MONDAY KETCHUP: SBF's in jail, women just need "P&L experience", Blankfein wants back, Starbucks wins diversity challenge, McDonald's hides the ESG, and BM of the Week Tim Kenesey at Kraft Heinz

Sam Bankman-Fried is being sent to jail after a judge revoked his bail over alleged witness tampering

1. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried had his bail revoked on Friday over alleged witness-tampering.

2. Bankman-Fried was previously released on $250 million bond in December. 

3. Sam Bankman-Fried is in an 'inhumane' Brooklyn jail often criticized for its condition, and where Ghislaine Maxwell previously complained of rodents

1. Glass Cliff Alert: CNN announces sweeping new lineup ahead of 2024 election

1. 7pm: woman; 8pm: Gay man: 9pm: woman; 10om woman; 11pm: woman

2. Women, Do You Want To Become CEO? Manage P&L Responsibility.

1. Female leaders with career aspirations that include the C-suite face immense pressure. Scrutiny from others and high expectations create barriers to entry and trigger stereotypical doubts.

2. As they meticulously check off the standard boxes of CEO leadership qualities, one area is often forgotten: managing a profit and loss (P&L).

3. “For women to get into that C-suite, they need to be in the pipeline of succession,” Maria Doughty, CEO of The Chicago Network, explains during a Zoom interview. “And they need to be prepared and ready to be in that pipeline of succession. My biggest piece of advice is to gain P&L responsibility.”

3. Boomerang CEO Wars: Ex-Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein phoned his successor to complain after taking a $50 million hit on the bank's stock - and even offered to rejoin the firm, report says

1. Goldman Sachs' ex-CEO Lloyd Blankfein called up his successor to complain after taking a $50 million hit on the bank's stock, The New York Times reported.

2. Lloyd Blankfein offered to give more advice to David Solomon and floated a return to the firm, per The Times.

3. The embattled Goldman chief declined to take Blankfein up on his offer, The Times said.

4. Grindr employees working from home were given 2 weeks to decide to move across the country to work in person or lose their jobs

1. Employees at LGBTQ+ dating site Grindr are being asked to return in person. 

2. The company gave employees two weeks to indicate if they could move by October. 

3. The company's employees say Grindr could be retaliating against them for trying to form a union.

4. FFA: 49.8% owned by director G. Raymond Zage III, who owned SPAC/Hedge fund Tiga Investments; 23% owned by board chair James Fu Bin Lu; 8% by Tiga co-founder Ashish Gupta; 

1. majority LGBTQ board, including four gay men, one lesbian, and one trans lesbian

2. No specific labor/HR expertise on board

1. Daniel Brooks Baer.: former  Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

3. CEO George Arison

1. founder and former co-CEO of Shift, an online, peer-to-peer marketplace for buying and selling used cars. Prior to Shift, in 2007, he co-founded Taxi Magic, known today as Curb (RideCharge, Inc.).

2. “FYI, I am a conservative & agree with some Trump policies.”

3. Though he repudiated Trump himself, writing the same day that Trump was “everything our Founders feared the most,” Arison opined that Bloomberg was the only way to oust Trump from office.

1. Bloomberg’s 2019 remarks at a business conference in Manhattan, where he referred to trans women generally as “some guy in a dress” using women’s bathrooms and said trans rights were not “a winning formula” for Democrats

4. Grindr CEO says corporate America’s response to LGBTQ backlash is too timid: ‘They don’t put the dollars where they should’

5. Better.com’s improbable IPO proposal is approved  

1. New York-based digital lender Better.com will be going public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Aurora Acquisition Corp. nearly two years after Better’s initial timeline to IPO. 

2. The transaction, once finalized, will infuse the combined entity with at least $550 million and up to $750 million in new capital, Aurora’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in July noted.

3. Better’s SPAC deal with Aurora had been extended three times amid unfavorable market conditions, mass layoffs, huge financial losses and a mountain of bad press.

4. Founded in 2014 by CEO Vishal Garg, Better has been making headlines for its layoffs since it gained notoriety by laying off about 900 employees over Zoom in December 2021.

5. The lender cut about 91% of its workforce over an 18-month period, Aurora’s filings with the SEC in July showed. 

1. As of June 8, Better had about 950 team members, down from its peak of about 10,400 employees in Q4 2021.

6. Another controversy that didn’t help Better’s IPO was an SEC investigation over allegations Garg misled investors ahead of a planned SPAC merger. The SEC recently concluded it doesn’t intend to recommend an enforcement action against Better. 

7. The digital lender posted a net loss of $888.8 million in 2022 and $89.9 million in the first quarter of 2023, according to the SEC filing. Better funded 2,347 loans in Q1 2023, a decline of 87% compared to 18,559 loans funded in Q1 2022. 

6. Starbucks Prevails in Legal Challenge to Its Diversity Policies

1. Federal court dismisses lawsuit seeking to unwind chain’s efforts to increase the proportion of minority groups in its workforce

2. A federal court dismissed a lawsuit accusing Starbucks executives and directors of violating their fiduciary duty to shareholders by supporting corporate diversity policies.

3. The Friday morning decision in Spokane, Wash., is a setback for one of a handful of lawsuits that legal activists have filed in an effort to unwind companies’ policies aimed at increasing the proportion of women and members of racial or ethnic minority groups in their workforces and contracting corps. 

4. “We’re pleased with this decision given we very much disputed the plaintiff’s claims,” a Starbucks spokeswoman said.

5. National Center for Public Policy Research, which filed the lawsuit as the owner of a few dozen Starbucks shares, must decide whether to appeal the order or abandon its case.

7. McDonald’s is removing ‘ESG’ from parts of its website amid a conservative backlash against ‘woke capitalism’

1. McDonald’s quietly removed the term “ESG” from some parts of its website at a time when environmental, social and governance initiatives have been attracting criticism from some conservative policymakers in the US.

2. The fast-food chain’s “Purpose & Impact” website recently removed several mentions of ESG, according to an analysis by Bloomberg News. One web page that was titled “ESG Approach & Progress” is now labeled “Our Approach & Progress.” Most of the other text remains similar.

3. Another web page, previously titled “Performance & ESG Reporting,” now shows up as “Goal Performance & Reporting.” In some instances, McDonald’s subbed the phrase “environmental and social issues” for the ESG abbreviation.

8. Fizz, formerly called Buzz, could be the next Facebook on college campuses—but it has a Gen-Z twist

1. Fizz has already racked up thousands of student users across 80 schools, as well as $41 million in venture funding

2. .A new social media platform is being buzzed about on college campuses. Fizz, formerly called Buzz, is already being used by thousands of students who feel it keeps them more closely connected to campus life. But Fizz, which sounds spectacularly engaging, takes one big risk: it’s entirely anonymous.

3. The app was created by two Stanford students, Ashton Cofer and Teddy Solomon, who dropped out as the network’s reach continued to grow.

4. Like Facebook, Fizz’s first couple of years has not been without controversy. There has already been a name change and a rebranding to go with it, privacy breaches, and concerns about the anonymity of the app. Some have also compared the app to YikYak, another anonymous social media platform that emerged on college campuses, but failed after four years when it became overrun with cyberbullying and hate speech before reemerging in 2022 with what the website called “community guardrails.”

9. CEOs Rule!

1. PayPal taps Intuit exec Alex Chriss as its new CEO

1. Alex Chriss will become the new CEO of PayPal on September 27.

2. Current CEO Dan Schulman announced in February he would retire at the end of 2023.  

3. Chriss will come from Intuit, where he is the EVP of small business and self-employed group.

4. FFA: Schulam (22%), stepping down from board 2024 AGM; this is a free for all?

2. Kraft Heinz Names Carlos Abrams-Rivera as Next CEO

1. Kraft Heinz has designated Carlos Abrams-Rivera, the head of its North American operations, to succeed Miguel Patricio as chief executive of the company, effective Jan. 1.

2. The maker of sliced cheese and ketchup on Monday said Abrams-Rivera, who has served as president of its North America zone since December 2021, becomes president of the Pittsburgh-based company, effective immediately.

3. Abrams-Rivera has been with Kraft Heinz since February 2020. He will also join the company’s board when he becomes CEO.

4. Patricio, who has been CEO since 2019 and chairman since 2022, will continue to serve as nonexecutive chairman.

5. FFA: Berkshire controls this (62%: Greg Abel and Tim Kenesey)