Nell Minow, ValueEdge Advisors

Welcome to. Shareholder, Primacy and free float media, a podcast about activist investing Securities Law, and all the ways, the financial and legal worlds, intersect and Collide in real life. I am usually here with and Lipton, who's a law professor at Tulane, but Anne is once again, going off to some academic conference and some some fun place. So Anne, and I invited. Now, minnow here for an interesting and fun conversation about what she's done and seen in her decades in and around corporate governance and activists investing. Hey now, thanks for joining us, how are you doing this? Fine day? I'm doing just fine. Very glad to be talking to you. We are very glad that you're talking to me, too. A little bit of background for which is hard to believe that some people listening here don't know this already but I'll say it anyway. Lately now has LED or helped lead valued advisors which is a consultant for institutional investors and corpgov issues at their portfolio companies. I say that right? Yeah. That's perfect. Cool. Great. But that little blurb doesn't quite do, just her experience expertise as the as well. Say Grand aim of you as corporate governance. Hopefully, that's okay that I said at that way. All right, cool. Her checkered illustrious past includes well, of course founding institutional shareholder services or ISS. Well, talk about that. I'm also possibly lesser known to listeners here. She helped lead an actual activist fund was called lens. And then she also helped found and lead a big data firm GMI on corporate governance. So we'll touch on all these as a way to kind of look and set up a fun discussion of some current questions and controversies in corporate, governance and activists investing. Let's start at the beginning, in the beginning was in Chicago. Right? So you haven't lived here for a long time, you know. I'm in Chicago. Yes. So and you started as a lawyer essentially, right? Yeah, yeah. I grew up in Chicago. I went to New Hampshire, High School. I'm sure. You know where that is on the road from me. Yeah, and that's right Rivals. That's where I met my husband and went to the University of Chicago Law School. And after law school moved to Washington thinking that it would just be for a few years and we would go back. But we'd like to hear And stay there as and you were a lawyer for the first few years. Yes. Bunch of different agencies, right? Yeah, I went to the Protection Agency, never imagined that that expertise would become so relevant in my current job, but it did, and then I was at the Office of Management and budget, which is part of the White House. And then I was at the justice department, the EPA was pretty new. Yeah, I was about 10 years old and it was the Jimmy Carter Administration, and he liked to describe himself as the most passionate environmentalists since Theodore Roosevelt. So, it was a real Go-Go time at the Environmental Protection Agency. It was wonderful time to be there. And then for the Reagan years, I went to the OMB which was the most exciting place in government at that time. So I was very lucky and both circumstances. So it was it OMB that I met Bob monks and he was working for then vice president. George Bush. And I was working on the same program at very different level from him, but I met him and we very quickly hit it off. We became very good friends very quickly. And so while I was out on maternity leave, From the justice department, he offered me a job and he said, I'm starting this new company called institutional shareholder services and we're going to provide advice on corporate governance to institutional shareholders. So of that sentence, I was familiar with the words advice and we that's about it. I didn't know any of those other words, institutional investors didn't like make any sense. Nothing about that and know nothing about corporate. You were Bob was not an attorney. Yes. Oh, he isn't it? Yeah. Oh never mind. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that kind of kinship. Yeah, so we, we got along very well. So anyway, I said to him. Well, you know, he kind of explained to me a little bit about what that was and I thought to myself, well, this is great because it's a wonderful idea, but the entrenched interests of the corporations are going to prevent this from going anywhere. But we'll be on the right side and we'll have a lot of fun. And I said to him well I you know, I'm about to have the baby. Um, I really can only work three days a week and he said, okay. So that was that, was it? So, where did he get the idea or do you two get the idea first, he got the idea. Well, it turned out to be two different ideas, which I'll tell you. So he got the idea because he was running for office unsuccessfully in Maine and he was driving around, you know, doing various political things and he went by a river in Maine, that was tremendously polluted. It had those little bubbles of toxic substances on it and he looked at it and he said, who wants this? The government doesn't want at the community doesn't want it. Who wants this and he realized that it was really all about. Externalizing costs and that he himself was kind of responsible. He had run an investment firm and voted proxies in favor of the people who are doing this. And so, he basically went off into the woods and read a lot of books for a couple of years and just decided that this was the rise of the Institutional Investor. Was going to change everything and so when George Bush said to him, you could have any job you want in the government. He said, I want to run the erisa program and they said you got to be kidding and Marissa was brand new. Yeah. Well, yes, it