Transcript
Live. Yeah. That's it. No energy. Okay, that's you brought the energy waiting for some kind of callback live for like somebody to clap live from I from vanguards executive Opium Den. Hey oh it's not a bad place to be. I bet it's comfortable. With a bunch of sweaty Executives, from a bunch of Mortimer Walker, please? Only weakly woke data podcast. Featuring PS man. Mattie and special guest star Doug. Chop president of soundboard. Governance, welcome Doug, Krause. He's back. And today back in today's Earth scented grab back called March 29th, 2023 and ESG headlines around up and a deep dive into supposedly anti-walk companies. Oh supposedly. That just makes it seem not like it's not that. Well, this is what I want to figure out later. The show most people and Members of Congress where these companies are headquartered. That was Doug cha everybody. Our show today is being sponsored by ESG your ESG Data Solutions, provider skates? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, without you all of this is possible with less money. Here we go. Before we get to the the anti-wolf discussion. I have I pull up some ESG headlines, for both of you. I'm calling it. Really I'm calling an ESG headlines softball quiz because these are easy questions but I just want to hear what you chuckleheads have to say. Are you ready? Yeah, let's do it. SBF. You know who that is by now, right? Yeah, yeah. Played League of Legends so much. He was gaming during a pitch meeting. Here's the question, here's the softball ESG. Question to both of you should should CEO percentage of gaming during a board meeting be added to the suite of commercially available, ESG, research data. Oh, wow. Serious. We are around here disclosure right under percentage of board. Meetings attended. Yeah, I like it spent gaming. I I do think that should be required disclosure and how many dogs you have, and how much bacon you eat each week. I think those are all required. Adidas backtracks on black lives, matter design opposition. So data says, it is withdrawing a request to the US. Trademark office to reject a black lives matter application for a trademark featuring three parallel Stripes. Okay, so here's my question. So after reporting, a 540 million dollar loss associated with its now, defunct line of anti-Semitic sneakers, is Adidas caving into the, to the pro ESG Pro woke mob like It so it is convolution so they're not they're not fighting the true. A trademark from the black lives matter movement. They're not going to fight the trademark. It's a makeup call. So okay. So they were going to see black lives matter for the three strike. Yes. Exactly. Now they're like, no forget it. We. Take that back. I this might be their form of an apology for the for the Kanye West. Kanye stuff. Other than the tell my kids stop wearing those freaking shoes. Um, well, if you're an investor in Adidas, it does represent a 540 million dollar loss. Look everyone's intent look. Everyone's entitled to a makeup, call the refs in NFL games, do it all the time and Joe it was on it was on tape just doing whatever he knows happens, but yeah. How about this? We're doing the United States pushes for business investment in Africa, to counter China's, reach by President, Kamala Harris is the latest American official to pledge more investment in the continent. So, the question is, was Jack, Dorsey Wright and should Elliot management, apologize? And finally is investing in Africa or anti-wolf, what do we think here? Is she movement see investment in Africa. This is a challenging one. Yeah. Yeah it is because you can subjugate a whole continent but they're but they're they're wrong skin colors. So how does this work? Oh no, it should get high scores for ESG to support and you know, the third world countries, but on the other hand, On the other hand, what? Oh, they could be supporting like, strip mining and killing animals and, you know, conflict minerals. And and and, and totalitarian dictators, you know, that stuff so small price to pay. Yeah, isn't that? Where America is heading? Anyway, I'm gonna go with Jack. Dorsey was right? Elliott man, it from it should apologize, but not for that. They should for a lot of other stuff they need to like, and Elon Musk. Now, owns, Twitter, and part their part to blame for that. That's just one of the Myriad of things. Well, should Elliott management, Paul, guys, to Jack Dorsey, or to all of Africa, or both know, probably both this probably some World in which they apologize. I'm not sure why all of that apology tour of the country of Africa. The country of is does Elliot management represent. Sort of the first weird anti-wolf Corporation Moment by suggesting that Jack Dorsey should not be looking for more business. In Africa was like, was that the first anti-wolf flex? Well, then maybe, but then they anti-walk Lee zombie directed themselves before the buyout. Right, well and Elliott, that's what you're saying. Yeah. There and then anything that comes out of those guys mouths when it comes to. Yes. That's I mean, it's so just ridiculous. That's I think that's the right call and is investing Africa, woke or anti-woke? I would just say if you don't invest in Africa you'll never have to answer the question. That's what? That's the answer. All right. Here's a, here's a pic of a question. Levi. Levi says that AI models are not a substitute for action on diversity, following backlash. So here's what happened. They they came into scrutiny this week after it announced a partnership with an AI company that was generating diverse models. Okay. So this, so I know this is going to be a hard one. This is a head scratcher. Is it anti-walk to Outsource diversity to AI? Oh and make it even more complicated. This IAAI companies black owned. So oh, is it a double woke negative? You don't have to answer any of this. You don't really don't have to, I don't know. Offsetting. You throw this one away. Yeah. I don't know this starting to make my brain hurt. I kind of as it should. I stick to like, simpleton things just like the people like criticize. Know like yeah, I'm gonna go with I'm gonna go with we actually had someone on the show back when and academic talked about the metaverse and diversity and the metaverse and the and how like Ai. And the metaverse are like places assess pools of racism and and systemic bias, right? So that they are using AI to add diversity, is neither woke not or anti-woke? I think that's fine, I guess, no one cares that. It's a black owned company. Should I think trumps? I think they're, I think it's that gets in the clear that there's a real black person there. So, yes, that's the guy. I would be terrified to see what the computer comes out with with kind of like A, you know, a black female. Jeans model. Except that it's black-owned company. So Asian they have a leg up, maybe? Yeah, I yeah. I only have good the people that program it, right? Yeah, for now. Well, did you hear that? Elon Musk is one of the people who like, you know, six months time out on development of new AI. So we can have some time to figure out like rules of the road guard rails. You know, is that is that code? Sorry let's say is that CEO code for give us six months to catch up. stopped developing so we can catch ugly, like, you know, we're gonna stop at GPT four, which Microsoft just rolled out, and everyone's got six months to kind of just Take a ceasefire and and reflect. Yeah, sure that guy get to call time out. Why can't I call a time? I wanted a timeout before AI came out on him. You know, he just go away like Jack. He might be a time of himself out, because as we announced this week, the market value of Twitter's already less than half then when he purchased from 44, that's over estimate. Yeah. Like the there are other estimates. That put it more like 10 to 12 billion. Oh, Erykah Badu said, when GOP says woke, they really mean black. So my question to you, is that when the GOP says ESG, do they really mean women? No. Okay. That's it. I mean that's rolled in there. Yeah they mean they mean anti-oil and gas and women and they hate Unions. That's what they mean. Let's Branch off into a few CEO moves here. Talk about some of our data because that's what we're here to do is sell our data Port statements, right? Yes it does here to do so I have a few more here and I'll hand it up to you two gentlemen, CEO moves in the news. First of all. Former CEO, at UBS Sergio Army is coming back. He's taking over UBS again, after they took over Credit Suisse. Okay, so Boomerang. Yeah. Boomerang CEO, my question to the group here is according to our data Sergio Armani had very little influence as chair a Swiss re. So how you say it Swiss army Swiss re So he basically fell on a category with five four of the directors of having about 9% influence, which is well behind the two leaders who had to over 20% influence. So my question is, if he had had more influence that Swiss are Swiss ruh, Swiss re yeah, it's rough. What if he stayed? What if he stayed Oh, I that seems like a dumb question. Okay, I don't care. Don't know enough about that other than the other than they well it anyone bringing back. Anybody is better than bringing back anyone from csfp. That's clear. I mean, You know former Credit Suisse CEOs are kind of like former governors of state of Illinois, you know it's like somehow they all ended up for bad. Yeah. So yeah. How about this one Macy's chair and CEO. Jeff Jeanette. Stepping down. I found that Jeanette had an 18% influence in Macy's, which is well below the US average for a combined CEO. Chairs combined, CEO, chair, bad. Us companies is 40% influence. So since he had so little influence on the board of Macy's, this is his make him less likely to Boomerang back. Do you think? Oh, that's one. That's a layup. Question layup. He's not coming back. He was calling. This is only like 5 8 3. And finally, in our little trip here, down board saber metrics Lane with some CEO moves. The lift co-founders or stepping down. So this is CEO and co-founder Logan green and president co-founder John. Zimmer combined they control 78%. Yeah, that's right. All