Transcript
Hello. Oh yeah. Wow, woohoo. You're excited today. What happened? Well, our first guess, which is the first time one of our guests is gonna be president That's true. So sorry. Doug Chia, but sorry, Dougie and Seth Wickersham. You got beat to the punch Live From the Black Rock tree, hugger conference room sponsored by Greenpeace. I know because that conference room because BlackRock, isn't that what they do? They basically attack whaling boats. That's just a bunch of tree, huggers right? I did see Larry Fink tied to the front end of a whaler. Yeah, it's the ESG industry's only weakly Wok data podcast and really only is only ESG anything we do. We do this daily. We are it. Yeah, that's true. I'm not sure anybody asked for or needs it but we do it. We're it. We we are Chuck D. One of my favorite rappers. As a kid Chuck, the head of Public Enemy called rap music. The CNN for black people, Matt, we are the, what are we? Where the CNN where the ESG for? I don't know, for what are we going? But I'm uncomfortable and Vivek, would already say that. This doesn't sound very merit-based. So I sent him a congratulations email. So if you haven't heard loyal listener, Vivek ramaswamy, who was on the show, to talk about the anti-wolf movement, although he said he's not anti-anything, but his campaign ads says, he's basically been labeled the head of the anti woke. Well, every headline I see and I see a lot of headlines either calls him anti-worker anti-esg. Yeah. That's right. Isn't actually stand for anything. He's just anti. He's just anti-something although he said he's Not anti-anything on our show. He was on our show he's gonna he could be president. He's on our show on today's show. We talked about a bunch of CEO pay ratios. Can you believe we talk about stuff like that? He does we a bunch of board saber metrics data against this is our own proprietary data. So all the data Most of the data referring to today's ours if you want to buy it and a word from our sponsor at the end map before we get going, our show today is being sponsored by S gauge your ESG Data Solutions provider. So yeah, that's great. Let them, let them share, let them cheer to the heavens for once I agree with the audience for once before we get to the CEO worker, pay ratios. Do you want to, you obviously want to talk about? Do I want to? I don't really care. Go ahead. Okay, so here's a blue dots. Had to say, don't know much about this fellow yet but I sure like the way he thinks so far. So good. Pretty much says it. All right. I mean that does that not in a nutshell, sort of an adequate description of that whole anti ESG movement, like they don't really know what's happening. No thoughts been put into it, but yet here we have opinions. We have grand thought, Grand opinions. Well, let's be honest. Let's be really truly honest with this. We're talking about Vivica Romney. I don't know him. But I like Yeah, here's what. Here's the best part. Yeah, before he was on business pants not running for president after he was on business pants, true running for president, he realized. Yes, here here is where he came up with the idea. Yeah, he realized that he could sway us. He, I think he thinks he convinced us. Yeah, I think he realized he reached our audience and thought. Well, those idiots haven't bought board zebra metrics yet so they plus we can if you I'm sure a lot of our audiences in New York, you're in Connecticut. I'm in Maine. If you can get those three blue States. I mean, come on you basically already won if you imagine if he got New York, right? Yeah. So I yeah, good one. Um, and by the way, strive Asset Management, I know you're listening, I really believe someone there listens because I think they get a kick out of how much that we love to hate them. We're gonna keep reaching out to you, to try to get somebody back on because just just not responding to us, it's not gonna make let us, we're not gonna stop asking by just ignoring us. Big said he'd come back. I did email him to congratulate him on his campaign. Yeah. That was very Earnest of you and wish him good luck and told them. If he ever wants to talk to the woke lefties again, we're available. I think you should have told him that he promised to come back. I don't think that promise was a real problem that was, let's get to it. All right, let's do it. I guess that's appropriate music now. Yeah, we're walking sounds presidential America. And I have a huge list of the biggest CEO worker pay gaps in America. Of all places. Matt, I found this on aol.com. I really like, honestly, I did. I thought that's where I found this article. It's based I believe on Research from the economic policy Institute along with some Bloomberg data. So I have a list. It's really just in in order of the worst to the worst, pay rushes at the stop and we'll just I'll name the company. And we can just we can