was relatively. Yes, it was it was it was about six years old so they said you're that has to be the most boring thing on earth and he said no no and so he went and he ran the erisa program. And that was in Department of Labor. Yeah. That's in the labor department and and then he started ISS and that was where he and I sort of got together. And so when you list all of the different companies I've been with, you have to understand that all of them have been with Bob. So for me it's all the same company. It's just that. It's like a rocket ship that drops off different sections, you know, Arts. Yeah. So we keep selling off parts and keeping other parts so we keeping the more interesting, keeping the more interesting, right? And I are both happier with startups then with already running All right, so so I assess he kind of got the idea and then recruited you into it. Yeah. But what happened was, he had a completely different idea when he explained this to me and December, as I was about to have a baby in January He said, basically we're going, he was all about activism. And okay, what I do then I didn't actually arrive until September so I walked in the door in September and he said, okay, I've spent nine months knocking on the door of everybody that I've met, when I was working on a Rissa. And all of them said, Not only do I have no interest and what you are proposing to me about activism, but I'm going to pretend you were never even here. I, you know, I'm so opposed to the idea what is not speak of this. Yeah, they didn't have that. So, but he said, three of the people that I talked to said, you know what I would like though? I would really like, recommendations on proxy vote because because Up until now it's been vote for the auditor vote for the board go home. There was really nothing exciting but all of a sudden Because of green male and poison pills. There were complicated subjects on proxies and the irrc, which was started by the Ford foundation and Harvard to deal with South Africa. And Northern Ireland, did not make recommendations. So, so a couple of people said, we would really like recommendations. So I showed up and he said, okay, everything I told you is out the window, we're not going to do any of that. Yeah, we're not going to do the activism part because the world isn't ready for us yet, but we're going to do this recommendations and I said that is genius because we could do one recommendation and sell it many many times. So socialized, they completely. Yeah. And I said and unlike say, security is analysis where there's a premium on exclusivity, the more people that get our advice, the better for everybody, because you're going to want everybody to have this advice and vote. I said it's a much better business, you know, you always want pillow money, you want? Money that's still coming in when your head's on the pillow. And so we can, we can do these, these recommendations and sell them over and over and over. Sell them to many many. Yes, it's a. It's a high-end Subscription Service. Exactly. Exactly. So I was right, but I wasn't right for a while because it took two years. We had one client at that time, who was a college friend of Bob's and took pity on us. But two years later in 1988, February 23rd 1988, which I just remember because it's my birthday. They the labor department Bob's old office issued a ruling saying proxy. Voting was an asset of the article when I mandatory but you had to tell you had a fiduciary duty. Yeah. and so, all of us sudden, then We started getting clients. And then We're Off to the Races. So you were, you were just ahead of where you needed to be, and then got there. Yeah, so that was ISS. and once that was really up and running, that's when we left to do an activist fund, the lands fund, so that was probably early 90s, I think, but it was 1990, Right. Oh, so you were into the issu as long as I thought you might know. I was, I was, as I said for years. Oh, wow. Yeah, and then and then you moved on to found lens, which lens. That's what's lesser known? Yeah. To most people at least listening here is that you were, you were an actual portfolio manager. Yeah. Like like with limited partners and money. And yes, yes. So let's hear about that. Well, that was really fun. We bought stock and companies that as my parents used to say, about me, we're not living up to their potential. And yeah, and then we went to talk to them and I would say about a third of the time, they would, they said we're right with you. We know exactly what you're saying and we're we're working on it and about a third of the time they pushed back a little bit and we had to push them and that about a third of the time we were in a knockdown, drag-out fight and the biggest fight Going about over the biggest fights. We had were. with Waste Management, where we ended up replacing the CEO not once, but twice, And Sears. Remember seriously, serious was a big deal with Bob. Yes, there's this big deal with Bob. That was really a wild wild story, and we ended up taking out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal calling the board of directors non-performing assets. And yeah, so we outperformed the market from 1990 to 2000, which was a very good time for the market. So we did very well and we ended up selling lens to what was at the time, the UK's biggest Institutional, Investor Hermes, Oh, which is not Federated Hermes, right? Exactly. And then we spun out and kept our favorite part, which was the research part of GMI. And that was That was a dream that I always had ever since my days at ISS. I wanted to rate Boards of directors like bonds, Triple A junk And so we we sold that product and I am