FRIDAY WRAP: Musk’s ultimatum, the millionaire’s tax fund, NH criminalizes ESG, Meta does child sexual harassment super well

IT’S FRIDAYYYYY!!! And we are LIVE, and ALIVE. This is Ari the Data Queen, joined by AnalystHole Matt Moscardi, Jessie the Money Whisperer, and Hazelnut Rallis. On today’s weekly wrap up: 

Story of the Week (DR):

1. Sheryl Sandberg to step down from Meta board

1. COO for 14 years/director for 12 years

2. Meanwhile, here are two Meta headlines from just today:

1. Meta documents show 100,000 children sexually harassed daily on its platforms

2. ‘Very scary’: Mark Zuckerberg’s pledge to build advanced AI alarms experts

2. Elon Musk gives Tesla's board an ultimatum as he seeks to grab more power

1. He wants 25% voting control at Tesla or he'll stop growing AI development at the electric-car maker. AB MM

1. He currently has about a 13% stake in Tesla and had around 22% before he sold off some of his shares to fund his Twitter purchase in 2022.

2. “If dual-class can be done, I’m all for it. It’s weird that a crazy multi-class share structure like Meta has, which gives the next 20+ generations of Zuckerbergs control, is fine pre-IPO, but even a reasonable dual-class is not allowed post-IPO.

3. Making ESG a Crime JS

1. Republican representatives in New Hampshire led by Mike Belcher introduced a bill that would prohibit the state’s treasury, pension fund and executive branch from using investments that consider environmental, social and governance factors. “Knowingly” violating the law would be a felony punishable by not less than one year and no more than 20 years imprisonment, according to the proposal.

4. BP says interim CEO now permanent after predecessor resigned for failing to disclose personal relationships

1. Murray Auchincloss will permanently replace predecessor Bernard Looney after acting as interim CEO since September

Goodliest of the Week (AB):

1. The MBTA received $200M in ‘millionaire’s tax’ funds. Here's how they'll spend it. JS DR

1. Passed in 2022, the Fair Share Amendment levies an additional 4% surtax on annual income over $1 million. The revenue is intended for investments in education and transportation. 

1. Mark Cuban MM

1. Mark Cuban Doles Out $35 Million In Bonuses To Dallas Mavericks Employees After Selling Majority Stake In The Franchise

2. Mark Cuban says ‘good businesses’ embrace diversity: ‘The loss of DEI-phobic companies is my gain’

1. “I take it as a given that there are people of various races, ethnicities, orientation[s], etc. that are regularly excluded from hiring consideration” ….. “The loss of DEI-phobic companies is my gain.”

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

1. Mike Belcher, Sandra Panek, Travis Corcoran, and New Hampshire AB DR JS

1. In a rush to out-MAGA and overdeclare their hatred of trans-gay-jew-black-women, the GOP has outdone themselves in NH

2. They propose to criminalize ESG, punishable by up to 20 years in prison as a felony

3. Just to be clear, they listed governance as something that can not be considered in investing

4. In irony totally lost on the three GOP sponsors of the bill, Mike Belcher, Sandra Panek, and Travis Corcoran, that they are governing by sponsoring a bill aimed at removing governance as a criteria for all state investments

1. Corcoran’s awesome claim to fame: GOP Rep. Corcoran Called Out for Using N-Word, Urging Others to Join In - he said on Twitter (obviously), “We must all say or type the word’ n*gger’ in a public place, as a declaration that the progs can’t control our thoughts or our behaviors — EVEN IF WE DISLIKE THE WORD,” Corcoran wrote on his personal @MorlockP Twitter account. 

2. Belcher, meanwhile, defended himself like an idiot… on Twitter: This article is a good example of the leftist motte-bailey strategy. The author asserts that a prohibition on ESG investing would not allow consideration of laws and regulations. Nonsense, ESG is a specific, well-defined set of social activist criteria having nothing to do with laws or regulations. ESG activism in investing is fraud. It should be criminal.

5. Also, to be clear, here is the definition of governance: Governance is the process of making and enforcing decisions within an organization or society. It encompasses decision-making, rule-setting, and enforcement mechanisms to guide the functioning of an organization or society. 

6. Just so they aren’t obtuse, the headline of the bill states: This bill prohibits the investment of funds of the state treasury, executive branch agencies, and the state retirement system in investments which consider environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria.