just sort of pepper and some of our own data board simulator, you ready? you know, the economics policy Institute, I'm pretty sure is the Are they the one that that files all those shareholder proposals? They have such like terrible names. It's hard to keep them. What are you trying to say? I don't, I'm not sure if it's the same one, they might be. Are they left-leaning? Are they right leaning? What? I don't know. I'm doing well, call us. And come on our show. I shall reach out to them. They'll have Uh, first up Amazon. Oh, this actually kind of surprises. Surprises me a little bit but not when I realized that Andy jassy made 213 million dollars last year. So But I'll be fair, Matt. There's not a lot to say about a company like Amazon because this is still Jeff Bezos world. It's still his world, he controls despite not being the CEO, he controls 68% of the board influence. So if he wants to pay Jesse he's gonna effing page. Yes he's gonna do whatever he wants you how dare you even say that he shouldn't? In fact how about this little stat to only we could provide Andy, Jesse CEO of Amazon. His influence is only 6.7% of the board, that's it. Yeah, that's correct. That's incredible. And here's a number incredible, Judith. McGrath the chair of the pay committee, Who is ostensibly putting together the payback, Andy, jassy 1.5% of the influence of the company? Yeah, well again, this is Jeff was World 0.5%, so we can move on from this one. And again, you know, get this kind of data at your normal ESG provider, what was the pay ratio there? That pays you would be sick. Roughly 6500 to 1. 6500 to 1, the median worker pay at Amazon is about 33,000 dollars. So, let me ask you something. Yeah. King. In an Amazon warehouse, peeing, in a bottle, and you found out that in a bottle. But, to be honest, I'm gonna be honest, I've never peed in a bottle. Really, is really freeing. You should know. I really don't want it. I don't even have any bottles around. You just said, get a wide mouth. I have a thermos. Don't try that. If you heard that the CEO makes your annual salary because the average like warehouse worker makes what 60,000 bucks a year. You make your annual salary in less than 10 days. Yeah. Would you unionize? Yes, interest, yes. But yes, I would stop working in the warehouse. I would actually apply at the cheese area and the Whole Foods and I would probably eat like another 30,000 dollars in free cheese because I love That's the worst idea I've ever heard, number is a dollar. Number two is new skin. Oh, they have a, I already hate them. What do they make? Okay, here's the problem with this company because the whole company is a scam, their pay ratio, worker pay ratio, is 5,000 to one. It's a multi, it's a multi-level, marketing, skin and beauty company. So should we really be talking about them median? Worker pay? The median worker pay is 1300 dollars. So I say we don't talk about them unless you want to say something about our board super metrics Theta here. I will just say that Thomas Pisano is the board is the chair of the pay committee. He's the oldest member of the board by seven years. She's 77 years old, okay, um, and he has a 14 year 10 year on the board. And his One Shining accomplishment is routinely being in the bottom quartile for CEO pay ratio. He pays the most of paychecks and of his peers, so good for Thomas Western Digital. 3300. To 1 CEOs. This is CEO David. Geekly. I get cold. It's totally different name. I don't know what you, here's the board super metrics data on this company. This is what you need to know about this company. The CEO controls 27% of the influence of the former CEO and chair Matthew messenger 26%. So this is their show. This is the CEO, and the former CEO control this board. So it would make sense to me. That the CEOs pay would be astronomically High know it. Well, they're the their pay committee chair. Martin Cole is actually on two boards and let's not get confused. He's on the board of Western Digital Corp, and on the board of Western Union are the entities related, totally different, and that's weird, not unrelated, entity's marks, Western Union, he has the dubious distinction of being in the bottom courts off for CEO, pay meaning, It like, relative to peers, he loves painting, the CEOs and the bottom quartile for TSR everywhere. So he returns little shareholder return for high pay. He's like a CEO's Dream. Well, I was gonna say clearly he's a puppet, right? Because the CEO and the former CEO are deciding, what goes on here? Exactly. So, that's you, keep that guy's the paycheck chair. Correct, Discovery media. I don't even know if I want to, I can't do this. I was very confusing to me. These media. Companies are terrible, I would suggest to all of our listeners to just never invest in any Media Company. The CEO pay last year for David Zastava was about 250 million dollars. Based on a 202 million dollar option award he received. But, you know again this is a yeah, another Media company yet another merger. It's all nonsense. Is it really is? Yeah. His pay was going to be 50 million and they were like you know what you need a bonus, 200 million dollar bonus in order to incentivize you. I mean, the pay committee chair is is also the board chair, Robert Myron. Whose son is also on the board. Stephen Meyers. So forget this. Yeah, this is yeah, this is what is this? I don't know. I really don't know. Why are companies like this. A lot of even listed this is not. This is not a counterbalance to management but this isn't a question of the companies himself. The companies will get away with whatever they can get away with. This is the question of who's investing in this, the, you're voting on these board members. These are still one share, one vote companies. We haven't listed a company with dual class votes, where you don't have rights. Why are we rubber stamping these human beings? Another company we can skip is Expedia group, that's a 3000 to 1. Pay ratio the CEO. Peter Curran made 300 million dollars. That's right. A 295 million dollar stock and option Grant. But this is Barry Diller show he decides. So let's move on from this. Yeah, this is terrible. Like, who cares? I'm lost. We could we could talk about Mattel. Their ratio is 2,700 to 1, but their median worker pay is 6,000 dollars. What? Dude. I gotta hand it to Mattel there. At least being honest a lot of their workers are in offices where there's a lower cost of living and it looks like they're being forthright about that. Yeah. Six thousand dollars. Well, I think they're admitting that they've offshore most of their labor, right? So, do we give them credit for not for actually being honest about their meeting worker pay? At least? No, no. I mean, the head of the, the hey committee is Michael Dolan. Oh yeah, he has a quarter of the boards influence and he's been there for 18 years. How is that guy objectively choosing pay of all the companies that we've covered recovering? Today, this is an outlier, I've never seen a regular independent director or so much influence, it's really. It is really odd. And he's at the body, he's been on three separate boards in our data, he's at the bottom court house for CEO pay across all of them and he's terrible at worker productivity, which is shocking considering how little he pays the workers, right? Well, but this is expect. So this this work, this CEO pay ratio is all about that low pay because of offshoring job. So, let's move on. Same with Manpower group. Same meeting worker pay. 8000 dollars. Skechers 2,300 to 1 pay ratio but again, this is CEO and chair. Robert Greenberg controls 68% of the board influence? Yeah, again, you need this data people. You're not going to get this from your normal ESG. That's a psychotic amount of influence. Come on, you're not gonna get that from them. We have that. Okay, here's where it gets interesting. I notice a pattern in this data and that here. Let's go to the TJX companies. Okay. Okay. What's the pattern? CEO made 32 million dollars. Meeting worker pay 14,000 dollars, pay ratio about 2300. That doesn't sound like the worst we've heard so far. But here's the weird pattern and I think there's something interesting going on. So for all of you nerds, put down your your submarine sandwich and listen to this because this could be a research paper or, or maybe just something to impress your manager, over like glass Lewis or wherever you are, okay? Listen, you love glass Lewis or State Street. I don't throw them in as a consolation prize, CEO Ernie. Herrman controls only 15% of the board influence, right? Only 15%. Wow, so there's an actual democracy going on here. It seems right that's really low. Yeah, the pay Committee in aggregate controls 37% of the board influence, right? So my question was that I wrote that in my notes, is why all caps for four question marks? Why the hell would they listen to the stupid CEO? Why are they giving such astronomical PayPal package? What the hell is going on? So I looked up the vote, I looked up the shareholder vote, they agreement, they rejected this. They rejected these, they get a majority vote. Yes. Majority vote against Sam. Pay at tgx companies and now the pattern is going to start to happen. Yum brands, same thing. The CEO has 15% of the influence. The pay committee has 50% of the influence, what, right? So I was just like, why why why why is this happening? Same thing, the say, on pay was rejected by 48% of shareholders, that's a victory. I mean, I know it's not a, it's not over 50%, but so, wait, the pattern is, tell me. All right, why you correct me? Yeah, this CEO when they're low influence CEO, but get a lot of pay. You see? Big rejection from Cheryl know, it's more complicated than that. It's a low CEO