sorry to say that we never got any institutional investors interested in it, but we did sell it very well to dno liability insurers. Which I thought was a great sort of Market test because we were a really good predictor of litigation risk and liability risk. We also were a great predictor of of investment risk and we would have been terrific as short sellers if we had if we had done that. But if you had that appetite to kind of like yeah that kind of trading which is yeah really hard that's really hard. So. But anyway so we so I can't think of a better Market test than the dno people that was that was great and then and then we sold that to msci Right. And kept a little tiny piece and that's valuation advisors evaluation. Okay? So the trajectory ISS to lands was logical but it wasn't like lens was part of issue. He had to leave ISS. Yes. And then start lens and you probably can't be the Umpire and the Pitcher and the same game and you probably had to go get some other Kind of skill sets for I mean, you know portfolio management. Yes, we did. We had a couple of investment bankers and financial professionals. All right. How do I hire a prime broker? I mean, you had to do. I had a relationship. Yeah, right we did all of that. Yeah. Right. And then and from then once Hermes grab that, go to GMI or you call this something else called like the Corporal library or something like this. Yeah, the reason we picked the name of the corporate library is that we had such a reputation as bomb throwers and activists. We wanted to pick a very institutional name for the company. That would sound very credible. So we called it controversial, we call it the corporate library and then when we merged with GMI. We took their name. Oh, you grab their name and got, okay. So you Rebrand a little bit. Yeah. so, what's So evaluation advisors grew out of GMI. Yes, I didn't realize that. Yes. All right. And so what's it's just so I don't know is is like, It's full-time. Or are you doing a lot of it? Is it kind of when you feel like I'm still working three days a week. Oh wow. Nothing has changed. I never never worked full-time at any of those jobs. I really do other stuff like watch movies. And yeah, I have a second full-time job as a movie critic. But that was a sunk cost that was already going to go to a lot of movies. I had to figure out a way to monetize it, so but yeah, I, you know, I think Bob once a year Bob would take me to lunch and say, Let's talk about you. What, what are you looking for? And I think he felt, you know, when my children went to school or maybe one thing went to college, that I would work full-time, but the five days a week. Yeah, I never did something right. And I never did write the last time he did that was at the Department of Justice. Probably know. Because I, I was already working three days a week there because I had a child, the government. Yeah. So I yeah. But in the government Shut, my son was born. I did work full time I saw Valley. So valuation consulting firm basically, right? Yeah. We put on a conference every year for public funds and I write reports for our clients about what's going on and the Wacky World of corporate governance every month. But also it's a very deep in the ways. Washington, kind of job for me, which I like, which is that I filed comments on rulemaking and sort of follow what's going on in Washington, All right, so it's you have and your clients I found really like investors. Yeah. So, you're not doing any work for boards or never never never, never, no, I would never do any. I don't think you can do both. And when I was at ISS, we did not do any Consulting, work for boards. Oh for so the whole ISS corporate kind of took off much later. I I refused to do that. I was president of ISS for one year after Bob left and then I joined in my year later I didn't do it, but In fairness to ISS there were consulting firms that were selling products like how to get a good rating from issue. We're leaving a lot of money on the table and there were companies that were mad at us because they had to give us a grade. But you don't tell us how to get better. So I understand that but I don't think it's a good idea and I still wouldn't do it if I were there. yeah, I I did some looking into this at one point and and I did a podcast on this where where there are some legitimate questions about what they showed or shouldn't do. But he said that they are doing it, seems like they've put up some of the right barriers to try and mitigate the conflict. Yeah. Absolutely, but I'm not there and if I were there. No, I'd do it. Yeah, I know. I understand well but yeah, so I have a couple of times been offered the opportunity to advise Boards of directors and I won't do that because you can't, you can't do it. There's Boards have so much available to them. Yeah, between you know, dozens of Law Firm, And solicitors and investment Banks. Yeah, but they give them terrible advice is good. I'm just saying that if you're on a board. Yeah, last thing you need is you or me? Yeah, it's it's yeah. Yeah, I think there's so little available to investors. Yeah. I would yeah, I would find it very hard to. Well let me put it this way. Bob monks and I often quote Upton Sinclair. Who said, it's impossible to make a man, understand something. If his paycheck depends on his not understanding it, that's right. Wow. With that there's a whole bunch of stuff. I really want to ask you about like what was going on today and what might be happening and using your trajectory as a way to inform some of that discussion if we could do that. Sure I would I would love to but let's do that after a quick break. Shareholder Primacy is brought to you by