1. And… no funds or state- controlled investments are invested with firms that invest New Hampshire funds in accounts with any regard whatsoever based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria

2. Punishable by not less than one and not more than 20 years

7. Good luck NH - you can’t invest with ANY FUND that votes proxies or does any analysis that involves management… which I suppose leaves you entirely invested in cash?  Ooooh, or Russian bonds!

2. Cowardly, impotent investors

1. BlackRock stresses financial strength over ESG in company calls - Financial Times

1. While you’re so busy bowing, there’s this: Center-right groups enter Republican fray over ESG - Axios

2. Elon Musk is 'blackmailing' Tesla investors by threatening to build new projects outside of the EV company, long-time Tesla bull says

1. Here’s what BASIC due diligence should look like: Calpers votes NO to Denholm, NO to Ehrenpreis, NO to Wilson-Thompson.  CalSTRS votes NO to Musk, NO to Denholm, NO to Straubel, No to Ehrenpreis, NO to WIlson-Thompson.  NYCERS votes NO to… EVERYONE.  THE WHOLE BOARD.

2. Meanwhile, Blackrock votes YES to… the whole board.  Vanguard votes YES to… the whole board.  SSgA and Fidelity vote YES.

3. Spotify CEO says he's probably 'the least powerful person in the company'

1. 74.4% voting rights - and his name is Daniel Ek and his co-founder is Martin Lorentzon

Exhausting-est of the Week (JS):

1. Headlines like this: British Gas boss Chris O'Shea: 'I can't justify my pay of £4.5m' AB

1. Just to give some background info: UK domestic energy customers have fallen nearly £3bn behind on bills.

2. Chris O’Shea was being interviewed by BBC and in the discussion of the high cost of gas and electricity in recent years, the interviewers brought up his own pay package of 4.5M pounds.

3. His response: "I'm incredibly fortunate," he said. "I don't set my own pay, that's set by our remuneration committee. "You can't justify a salary of that size. It's a huge amount of money to anyone looking at it." He went on to say his mother was on the basic state pension, and that many customers were struggling.

4. But he pointed out that the presenters interviewing him also received well over the average wage, and also did not set their own salary. And that he turned down 1.1M in bonuses in 2021

5. This is an incredibly lame and privileged response. Also give your mom some freaking money.

2. Women added to Cop29 climate summit committee after backlash

1. The president of Azerbaijan has added 11 women to the previously all-male organizing committee for the Cop29 global climate summit, which the country will host in December.

2. Christiana Figueres, the UN’s climate chief when the historic Paris agreement was delivered in 2015, had called the all-male panel “shocking and unacceptable”.

3. President Ilham Aliyev also added a further two men to the committee, which now comprises 30 men and 11 women.

4. Can we just stop the COP summits now????!!!

3. Meta documents show 100,000 children sexually harassed daily on its platforms DR MM

1. Meta estimates about 100,000 children using Facebook and Instagram receive online sexual harassment each day, including “pictures of adult genitalia”, according to internal company documents made public late Wednesday.

2. A senior Meta employee described how his own daughter had been solicited via Instagram in testimony to the US Congress late last year. His efforts to fix the problem were ignored, he said.

3. The complaint also highlights Meta employees’ concerns over child safety. In a July 2020 internal Meta chat, one employee asked: “What specifically are we doing for child grooming (something I just heard about that is happening a lot on TikTok)?” According to the complaint, he received a response: “Somewhere between zero and negligible.”

Who Won the Week?

1. DR: Backlash: 12 women added to the previously all-male organizing committee for the COP29 global climate summit

2. AB: 

3. MM: Dual class shares - they don’t have to hold anyone hostage for giant pay packages!

4. JS: Couples who do date night at Applebees: Applebee's launches one year of weekly date night passes for $200

Predictions

1. DR: Sheryl Sandberg boomerangs back to Disney board starting boomerang director trend

2. AB: 

3. MM: I figure out how to use Reddit this weekend.  Then I post on wallstreetbets a constant stream of “Vote Anti-Boeing” memes, data, and thoughts.  Then, leveraging the same power that drove Gamestop to the moon, I get hundreds of meme warriors on Robinhood to buy Boeing stock and vote out the board, doing what institutional investors have lacked the fortitude to accomplish.  

4. JS: