2024 PREDICTION SHOW: AI Insurance, FedEx board turnover, Musk FIRES Linda Yaccarino, volcanic rock dust, unions, and Disney succession

2024 PREDICTIONS (DR):

1. Big Data

1. An antitrust case out of the EU hits a US tech company really hard, causing either momentum for a spinoff or to shut down operations in EU jurisdictions.

1. I want to say Meta because I always want to say Meta spins off something

2. But Maybe Alphabet?

2. Apple develops a game-changing AI product. Or a car? Why not a car? Or gets into sports? Or combines all 3? A meta-AI-car that permanently shows NBA games

3. AI Insurance industry takes off. Blame deepfakes

4. An even Cybersecurity bigger scandal. Duh. One that actually gets people to pay attention. Which means social media or entertainment

5. I don’t say “Generative AI” in any show other than this one.

2. China

1. Something needs to happen here, right? I feel like 2023 was so China quiet. BYD gets under Elon’s skin so much that he starts a war with Warren Buffet (8% BYD owner), which results in one of them having a heart attack.

3. ESG

1. E

1. High profile assassination at COP29 in Azerbaijan

2. S

1. A unionization/walkout effort finally happens at an office-based company

3. G

1. Rupert Murdoch dies and we get to witness a real life Succession scramble

1. Upon Rupert’s death, News Corp and Fox Corp voting shares will be transferred from Murdoch to his four oldest children – Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James – creating a scenario in which three of the children could out-vote a fourth, potentially setting up a battle over the future of the companies, even as Lachlan Murdoch runs Fox Corp and is the sole chair of News Corp.

2. BP surprises everybody and hires an Asian, pro-ESG CEO

1. And then Shell buys BP after its shares tank

3. Someone jumps from CHRO to CEO (spoiler: it’s a man!)

4. A deepfake scandal rocks a boardroom

5. Nelson Peltz wins. Simply because it annoys me.

6. KevDoll reemerges to be the boomerang ex-boyfriend CEO savior: The Great White Former Hope?

1. Candle Media is a Blackstone-backed media company co-founded by former Disney executives Kevin A. Mayer and Thomas O. Staggs.

1. Stags is Spotify director. He comes with KevDoll

2. In 2021, the company began acquiring content companies starting with Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine and then Moonbug Entertainment, a children’s entertainment company, for nearly $3 billion.

2024 PREDICTIONS (AB):

1. UNION PREDICTION:

1. 2024 will be headliner year for workers across the tech industry forming unions with collective bargaining power

1. “Tech Layoffs in 2023 surpassed 2022 Totals”

2. 1,183 companies laid off 262,000 workers in 2023. Amazon: 27k, 21k, Google 12k, Microsoft 11k

3. HOWEVER, what will drive the union efforts? ANTI-RETURN-TO-OFFICE MANDATES

2. BOARD TO WATCH FOR TURNOVER:

1. FedEx. The definition of male, stale, and frail

1. With the exception of the recent board members added by activist firm D.E. Shaw, the tenure of this board is 2x their peers.

2. They have been greasing hands with share buybacks but a huge merger that will be put into action by June of this year in efforts to cut billions of dollars in costs will juxtapose FedEx catching up to this century and the board that is still mostly stuck in the last century

3. Bonus: UNION POSSIBILITIES????

3. MOST FUN ESG PREDICTION:

1. Vince McMahon being named as a risk in a SEC filing by the WWE-UFC merger company TKO was just SO MAGNIFICENT that there is no way year 2024 ends without Elon Musk appearing on such a filing by one of his hundred companies. Will Elon Musk lead more companies than have babies in 2024? 

4. RANDO:

1. Companies will continue with DEI but they will rename it to 

2024 PREDICTIONS (MM):

1. CEO TURNOVER PREDICTION: In 2024, there is no REAL CEO turnover as every white male CEO becomes Executive Chair and is replaced by a woman.