free flow analytics.com. The only free database of corporate directors, their influence and their performance Fiona stock, are retirement plan go to freeflow analytics.com, and look up, which of your elected directors are performing well and which aren't use your vote in the alternative democracy and get your data at free flow. Analytics.com. Now, back to the show, Older Primacy. I'm Mike Levin talking here with Neil, minnow about all things, Corp gov and activist investing We just kind of finished talking about. You know what you've learned at values and ISS and so forth. But let's start to think about how these experiences provide kind of a comprehensive basis for some views about what's going on at activism and corporate governance today. And there's a whole different list of things we can talk about. We started talking a minute ago, about proxy, advisors ISS, of course, class Lewis. Clearly you have your view about What kind of businesses they should be in. But what are they, what are they in for? What do you? What do you thinking about? When you think about the that firm you're created? You know, just like any other company, it's very market-driven. And it's so absurd to me that people talk about how influential it is, when the data is exactly the opposite. The data shows that to the extent that there's any item on a proxy that is in any way, controversial or complicated, the clients like the analysis and then make up their own decisions and over, 90% of the recommendations ISS gives are to fight with management because over 90% of the items on a property, are vote for the board of directors, vote for the auditor. So, You know, it's hard for me to imagine why corporations are so upset about it, but I've learned over the years that the very people who wrapsodies about the purity of the free market are the first to squeal when the free market doesn't like whatever it is. They're putting out there well put So you know, there is a very Kill the Messenger thing. Unlike say, the ratings agencies or the Securities analysts they're exclusively paid for by the users of their product. And so corporations cannot cannot influence them and that's what makes it valuable. I have always been mostly a fan But you're right, that they're basically an intermediary, a way that is institutional investors kind of Express. Their views. I mean, I assess English Louis are assiduous in how they kind of solicit their input, which is from what people who are just people in business, do that, you know, if you sell pizza flavored toothpaste and nobody buys it. That's when you say, maybe I should do something differently. Yes. So yeah. And if you want to get proxy advice, you can go with the firm that does do Consulting. You can go with the firm that doesn't do Consulting, you know, or you can do it all in-house. You know, it's it's a product that nobody has to buy a lot of institutional investors, don't buy it. So it's hard for me to imagine why? The corporate community. So frantic about it but there it is. Yeah and they they really want to regulate it really hard. Yeah. And and I think the SEC has so much better to do. Yeah these days then try to focus. I mean there's never been I don't think there's ever been a complaint To SEC enforcement about any of these conflicts or any, what they do. I don't know, there hasn't and The corporate Community says, oh, they've got a under one percent error rate. Well, you know, any of the corporations that has under a 1% error rate, you know, must be doing very well and they correct their mistakes, just like anybody else, you know? And they their advice is very moderate. If I were still there, they would be much more aggressive. Yeah. Let me ask you about something else. Let's talk a little bit about ESG. And activism and so forth. And as an investment style is maybe flying out a favor a little bit and to my ear, you're focus a lot of your Thinking on the G part. Of ESG. I love to hear if I'm wrong or how to how that's that's not quite right. Well and then I want to ask kind of where that whole trend is going. I think we understand the G part a lot better than we understand the S which is a catch-all and the and the E which is you know, very complicated. But I would say that they're all important ESG as a term has fallen out of favor. I don't think as a concept it has It's hard to say that generally accepted accounting principles have been definitively accurate. Over the years, we've been struggling with them for over a century and they still get revised every year. And they still sometimes fool us when we have situations like the financial meltdown. So so I think what I would call them is possibly non-traditional indicators or adjunct indicators. I saw that the big banks have all said that they think that we're not going to meet the Paris targets. And so they're going to revising some of their ideas about the future of various Investments. If you're going to have a portfolio company, that's got Shoreline property in North and South Carolina. You're going to have to think about what that means going forward. So it's really just a question of enhanced risk assessment. Now governance, I think we understand better because There are fewer factors to look at. And I just want to say there that the reason that our rating of boards of directors was so accurate. Is that GMI at GMI? That rating that rating? Yeah. The reason it was so accurate. This is something I'm especially proud of is that we didn't rate them on what they said they did. Would, you know, I SS will give them a good rating if they're governance policies are on their website. I don't care about that. I care about what their decisions are. So we looked at basically three things, we said there are three very tough decisions that boards have to make, where the CEO may have interests that are contrary, the interests of the investors, First one obviously CEO pay the investors want a lot of variability and CEO. Pay the CEO wants less really high and steady. Yeah. And so if the board can't mediate that conflict in favor of the shareholders, then it's not a good board and I don't care what their resumes say about their independence. We once had at Lens, one of our portfolio companies, the board consisted of the CEO, the CFO, the company's lawyer, the companies investment banker, and another guy, and the other guy looked like an independent director for the SEC and the New York Stock Exchange criteria. But he was on the CEOs jazz band and they played together on weekends. So you're not going to learn anything about independence by looking at what the disclosures are you have to look at their decision? Really dig into their decision-making? Yeah, so the CEO pay is obviously key if they're, if they're giving inline musk. Now that we had any delusions about the the board at Tesla with Elon Musk brother, the chef on the board, But if they're going to agree to a 56 billion dollar PayPal package for him, it's a bad board, it's a terrible board. Okay, so that's one. Item number two is transparency. The CEO would prefer a little bit of obfuscation in terms of yeah. In terms of their financial reports and shareholders, obviously want to have as much clarity as possible. So if the audit committee cannot be on top of that and working on behalf of the shareholders, it's a bad board and then the third one, I think you'll appreciate is Acquisitions because companies like to make a lot of Acquisitions and most of the time, they don't end up adding value. They waste a lot of money and they waste a ton of money projects or it's, it's weird stuff. Yeah, yeah. So those are some of the key criteria that we looked at but it was only in terms of their decisions that they made not in terms of what they said they were doing. So what's, what's going to happen here? I mean there's been some data even this year, that the whole, you know, out of the issue proposals, are way down. Yes, you see, is, like, leaning on these proposals much harder. Yeah. What, what can we expect? What do you, what do you saying? Well, certainly, the pendulum has swung very hard in the other direction from where it was a year ago. And and by the way, you can't just go by counting proposals because quite often. In fact, I was on a call about this yesterday, quite often the proposals, get withdrawn, because they've got a negotiation. So, you know, sometimes that's the dogs that don't bark, sometimes, that's good news. But I do think that the people with the green eyeshades and the sharp and pencils are understanding environmental risk, better climate risk, better. And so, I think you will continue to see this. Let me put it this way. I was last month at the councilman institutional investors, annual spring, mating and Washington and the commitment to Looking at climate risk and Dei was unqualified. There was not one person. There was said, I think it's time for us to back off. None of this. None of what we've been seeing lately, scared, any of that, that Community, not at all. No. because I have a little vision at least short-term I'm kind of curious what you think of it is that A lot of the governance stuff which we just talked about in governance proposals and governance changes will not actually sail through. but will proceed as it has which is getting some pushback from companies and so forth but they're not going to Face nearly the opposition. That corporations have been mounting against, you know, environment and climate and a lot of the broad social type of initiatives. Yeah, I've seen some of that companies that are unclassified their boards and and making other changes, but I'll tell you what I think. I think that the big corporations hate what's going on in the government right now and I think you're going to see them making this week. Oh my gosh, this week but they hate you know what corporations don't like is uncertainty. and, this is all just much too chaotic and much too crazy and I think you're going to say Them. You know they they hire a lot of lobbyists. They will be complaining to their representatives in Congress and I think you're going to see a lot more pushback coming from the corporate Community they're going to welcome. What life used to be like when you set a deal with a bunch of ESG proposals? Yeah. Exact Negotiate with a bunch. And I know, you know this, but let me just reemphasize that even 100% vote on a shareholder. Proposal is advisory only the company doesn't have to do anything about it. Of course. So. All right. So so that's that's the ESG Trend and I want to mention I know, you know, this that we're getting a huge number of Extremist right-wing, anti ESG, proposals anti proposals. And they're all getting Single digits, one, two percent getting no, no support whatsoever. So, that shows you that shareholders are paying attention, and that, even a subject line about diversity is not fooling them. I have a little hypothesis that I needed to develop a little more, but I think that the Abject failure of a lot of these anti-esg proposals and there's been, you know, dozens more this year than there were even a couple years ago. Yeah. And there's a couple of proponents that are Kind of Washington lobbyist type cousins that are promoting this the national Center public policy, whatever. I can't remember. I think that they're low level of support. Reflects as much the fact that big indexers