influence, but it's the pay committee actually has a much higher amount of influence. So it's almost like the investors are like why yelling at the WTF? Yeah. They're saying why you paying that guy so much money? yeah, because you usually we See a pattern, we can see that the company is controlled or that the, you know, the CEO has a lot of power or maybe the competition committee is all, you know, bunch of buddies or a bunch of CEOs. But but in these Situations where I'm like, why? I don't get it. The shareholders seem to be agree that even without our data, they know something is wrong. And so we finally proven something actually maybe I think it's more interesting that they're doing that with our data because then what they know is that CEO is like in conversation and actual discussions with them, they probably know that CEOs are weak jerk, okay? And I like this too and we put a number on how weak of a jerk. They are. I mean, this is impressing me Coca-Cola Company, CEO, chair James Quincey. Again, a lower amount of influence in the all-female, pay committee. That's right. An all-female flyover at Coca-Cola. I've never well. Whoa, you can't say this on tape because if Vivic is listening, they're going to vote against that entire committee. That's true. It's a what committee know. I think they would say as he said in our show you I don't care. He vote against him anyway, since strive is voting against women at a two-to-one ratio, but the pattern is true here, Matt. Same thing, the paid committee has much more influence than the than the CEO and shareholders 49.7% rejected that say on pay at Coca-Cola near majority. And again for those of you who don't do this, nerdy stuff on the regular, that's a very high amount of shareholding. In fact, I think the difference is just Warren Buffett, isn't it? Yeah, probably true. Yeah, that's actually. Yeah, or cherry Carly or whatever. Good Charlie this whole happened at Intel, this is the last company I think on my list Intel where the CEO pay was 179 million dollars. The CEO worker pay ratio was 1700 to 1 the CEO Pat gelsinger has 19% of board influence against this data, only get here. The pay committee has 46% of Of influence. Wow. Say on pay rejected at Intel outright rejected. Okay. Greta I know Greta is blah blah. Blah me. But I think this is a really fascinating pattern that you can only find here only. So that means we should be able to look through all of our data and and figure out tires. CEOs are most likely to get no on pay just by looking at the collective influence of the pay committees versus the CEO pay and then comparing that to the CEO pay package. And whether or not it's it's outside. What I want to know is when the pay committee has so much influence, is it getting to their heads? And are they like, are they like? Is that why? They're making these big? Why are they kissing the butter? The CEOs, like, what's going on here? I don't understand this, I don't know, but I think I have some stats at the end of this to maybe help the last one I could cover is Activision Blizzard. But no, it doesn't matter. Bobby kotick controls 52% of board influence. So again this is his this is his company doesn't matter, just made me feel Bad about what else? Before we get the Paul harsh in the great. Paul Hudson, what do you have for us? All right. Here's what I have Freddy. It's more of the same stuff. Okay, let's hear it. Come on, tell me. Here's what I've got. I there's a three or four, very simple stats that I that I pulled. Okay. Yeah. So this helped might help explain why you're seeing someone what you're seeing. When I look at all of the page errors globally, we are looking at 9,000 companies and their payche so, okay. 21% of the page shares globally. Ranked in the bottom quartile of the last five years for CEO pay ratio as in. I'm saying one in five, hey chairs, give their CEOs, massive. Hey relative to peers and relative to the median employee, okay? And there are 27% who are in the top quartile. They're limiting pay. Of the bottom quartile company. Those one in five Autumn quartile. Yeah. Nearly half of them are connected to other board members on that on their board. So it's just, it's a, it's a bro. Ah bro. Happy Network. It is crossing measurable, bro. Happy no measurable broth. As in, you can see Hey chairs when they're highly connected to your board. More often than not pay your CEO's a tremendous amount of money. So yeah my takeaway here is this meant if you have funds that you're voting and you're trying to figure all this out reach out to us and we'll tell you how to vote. We're gonna predict to you, who's gonna pay your CEO too much money. So get ahead of this game, don't wait to vote no afterwards and they don't have to listen to you. Vote. No, in advance. Vote out the paycheck. Chair in advance. It's like Minority Report. That's what we think. We're, it's