1. CEO turnover is at the highest point since Russell Reynolds starting tracking the data in 2018

2. CEOs don’t retire any more – they ‘step down’ and become executive chair. Why?

1. The average SP500 CEO realized pay in 2022 was 25.2m

2. The average CEO works 62 hours per week

3. Assuming 50 work weeks, it comes to $8,129/hour in realized pay per year

4. The average male CEO tenure is 8.1 years (5.2 for women, thanks glass cliff), which makes an accrued realized pay on average of $204.1m for 25,110 hours worked

5. The average DIRECTOR works the equivalent of 20 “work days” per year, where a work day is 8 hours

6. The average SP500 director realized pay hovers around $1m/yr, coming to $6,250/hour

7. The average SP500 director tenure is 7 years, but the average ACCRUED board experience of active directors is 14 years across multiple boards with a 95% approval rate from investors, resulting in accrued pay of $14/m for 2,240 hours worked

1. 10% of the hours for 76% of the pay - THAT’S WHY YOU BECOME EXECUTIVE CHAIR

3. In that spirit…

1. Bob Iger steps down early and is named Executive Chair (again), Disney Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden is named CEO all but setting the stage for a third boomerang in 2027

2. Brian Cornell, CEO of Target, steps down to Executive Chair, and Claudine Gay is hired as the CEO, all but setting the stage for a boomerang inside of 6 months

2. TWITTER PREDICTION

1. In 2024…

1. Musk FIRES Linda Yaccarino, realizing she was actually just a woke mind virus DEI hire

2. Trump returns to Tweeting full time as Truth Social fails to go public and dies

3. Twitter records profits as advertisers pour back in as there are too many eyeballs to ignore

1. Apple’s Vision Pro releases in Jan

2. Disney is releasing 30 movies, used to be one of the biggest advertisers

3. ESG PREDICTIONS

1. AI PREDICTION

1. In 2024, Generative AI causes one death - not auto driving cars, but ChatGPT persuasian

2. THE ANTI-ESG MOVEMENT ENDS

1. DEI becomes the new ESG after ESG was the new CRT - in 2024, there is at least FIVE Congressional hearings targeting “liberal” company DEI policies

2. Conservatives hold a conference in 2024 with a sessions called “Alphabet soup: Understanding the liberal acronyms”

2024 PREDICTIONS (JS):

1. Union momentum stays strong

1. I predict more strikes in healthcare and in the airline industry and not just in the US- I’m looking at you, UK and Canada

2. Nurses in US fight “stay or pay” agreements

2. X Goes Down

1. Companies (Apple, Disney, Airbnb, Coke, Microsoft…) wake up and realize what a cesspool the platform is

2. Causes X’s demise…take that Musk!

3. 2024: The Year Warren Buffet dies

1. Enter: Berkshire Vice Chairmen Greg Abel and Ajit Jain

2. The pair currently has a combined 4.5% influence

4. Climate Change Hero: Crushed Volcanic Rock

1. Two years ago, a startup called Lithos didn’t yet exist. Now it’s selling its carbon removal service to companies like Alphabet.

2. Last fall, on a farm in Northern Wisconsin, a farmer spread 1,421 metric tons of crushed volcanic rock on his fields before planting soybeans and corn. The rock dust, from a startup called Lithos, serves two purposes: For farmers, it increases yields. It also helps capture carbon.

3. In new deals, buyers including Stripe, Alphabet, and Shopify have committed to pay the startup $57.1 million to remove 154,000 tons of CO2 over the next four years.

Who Will Win the Year?

1. DR: California rulers

1. Gavin Newsom

2. Zuck (one of his dumb meta things breaks through)

2. AB: McDonald’s. I predict Russia and Ukraine will end the war… McDonalds is going back to Russia! Plus with all the new stores announced, McDonald’s will be the golden child of fast food in 2024

3. MM: White men in middle management - the slow strangulation of DEI means finally you’ll get your shot at that promotion

4. JS: President Biden, when he’s reelected as POTUS