MONDAY KETCHUP: Rate the stupid with Jann Wenner, Vivek's 64 degree Army Rangers, Clorox's cyber experts, and DocGo's fake degrees; Plus, Dirtiest Directors on Earth

Live from your CEO’s fake base salary, it’s yet another Manic Monday edition of Business Pants. Joined by Analyst-Hole Matt Moscardi. In today’s broken record called September 18, 2023: The Arbiter of Stupid! And Matt’s Dirtiest BMs of the week!

Our show today is being sponsored by Free Float Analytics, the only ESG data platform to measure real board influence

DAMION1

Rate the stupid 1-10

1. A pastor invited to DeSantis' Disney board meeting quoted the Bible telling people not to 'resist authority' as it strips workers' park perks

1. A Florida board picked by Gov. Ron DeSantis to run the area around Disney World defended stripping park employees of their perks — moments after a pastor invited to speak urged attendees not to "resist authority."

2. After a lengthy introduction, Pastor David Netzorg — who founded Emmaus Church in Winter Garden, Florida in 2011 — took the podium to start the board meeting on Wednesday night, said government work is "a calling" and government employees "actually work for God." 

3. He then read a passage from Romans 13: "Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God," the passage began. "And those which exist are established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves." 

4. "So we're to obey the police, firefighters, government, all of those in authority" Netzorg offered as commentary. 

5. The new board governing the land that belongs to Disney World had decided to strip the workers of previously guaranteed perks. 

2. Millionaire CEO Tim Gurner who called for high unemployment to remind workers who's in charge apologizes for 'deeply insensitive' remarks after viral backlash

1. Tim Gurner, CEO of Australian real estate company Gurner Group, said in a LinkedIn post on Thursday that he was "wrong" to say what he did.

2. "At the AFR Property Summit this week I made some remarks about unemployment and productivity in Australia that I deeply regret and were wrong," he wrote. "There are clearly important conversations to have in this environment of high inflation, pricing pressures on housing and rentals due to a lack of supply, and other cost of living issues. My comments were deeply insensitive to employees, tradies and families across Australia who are affected by these cost-of-living pressures and job losses."

3. His post continued: "I want to be clear: I do appreciate that when someone loses their job it has a profound impact on them and their families and I sincerely regret that my words did not convey empathy for those in that situation."

4. Gurner had said at The Australian Financial Review Property Summit on Tuesday that the key to quashing what he views as "arrogance" in the labor market in recent years is higher unemployment.

5. "We need to see unemployment rise," he said. "Unemployment has to jump 40, 50% in my view. We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around."

6. At the summit, Gurner went on to say: "There's been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around. We've got to kill that attitude and that has to come through hurting the economy."

3. Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner ousted from Rock Hall board after suggesting to NYT that only white male musicians really matter

1. Jann Wenner, who co-founded Rolling Stone magazine and also was a co-founder of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, has been removed from the hall’s board of directors after making disparaging comments toward Black and female musicians. He apologized within hours.

2. “Jann Wenner has been removed from the Board of Directors of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation,” the hall said Saturday, a day after Wenner’s comments were published in a New York Times interview.

3. Wenner created a firestorm doing publicity for his new book “The Masters,” which features interviews with musicians Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Townshend and U2’s Bono — all white and male.

4. Asked why he didn’t interview women or Black musicians, Wenner responded: “It’s not that they’re inarticulate, although, go have a deep conversation with Grace Slick or Janis Joplin. Please, be my guest. You know, Joni (Mitchell) was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll. She didn’t, in my mind, meet that test,” he told the Times.

5. “Of Black artists — you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right? I suppose when you use a word as broad as ‘masters,’ the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level,” Wenner said.

6. Late Saturday, Wenner apologized through his publisher, Little, Brown and Company, saying: “In my interview with The New York Times I made comments that diminished the contributions, genius and impact of Black and women artists and I apologize wholeheartedly for those remarks.”

4. Clorox says last month’s cyberattack is still disrupting production

1. Clorox  on Monday warned of a material financial hit from ongoing production disruptions caused by a cyberattack last month.

2. Said it doesn’t have an estimate for when it will be able to resume full operations.

3. Nonetheless, the company said it believes the threat is contained. It expects to start bringing systems back up to speed next week, and will ramp up to full production “over time.”

4. Clorox had disclosed the attack Aug. 14, saying that its systems had been breached. After learning of the attacks, the company took systems offline and involved law enforcement.

5. Now, a month later, the attack is still causing “widescale disruption” to the companies operations, according to a Clorox securities filing.

6. Board skills:

1. They claim 7/12: 

3. The reality according to their stated “skills and qualifications,” is maybe one?: 

1. Amy Banse: deep expertise in media and technology

1. Sits on Adobe board

2. President, Comcast Interactive Media, a division of Comcast responsible for developing online strategy and operating the company’s digital properties

2. The others?

1. financial and accounting expertise

2. financial and operational expertise (PE and banking)

3. investment banking and finance

4. Marketing expertise

5. Form Kellogg’s CEO

6. banking and finance expertise

7. financial experience

8. CEO Linda Rendle (whose background is in the Cleaning department of Clorox and previously worked in sales at Procter & Gamble

9. Former CEO at Beam (booze) and Chair at Domino’s UK

10. 30 years at Target: former Chief Merchandising and Supply Chain Officer

11. CE Domino’s

7. There’s also this one but I’m too tired to pay the cybersecurity board expertise game again:  MGM Resorts is still suffering from a massive outage after a notorious group of young hackers apparently tricked workers into handing over access to the company's network

5. Inside Vivek Ramaswamy's intense, high-maintenance, and highly air-conditioned empire

1. Former staff say he could be finicky and paranoid, and treat staff more like servants than workers.

2. Rooms had to be set to 64 degrees or below, with three Army Rangers tasked with keeping him cool.

3. Ramaswamy was so concerned about his safety — long before he began running for president -— that he hired a former Army Ranger as a personal security guard. The former Ranger would regularly sweep the Strive offices for security threats, a former employee said. (McLaughlin said the security is necessary because Ramaswamy and his family have received death threats.) At one point, his presidential campaign employed three former Army Rangers, including Ramaswamy's current body man, according to financial disclosures.

4. The Rangers were also responsible for rushing ahead of him to his hotel room when he traveled to cool down the room and ensure it was a "sufficient temperature" before he entered. 

5. Ramaswamy's campaign disputed the characterization of him as entitled and unusually demanding. "Vivek applies the same standards to himself as to those around him," McLaughlin said, saying he works around 18 hours a day "on average"

6. ‘One of the Most Hated People in the World’: Sam Bankman-Fried’s 250 Pages of Justifications

1. The FTX founder wrote hundreds of pages of reflections and self-justifications while under house arrest, shedding light on how he may defend himself at his criminal trial next month.

2. At the end of a 15,000-word Twitter thread he never posted, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, offered a blunt assessment of his predicament.

3. “I’m broke and wearing an ankle monitor and one of the most hated people in the world,” he wrote. “There will probably never be anything I can do to make my lifetime impact net positive.”

7. DocGo CEO Anthony Capone resigns following report he lied about college degree

1. “On September 15, 2023, effective immediately, Anthony Capone resigned as the Chief Executive Officer of DocGo Inc. and from all other positions with the Company due to personal reasons

2. Anthony Capone falsely told investors he earned a graduate degree from Clarkson University and that his background in artificial intelligence has been integral to the company's success.

3. Capone had asserted that he earned his master’s degree from Clarkson University in 2014 and a bachelor’s degrees from SUNY Potsdam in computer science, philosophy and law on 2009. The resume claims that Capone had earned “sum cum laude” honors for each of those three degrees, misspelling “summa cum laude.”

1. Both degrees are in question

4. The false information from Capone goes beyond his academic credentials, which had been posted on the publicly traded company’s website. He made other misstatements to investors at the Canaccord Genuity conference last month. Those comments included the scope of a potential multibillion-dollar contract with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Capone had pegged the contract at about $4 billion, but government sources said it was never that high and is for about half that amount.

5. FFA: Capone (35) CEO since Jan 2023 is merely running from a board dominated by Founder (28%) and former CEO (22%)

8. CEO Peter Brown of top hedge fund Renaissance Technologies that averaged 70% returns over 2 decades doesn't regret sleeping 2,000 nights in his office:

1. In an interview with Goldman Sachs, he said he valued the uninterrupted time with his colleagues: "Of course, I really miss my family. But the freedom to concentrate nonstop on work while surrounded by my colleagues is hugely valuable. And the job is so demanding, I really don't see how I could do it otherwise."

2. Brown's nighttime activity once indirectly led to him giving a colleague a raise so that he could justify calling him in the middle of the night: "So, it was around 1 o'clock in the morning and I picked up the phone to call [a colleague]," Brown said. "And Jim says to me, 'Wait. You can't call this guy in the middle of the night. He doesn't make enough money.' So, I said, 'Fine. How about this? I'll call him. I'll tell him we're going to give him a raise. And then ask him our question.' And so, that's what we did."

9. In rare interview, Dr. Priscilla Chan shares plan with Mark Zuckerberg to follow in Bill and Melinda Gates’ footsteps, conquer all diseases by 2100

10. Elon Musk has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from a turbulent childhood that included time in apartheid South Africa and verbal abuse from his father, famed author Walter Isaacson claims in his new biography of the Tesla CEO.

MATT1

Dirtiest Directors

1. Influence x absolute scope 1+2 emissions

2. All boards, last five years

3. Add up emissions

Result is one a day.  Three women, four men.  Not all oil companies!

1. Lakshmi Mittal

202,493,977

MRY Infl

ArcelorMittal SA

Materials (steel)

70%

The Goldman Sachs Group

Financials

12%

Aperam SA

Materials (steel)

44%

2. Andres Ricardo Gluski

37,310,221

THE AES CORPORATION

Utilities

17%

WASTE MANAGEMENT, INC.

Industrials

9%

3. Simon Henry

31,655,992

Rio Tinto Limited

Materials

11%

Harbour Energy PLC

Energy

11%

Rio Tinto PLC

Materials

11%

DGL Group Ltd

Materials

73%

4. Hanne Sorensen

31,419,053

Tata Consultancy Services

Info Techology

8%

Holcim AG

Materials

21%

Tata Motors Limited

Consumer Discretionary

7%

5. Alexis Herman

31,234,783

The Coca-Cola Company

Consumer Staples

12%

Entergy Corporation

Financials

5%

MGM Resorts International

Consumer Discretionary

20%

6. Claudia Sender Ramirez

26,998,743

Gerdau S.A

Materials

5%

Holcim AG

Materials

13%

Embraer S.A

Industrials

23%

Telefonica S.A

Communications

1%

7. Richard Davis

26,807,636

Wells Fargo & Company

Financials

5%

Invocare Limited

Materials

8%

Matercard Inc.

Industrials

5%

Triumph Financial, Inc.

DOW INC.