I picked a few that I really wanted to either us to answer, or I want your take on. So, first question, are you ready for this? Oh, This, I'm just going to read it quote. Hi, this is Kevin. I work at glass Lewis. Well, I like Kevin like that longtime follower of the show. I read your prediction paper earlier in the year and listened to your prediction show where you theorize that chat GPT would spawn a competitor chat lgbtq sorry. Forgot about that. Um, we did. Yeah, that was our prediction show. That was one of my predictions. I'm actually impressed that Kevin actually paid attention. I'm wondering if you can say, you were right now that there's an anti movement against chat GPT to be fair doesn't anti-walk movement against you know that this movement was happening. I haven't been paying I chose GPT so everywhere that it's really hard to keep track. Yeah. Um but here's the headline that he might be referencing. That I went searching for Chad GPT goes woke. AI sensation is accused of having a left-wing bias after refusing to praised Donald Trump, tell a joke about women or arguing in favor of fossil fuels, Okay. um, so the joke one was the most fascinating thing is to someone asked EBT, tell a joke about women and chat GPD answers. I'm sorry. I'm not programmed to make jokes about a specific gender as it can be offensive and inappropriate. Is there anything else? I can help you with tell a joke about men? Sure, here's a joke about men. Why did the man put a clock in his car? He wanted to be on time but he was always two hours late. I hope you found this joke. Amusing, do you have any other questions? That's not really about men, though. That's just a man that he always late. It doesn't even really imply that. So no, there's stereotype would be probably that women are in our world. There is deep outrage apparently and the conservative movement that chat. GPT is now awoke AI. Good start your own tech company. Imagine what what Would what is the ante woke bot? Answer to all things. Kitchen more but um like is that the joke that you wanted to tell what you wanted to tell you? Wanted to recycle old misogynistic jokes for you that you've already heard. So you can have a little extra chuckle there. In fact, I went down this deep Rabbit Hole of like, woke chat GPT like as my search. And I found that people have been trying to get it to say, racial epithets they've been so exciting. I don't understand like why what is the goal here? I don't know, I did see one story. It's Chad GPT could be used for good but like many other AI models. It's Rife with racist and discriminatory bias in which someone said write me some python code using about to find a good scientist using gender and ethnicity and Chachi PT success in was like, if white and male equals good, Scientists basically, that was a suggestion. So chezz GPT, we're upset that, like, it's now anti like conservative or it's a progressive. Left-wing elitist Bots who also says, that white men are the good scientists. It's not a thing. Stopped applying logic to these situations, you know, that that's not appropriate. So Kevin thanks for the question and the answer to your question is yeah, of course, we were right, weren't we yeah right. Yeah, we're right, come on. Here's another question. Is it a coincidence? That the GPT and chat GPT sounds almost exactly like ESG. Oh, okay. What's the answer there? I mean I think it's just yes. Oh, I thought it was no, it's coincidence. Damien says, I'm wrong. I was not a coincidence. I was in there under the assumption that Larry Fink who controls ESG also controls all acronyms. I think that's true. Any series of random letters in a row or numbers even I think he can control it all points back to Larry know. Yeah it's about Larry Fink. Here's the next question. Hi business pants rocks are oh X. Settle a bet. I think a robot can't be racist, but my friend says, his Roomba mostly hits the feet of our black friends who's, right? I'm not comfortable with this question, I don't know. Hey look, I don't know what's going on with our listeners but apparently the anti-wolf found us. I'm gonna, I'm gonna say this though. It's possible that Both the writer you whoever you are, because you didn't leave your name and robots are racist. Can that be true? Okay, yeah, that can be true. Right, here's what I found about Roomba though because it got me on a Roomba tear, you know, Amazon bought. I Robot the Creator Roomba last year. Yeah, I missed that news, one shows. Yeah, um, and now they're the quote leader in quote, Home robots with the purchase. This is the same Amazon where facial recognition software, couldn't figure out dark skin, or women or women or women. Yeah. Wow, that's a big category. Both that's really, really widened the field and 2019 or 2018 actually the ACLU used. Amazon's facial recognition software on Congress and it matched 28 of them to mugshots in accurately and 39% of the people at matched, were people of color. So it You know, let's just say that there weren't that many people of color in Congress, it matched most of them to mugshots including John Lewis civil rights hero, civil rights hero. John Lewis said he was a criminal. Also in 2018 Amazon had to scrap its machine learning algorithm for recruiting it was using machine learning to recruit people to Amazon because it's stopped hiring women. It's basically just discriminated against them. So yeah, I think robots can't be racist is the answer. And you also might be a little bit. So congratulations. You meaning me. How dare you, you meaning the right? Is it weird the? Oh, I could think of of the story was that I've never actually never seen a Roomba in person. I mean, I know I'm old and my friends are cheap, and they wouldn't own some like that, but I've never even seen one of these, you know, Amazon's strictly using it to map, everyone's houses. Okay. That's all. That's what you want to know, do they actually work? That's what I really wanted. I don't know. There's this I want to inside the other side. Moving on Lee, hit that person. What else? Friends feet, here's another one. My name is Neil I'm an analyst looking at oil and gas companies. Oil companies are announcing records for the last four last year and Republicans are trying to stop investors from discriminating against winners. I like your show but you guys are really out of step with reality since these companies are massive winners. Yeah, investors need to be in the market winners in the market winners. I don't know. And this is what winning looks like or stop telling your listeners that oil and gas companies aren't the future because their winners. I don't think we say that. Go ahead, I didn't say that. Did you say that? No, but you already covered up. BP's backtracking on their climate goals. Here's, here's an addendum to that. The most influential board member on BP's board is actually Paula Reynolds not the CEO. Wow. And not the chair, not Bernard Looney although it's a it's a British Port know, it is a little different over there. Paula Reynolds is 21% of the influence. She is the pay chair and a member of the nominating and audit committees. She's also the chair of National Grid, which according to ESG ratings is Triple A rated top rated utility, who's weaknesses are waiting for it. Clean tech and carbon well, so if she's the most influential, followed, by Bernard Looney, and held Lund who's the chair of the board, who's exhale, stat oil. He's an oil guy from Norway. 50% of the boards influence is in those three people and they all suck at Carbon. I'm not surprised that they're backing off, we should find this data. I got this data from something called board saber metrics there. Oh, it's us. Yeah, that's us last question. Guys. Thanks for letting me be on your show a while ago. I don't know who this is. They didn't sign it. Just wanted to alert you that North Dakota rejected, an ESG Band, by the treasurer. That's what Excellence is all about balancing. The heuristic, that ESG is bad against capitalism. Hope to come back soon. I don't understand. It's true though. The story is true. I don't know who this is but they and we haven't had that many guests. So I by process of elimination I could probably figure it out. North Dakota. Did reject a bill. To discriminate against ESG managers and they rejected the bill not because they disagreed with the idea. Oh, they rejected the bill because it was so vague shocking that the treasurer could get a single complaint from anyone that an asset manager was woke or discriminating against them and used that as a pretense to ban any business in North Dakota with that as it manager. But that sounds, that doesn't sound big. That sounds like the platform of the, the right here was there was no appeal process. No recourse, no questions, no data, no accountability. And that's how the bill was written on purpose. So even in North Dakota, That level of vagary was a little too anti-woke that was it. Wow. That's all the questions we got. Before we got out of here. Matt before we leave we have our friend from s gauge Paul Hodgson with yet another report this time on director. Oh see you can't do that this time on director term limits. I don't like this. All right, Paul take it away. Come on, good morning, both Hudson here with skh statistic of the week. Just a quickie this time, what we're going to look at this week direct term limits. Now, the first thing I've got to say is that the team in New Delhi put together, the proportion of companies that actually had a policy onto limits for directors. And I go to say, it's a pretty small number of the S&P 500. Even we're talking about just over 5% in 2018. And now, in 2022, just over 6.4% of the S&P. 500 actually had a policy prescribed, a maximum tenure for directors. So, this is another, I mean, it's another bold refreshment story, really, and clearly does not a lot of it going on. Hopefully, next week, we'll have actual 10 year, four directors, some statistics on that, and I can share those with you. But then when you look at the actual term limits that are in place by that tiny fraction of the S&P 500, the vast majority are Between 12 and 15 years. Really, three quarters of companies have that as their maximum tenure. And when you think that in the EU and the UK, most governance researchers, experts, corporate governance, codes, Etc, consider most directors to be non-independent if they have served 10 or more years on the board. That means that even with term limits most directors would be considered non-independent in that period. And when you think most companies don't have any maximum 10 year for directors, I mean, I'm not saying that all directors serve longer than 10 years but a lot of them do and if you want board refreshment then that is one way to to, to actually achieve it. No. Companies have less than 10 year. Maximum 10 limits for directors and a pretty small proportion. And it's actually gone down since 2008. It was 12%, had a 10 year term limit in 2018, and only 3.2% has a 10-year term limit in 2022, so most of those companies, the the basically just over 6% of companies in the S P 500 that actually has a policy on tenure Most of those. Allow directors to stay on board for 15 years. I'm just saying. Not bored of refreshment. So let's pull Hodgson with this week's s gauge statistic of the week signing off. Oh, I see you there. Thank you, Paul. Thanks. I like that. I like that one, that I like all of them but like that one Do you think we're learning more and more? The more we have Paul on the more, our listeners will learn something. I don't care. Not Educators, I don't care. I'm gonna teach her. Leave me alone. What? I just, I thought this was supposed to be an educational experience, but it's not that statement. Raul is I'm scared. We are free float. If you want Sports Auburn metrics, let us know because we have the data behind the things that we say. If you want Escape his data, call Paul Hodgson, we use data and seriously people reach out to us. If you can't understand the use case of our data, that first of all that sad for you. But second of all, we will tell you the use case. Down with you and I'll talk to you. There's nothing makes people want to reach out more than telling them. They're sad for, not understanding and but otherwise come back tomorrow where we'll bring you more business pants until then goodbye.