don't like many shareholder proposals. Yeah, of any type. Much less and they probably have a special. you know, bit of contempt for these but that overall, the big indexers just You know, the governance, once though kind of look at, but, but they kind of run into, you know, with black rock and so forth. They run into kind of this, this bit of fatigue, I suppose, I don't know, you know what, there's a big gap between the good proposals and the bad proposals, a good proposals, get 340 sometimes even 60%. So I think they can distinguish. All right, cool. Um, Where we're going to start to run out a little bit of time here. So let me let me just throw out sort of a broad question and say what are whether things you've been thinking about in terms of governance, And corporate corporate governance and an activism by the what's been occupying? Your Your thinking so far? First I want to say that you mentioned the national center for legal policy or whatever their name is, I want to. Yeah. Well they're two different ones and they have very similar names that that's a myth. Is these anti-d? I proposals because it relates to my answer to your question. Did you know that they're both funded by the same people? That funded project 2025 I did not. Yeah. They're just sock puppets for project 2025 and that same people give them the money to Heritage and all that. Yeah, yeah. And wow, yeah. So it's the exact same people. That's exactly who they are. These are there, they don't manage money. They just have accumulated enough stock. Yeah, right. So it was there not doing what there's a lot of ESG proponents that, you know, we've been kind of referring to here, that may not themselves. Have a lot of Assets, some of them do you know, Trillium. And so for they got, they got plenty of money. No, but some of them are just representing. They're working closely with big investors. Yeah. Like, John Chavez aren't ya? Jim Richie. No, no. These people are as I said, their sock puppets, for the skates and the, and the, and the melons, and the kochs. And so, you should always, always, always always look and see where the, you know, as deep throat said, follow the money, okay? Yeah. So we've a historical marker. Exactly. Where he was when he said that right near my house. So, So that's actually my primary concern right now. Is the proliferation of these fake groups that file comments on federal rulemaking. So that's why I've been focusing on that so that I just bust them a lot. And I say you know when when these people who have these very institutional names and sound like they are Rock Solid objective folks. Let's look at where their money is coming from and keep that in mind when you look at them and that's why I've been spending so much time, filing comments so that I can respond to some of these Bad actors. Wow. All right. What have you been hearing anything important or notable from like your your Consulting work and so forth. Other things you want to kind of mention here before we the main thing is I you know, as I said that at the CII I was very heartened to hear that. There's an undiminished commitment to the Genuine risk involved in failing, to address the environment, they HR socially, the governance stuff. So I'm very happy about that. And I am watching corporations, I think particularly with these tariffs, I think you're going to hear more push back from them. I think I think they're going to as establish your potentially, some sort of a alliances With, you know some of the some of the folks we've been talking about here to sort of push back in ways. Yeah. That people people quite haven't quite forcing yet. Well, what was very heartening to see that Elon Musk does such a face plant in Wisconsin? You can't. I was, I was very intrigued by that. Yeah. Yeah the road from us here. I think he's now. Um, he's now a drag on the stock. Yeah, and it's, and it's really interesting. I think, you know, I've been involved in active and some matters involving Tesla and I think the prevailing settlement and I've talked to a bunch of people. I've talked to them in former employees that are reached out and so forth. Everybody just wants the guy back as much as he's hard to work for. They they need him at the company, the company share price is completely Reliant. On. Yeah, him he's not portraying like a car company. He's Betty Crocker, he's Walt Disney. You know, he's, he's the Jolly Green Giant. He's he's the brand of the company for better for worse. He made it that way and you know, this is going to sound very quaint but I don't need it. Almost all of my Tesla stock last year. Just exactly. At this time, I waited long enough to vote, no, on the PayPal Edge, and then I don't need it because he was spending too much time at his other companies. So he We need him back now. That's because we love the guy, but because the share price depends on it. Yeah, yeah. Wow. All right, now This is this is terrific. I hope I hope you've enjoyed talking about some of this stuff and very much really living your your history. Yes, we're gonna have to wrap this up though. Thank you for having me. It's been terrific talking to you. So this is shareholder Primacy hosted normally by Ann Lipton and me, Mike Levin. But today we've been with now minnow I'm an independent activist investor and advisor to investors about their activist situations. Now helps lead valuation advisors Consulting to institutional investors about corporate governance at portfolio companies, you can find me Mike at the activist investor.com. And now at Value Edge, advisors one word, no punctuation.com. Our podcast is produced and distributed by free flow media. Thanks for listening and we'll talk again.