pre-crime. That's what we're doing. Yeah, call us. Here's stat number two for you right? Oh yes sorry. Go ahead. Last step before we get to Paul I looked at all of the combinations of CEO pay ratio performance for board members. And TSR performance for board members. So here's what I'm going for, okay? I want to know, do pay chairs, who limit CEO pay, do it when TSR is weak. Okay, I like this. The answer is, can I get a drum roll? I am going to drum roll myself ready. The answer is no. Really, it's amazing. You can play the drums and deliver the data. I like this, what I found was actually when the CEO is paid more. A 20% fully one in five paychecks who pay their CEOs, the most money relative to the median employee. Also, get neutral or terrible TSR as in. So it doesn't even reflect company performance. It does, there is no link between company performance and CEO. Hey, is where the page here is concerned, but Is there a racial vote on a racial Equity audit? As. That's the that's the actual measure against actual. It's none of this stuff you're talking about that doesn't, but that doesn't refer to actual excellent. That's I'm not talking about Excellence. I'm talking about something else and this is this. Why they think that ESG ESG data is woke because it talks about things like TSR and performance about it drives defense, they are voting against almost every PayPal package that does seem to be something that they are voting against it. Because because according to their methodology, if the company, even breathes the word ESG in the proxy, they vote against or racial opening audit, or race, or brown or yellow or, you know, that's how they roll right bows. Yeah. They vote against ready for Paul Hudson. So the Great Wall Hodge Oh, I like this. Paul is here to talk about director tenure, I think, but let's let Paul tell you here, go. All right. Hello there. It's Paul Hudson with the SK statistic of the week. as promised earlier, I was going to come back to you with some statistics on Direct tenure. Yes. Data on term limits, the tenure piece of it is where the reality is rather than you know, asking directors to come up boards, etc, etc. So if you're interested to see what kind of median and average tenure that was and I'll start with the S&P 500, it looks like since 2018, when we start to collecting the data, the median direct tenure has actually started to come down. The average has come down as well. So it was seven years, was the median in 2018 and it's now down to 6.3 in 2022. The longest. Board. Directors, the 10 year. For the S&P, 500 is around 25 or so on average throughout that period. So which is pretty long, but it's nothing when you get to the love him, when you get to the Russell 3000, So let me just pull that up so we can have a look at that as well. So, The longest average direct to tenure in the well, at one point, it was pretty high at 69 years, which is quite extraordinary. But it looks like actually the median for the Russell 3000 has been also declining, the median stuff that had to 6.2 in 2008 is now down to 5.2 years in 2022. We don't have a lot of data for 2023 yet because it's the most of the filings haven't appeared yet. So I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna cover this year and the average has come down so in the whistle 3,000. So even though we found, you know, last week that went very many term limits being applied to directors, it seems as if boards are kind of self-policing themselves in terms of of having directors, sit for relatively short periods of time. I mean some of them are often a matter of months, but most the time. As we can see, it's between five and seven years, the median, all the there are, as we as we noted some directors that stay a lot longer than that. And really couldn't be considered. Independent Beyond 10 years. So this is Paul Hodgson with the SK statistic of the week signing off. Board refreshment there, a little. That's what we talking about board refresher. Yeah, I got I got a theory though. Yeah, the reason why you're seeing all these directors that tenure come down is because the baby boomers are all dying. Baby. Okay, you don't care. That's all we got. Come back tomorrow when we're gonna play games tomorrow. Yeah. Probably why play some sort of game tomorrow? Maybe it'll be which anti woke can run for president. Next, we play that game are there more Christian chat. How many, how many famous anti ESG people are there? I guess, Mike Pence as three. There's three, famous anti es, cheers know Terry Branstad might run, you know, like, he's not gonna run but he's the ones donating he's probably confirming with. Yeah. I mean, we had a picture Peter teal gonna ride kills the one who basically funded, right. Yeah. So it's, it's all, it's all biblical the time now. Cheryl, whatever. That's all we got. Come back tomorrow. Until then Goodbye.