the influence at lift. So there the Press is saying they're stepping down but really Logan is transitioning to board chair. John Zimmer is transitioning to board Vice chair and a current director with 2% influence is becoming the new CEO. So I asked you, what the hell does? All this mean is this meaningful at all half step to retirement kind of thing. Or the co-founder still firmly in control here. Aren't they dual class? I think they own 10x shares, which is why they own so much influence, which means they just Sergey and Larry, they didn't go anywhere. Well, nothing changes. They basically, you know, purport to do a lot less work. But they still run the company because at the end of the day, no one's going to do anything without their blessing, right? Right. And that's the amazing part about Sergei and Larry, and when you this, when a Founder with controlling shares of some kind, then steps out of the CEO role and becomes like executive chair, That is brilliant because no one asks, you a question anymore. Like, nobody goes to you for a quote, no one. You don't have to worry about, like, these stupid anti-world questions or yeah. Yeah. You're you're kind of that. I wrote a whole piece on what the heck, does it? What the heck is an executive chair in the first place? What does that a higher page here? yeah, well it more overpaid share because they don't have to do as much but they still run the show kind of like You know Bob Iger was or I'll be here with that even without being at the company, but yeah. That kind of thing. Well, I know, Matt, you're starting to the first stage of looking into any odata named executive officer data. We're starting to try to understand how named executive officers operate in conjunction with boards, were trying to eventually get to the point where maybe we can, You know, ascertain the influence that these Executives have. So I asked you like, what does it mean at a company? Like what would be the influence of a CEO on a company like this, right? Like it has to be done, right? Right. Diminished Point power set but it's an interesting, the reason why I bring it up is because this is an area that ESG kind of routinely, ignores, right? They like do we think Sundar pichai is the CEO of Google? Like it is that the guy who gets called like in but you gets called in front of Congress but he's not. The guy who everyone has to call to make a decision. Like, if it's a strategic decision for the company, they're calling Sergey and Larry period because they can fire him. Yeah. Like by the cells they just they're like you're gone. Sorry, it's kind of like with Bezos Bezos kind of not CEO anymore. Kind of like Bill Gates did that, but it's like, come on, but he's lingering. He still runs the company. I mean, let's let's not pretend. Yeah, and basis is one of our number one picks for potential Boomerang CEO, because he's lingering and just no real clearly. You know he's done right? No, I mean the minutes something goes wrong. He's back. He's Bob eying, he's he's Howard Schultz. Whatever you want to call it. Yeah, so thing, one other thing I wanted to bring up is something else that ESG data always misses. At Macy's. The CFO Adrian Mitchell is also taking on an additional role as Chief Operating Officer. Oh, you see a lot of combined CFOs, but again, something that the ESG that corporate governance wonks, never really talked about, right? I mean, they only give a shit about the eight, the CEO, right? See like, hey, they only look at CEO pay. Some of the other Neo pays, even though it's all there, all the input pays listed in the proxies the same. Same information. Yeah, and some of them get crazy retention bonuses but nobody cares. They only look at the CEO but yeah for the CFO to also take on the role of seat. Oh. That's a, that's a massive job. Right? You see, not before that's a lot and that's not even the headline in the story to me. That's something that popped out the most. It may season is like that doesn't. That's doesn't sound like a great idea. Like question is, what is the CEO going to do? Like you, you gave the entire company to the CEO and CFO. So what is the CEO do? Call a bunch of investors and that's it can say, hey CEO, we don't need you. We've got that. Exactly. We got the other guy. He's doing just work. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Those are your ESG influence anyway. So Yeah, I like it Doug. I like a year now. Manning the clearance Department. Sorry. That would be a great demotion. Go to Macy's basement. All right, I'm gonna close up the ESG headline bag for today, Wednesday, March 29th. So, let's move on to Doug and Matt's Big, Fun anti-woke company list. So, yeah, this this is stemming from a previous. Let them fly them, have their moment. so, Last week, you know what? I'm gonna let you two chuckleheads. Introduce this concept. What are you talking about here? What do you have for us? I've been, like all charged up about shopping at the big. Go ahead. Goes back to this svb fails in part because They were too focused on this e and i stuff, they took their ball, they took their eye off the ball of risk and all that stuff. And he didn't have a chief risk officer for a whole year, but they did have a head of the SG. They did have a head of Dei. And that's tell you something. I'm already scared, guys. The who was that guy? Andy Kessler in the Wall Street Journal? Says, I'm not saying that if 12 got 12 white guys ran the company, it would have not faild. but, You gotta and as it turns out Doug 12, white men did run this VB, that's pretty much. It was pretty good banks in 2082 that didn't work out quite so well. And then Congressman Mike Collins gets on the floor. You know, that they're on the floor of Congress and the C-SPAN pans out and there's nobody, he's making a speech to himself and he says you know, Norfolk Southern all these train derailments maybe if they were not so many more focused on safety and d, i This would not. Well, let me, let me, let me, let me, let's think of it this way. Let's pretend. For the sake of the show that I am a deeply conservative person, worried about shopping and helping Larry Fink, destroy capitalism by foisting, Dei on failing companies. Like I'm not interested in that. And you tell me. How I can avoid this. All right, so I'm gonna I'm gonna wake up. You're gonna shop like a real American should shopping American. Yeah, I'm first thing I'm going to do online at your couch while you're also looking at tiktok While in my underwear, no on that. That other Twitter alternative for conservatives. Yeah, I'm on. I'm on Truth social now. Yeah. Which nobody's ever said. Yeah. So so I'm gonna wake up and turn on my lights. I live, I live near the Peabody Energy, plant, that's bringing me some power and I'm just, I'm, I'm stoked that my Energy company isn't worried about that environmental nonsense, Dei and all that bullshit. First of all, why are you why people energy? Why are you pointing them out? Because I just, that's his Energy company. My Energy company. Are they known to be conservative company? Well, they're heavy into, you know, extracting fuels all that, right? I like that. Yeah. Okay. So I turn on my lights powered by Peabody Energy. I light up a cigarette powered by Margaret. Yeah. And I strapped on My Smith & Wesson and I get ready for my day. Lets you slept with that striped on, okay. Go ahead. I'm just saying, I'm not woke. This is nothing woke about the things that I'm doing rightly. That sounds like a good cause of a drag show too everything. You just described who I am in my underwear. Let's dig into this, woke up, turned on your lights from your utility energy provider. Part of the world. I'm looking at the Peabody Energy, environmental social and governance report 2020 employee. What a report we continue to strengthen our ESG programs, take steps to better support, the ESG Targets, this is political holders and balance is strategic development of coal assets. With our portfolio, within our portfolio, with our emerging Renewables projects, and our greenhouse gas emission reduction reduction, Doug that is bullshit. Even worse, says here, the Peabody signed the CEO action for diversity inclusion pledge. They signed a pledge know, this is just because Larry Fink is making those companies do it. So you think this is what you think. This is woke washing, you don't think that's right, whatever. Okay. They're being forced to. Okay? But but okay let's let's look at when you Think conservatives. Who do you think you think Koch, brothers. Oh, absolutely. Everybody thinks Cobra so Coke, brothers, private company, right? Larry think has no influence on them zero, but I'm looking at their website. Here's here's what Coke is doing to baffle Injustice. Whoa, systemic racism systems against white people. You're just definition of systemic. I will say even I as a completely jaded cynical person, I'm a little shocked at how far Coke takes it on their website. Yeah, so here's Coke. Yeah, this doesn't have to answer to Larry. Thank You don't answer anyone really their greenwashing? Yeah they don't have to go this far, right? They don't have to flex. They just they could just say yeah, we commit not to discriminate against people when we're higher. That's all. That's all they need to say. They have a good news, they have a picture with a black hand, holding a white hand and Charles Koch. His signed the picture. He's put his autograph on the bench. I mean, this is I'm just saying, like this is a hand was one of those his hands. But this is a pretty overt commitment to something I'm just saying like this, this surprise even me Here's the high level takeaway. So one of the things that I did for this is second vote is the name of an org that basically does woke Miss ratings. How woke is your company And when I looked at the wokeness ratings, it becomes pretty clear. What woke is there's a lot of problems. Defining, what woke is but they did it for us. They gave us numbers so I can look through the numbers and I can say, oh well this is these are the things that the woke companies have in common. Do you want to know like According to second vote. According to Second vote. Do you want to know what the woke have in common? I'll give you some stats, right? First of all, they're smaller companies. Are not woke, right? The big companies are woke that we don't like big companies. They're whoa. Because Larry think made them. Yeah, I think made them all work. Okay the woke is sector is communication services and actually utilities is the second Focus, so we're recording other data. We've talked about before utilities also have a high number of women on the boards women in leadership. We don't really know why, but it's always been the case for a long time. Now this is true and and actually the they did do a good job at second vote of identifying. The focus companies did on average have higher msci, ESG scores than the not woke company. So they they know that and and they very clearly said that they don't like the e in ESG at all. All of the woke companies are better at e. Then the knot will company and in particularly they didn't like carbon. That's in the every company who's managing carbon in any way is woke and the Other ones are not for the most part on average, okay. And they really really didn't like unions. In fact woke companies were twice as likely to be unionized. Okay. Twice as twice. The coverage of unions on average as the the not woke companies but Starbucks. Yeah. But board zebra metrics tells us what they really like in their people is they really really don't like women. In fact they women on the board 35 for what companies was 34.5% of the board of women on average And not what companies who is 28.8% and the power Gap. Like women influence was even larger, the not, what companies was minus 10% and the woke companies was minus 7% so they basically are trying to marginalize women everywhere. They absolutely can. Which means we can summarize what woke is now so you don't we don't even have to like look around. I don't have to pretend to be conservative and try to figure it out the anti or smaller companies that ignore the environment and who don't disclose things disclosed last sure. Right? Because if you disclose, you probably didn't get penalized, okay? But wait a second. let me challenge that because Second vote, so there, the highest possible, not the highest part of all the companies that they rate. There's one Great American outdoors, group gets the highest score. Yeah, the least woke up 4.26 out of five on the conservative scale. Great. American outdoors group. They own Bass Pro Shops. And Cabela's both of which are kind of like outdoor hunting. Type shops. So this company they recently hired someone to help reduce their carp in footprint. They've they, they will Fortune. They Chief sustainability officer. I think it's just an ability would be a word that's like, bam. Or that just doesn't cross their lips if they're so, you know, second vote, holton's High esteem. What are they doing? Giving a shit about sustainability. Well, maybe and work. Yeah. Maybe it hasn't caught up to the second vote's robust methodology yet. Maybe, maybe when they get their next data dump. They'll catch this and they'll lower the score. You're Bass Pro Shops. They have a page dedicated to diversity and inclusion. The only talking about diverse, okay? Bass Lake, let me just want different species of fish. Let me wrap up on this diversity of fishing poles. Yes, yeah. Let me, let me confuse you even more, and this will be the last point on this. Yeah. Right. When I looked at second vote, they're they're not focused company. They're anti Focus company wasn't actually Great American outdoors, it was a patriot mobile. They got a 4.9 out of five and they're not wokeness. In fact, if you go to Pantry well Mobile's website on the front page, it says that all they do is about the basic American freedoms of its, they called himself. Christian conservative wireless provider. It's a phone company for Christian conservatives. Yeah, because that's it's got to be that specific. I think they just announced they have two G, too. So that's really taking off point nine when you look to buy create causes covid. So yeah, but when you look to buy Patriot Mobile plan and you want to know what your coverage is there. They actually are just using the T-Mobile network which ranks a 1.4 on the welcome meter. They are incredibly woke at T-Mobile and that is where it comes full circle. So you're so what we I think, what we all did is just speak about how confusing this really is that really Don't just we Define that there is no such thing as woke and there is a such thing as well. I don't know what's confusing about that the whole Just jump the shark, and our walk. And That was I'm at Scotty we are free float and soundboard governance. Thanks for stopping by Doug, come back tomorrow when we have a game show, think of some kind. We're doing something tomorrow's opening day at Yankee Stadium in March. Oh, nobody cares. And But we'll be back here because we don't like the Yankees and you'll be back listening to this too. Until then, Goodbye.