MONDAY KETCHUP: Yaccarino's first tweet, Peloton's CEO raise, Dan Snyder sells, Sam Altman now wants your eyeballs, and NERD ALERT: the effect of high performers bailing

Live from Ari-is-on-vacation-palooza, it’s yet another Manic Monday edition of Business Pants. Joined by the Lord of the BS. In today’s phlegmy ESG throat-clear called May 15, 2023: Sexy Story Updates and a Nerd Alert!

DAMION1

1. Musk

1. First tweet of the Linda Yaccarino era:

1. To Elon: “I’ve long been inspired by your vision to create a brighter future. I’m excited to help bring this vision to Twitter and transform this business together!”

2. Wikipedia founder blasts Elon Musk for caving to Turkey’s censorship demands

1. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales blasted Twitter owner Elon Musk for censoring social media posts that could harm the re-election of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. 

2. In a controversial move, Twitter revealed this weekend it acted to “restrict access to some content in Turkey today” just as the country’s 64 million voters were set to cast their ballots on Sunday in what was dubbed a historic chance to unseat Erdoğan, in power for 20 straight years.

3. Musk defended the decision, arguing it was better to remove any offending tweets the government required than throttle his business in Turkey entirely and he was at least being transparent about it.

4. Wales countered that Twitter should have followed Wikipedia’s example: “We stood strong for our principles and fought to the Supreme Court of Turkey and won,” he posted on Saturday. “This is what it means to treat freedom of expression as a principle rather than a slogan.”

5. Wales later added: “We do not bend to the will of governments, anywhere. If Elon is now saying ‘we don’t care about freedom of expression if it interferes with making money’, then he should just say that.”

3. Billionaire investor George Soros' fund dumped its entire Tesla stake in the first quarter - cashing out on the EV's maker's 2023 rebound

1. Billionaire investor George Soros' family office dumped its entire stake in Tesla during the first quarter of 2023. 

2. Soros Fund Management likely enjoyed gains from the EV stock's 68% surge in the January-March period. 

2. Two from our old favorite Peloton:

1. Peloton stock hits all-time low after company recalls more than 2 million bikes

2. Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy Receives a Pay Raise

1. In a 10-Q: annual base salary increase from $1.0 million to $1.25 million

2. Why? Because he greedily agreed to a sign-on award of 8 million options valued at about $170M priced at $38.77 in Feb 2022. Since then, the share price has dipped to under 8$ and he’s realizing he needs some extra scratch for Taylor Swift tickets.

3. McCarthy served as a consultant at TCV, where Compensation Committee chair Jay Hoag is a co-founder and General Partner

4. Also, McCarthy served as CFO of Netflix from 1999 to 2010 where Compensation Committee chair Jay Hoag has served as a director since 1999

3. Forbes magazine’s new majority owner is a 28-year-old billionaire who made his money in self-driving car tech

1. Austin Russell, a 28-year-old automotive technology tycoon, acquired an 82% stake in Forbes Global Media Holdings, parent of the well-known business magazine.

2. The deal values the company at close to $800 million, the parties said in a statement Friday. The seller, Hong Kong-based Integrated Whale Media Investments will retain a minority stake. The Forbes family will not, though Steve Forbes will remain involved.

3. Russell is the CEO of Luminar Technologies Inc., which provides antonymous driving technology to the automotive industry. The company, which has a $2.1 billion market capitalization, posted sales of $40.7 million last year and isn’t profitable.

4. Russell plans to serve as a visionary for Forbes brand and won’t be involved in day-to-day operations, according to the statement.

5. Forbes plans to appoint a new board consisting of American media, technology and artificial intelligence experts. Integrated Whale will keep one board seat.

4. 'Ketchup boat guy' plans to paint a Heinz bottle on his new boat after the company came up with more cash

1. Elvis Francois ate ketchup and seasonings for 24 days while stranded at sea

2. Heinz gave Elvis Francois another $9,900 this week on top of the almost $15,000 it donated in April.

3. He previously told Insider the initial donation wasn't enough to buy a GPS system for his new boat.

4. "I'm happy because it can help me finish my boat," he told Insider. "I'm very grateful for what they did and I appreciate it, so I want to thank them by painting a Heinz ketchup bottle on the side of the boat." 

5. Dan Snyder agrees to sell NFL’s Washington Commanders to Sixers owner Josh Harris

1. The deal is valued at approximately $6 billion

2. Owners

1. Josh Harris

1. founded Apollo Group with Leon “Jeffrey Epstein $50M” Black

2. the owner of the NBA’s Sixers and the NHL’s Devils.

2. NBA legend Magic Johnson

3. Mitch Rales

1. Danaher Corporation founder 

2. BS F Power gap: 29%/7%!).

4. Mark Ein

1. WM: Founder, Chairman and CEO of investment firms Capitol Investment Corp and Venturehouse Group

5. Lee Ainslie

1. WM: founded hedge fund Maverick Capital

6. Eric Holoman

1. BM: Operating Partner of Magic Johnson Enterprises

7. Michael Li

1. AM: owner of Range Group, mysterious PE firm)

8. the Morgan family

1. owners of Morgan Properties

9. the Santo Domingo family

1. a Colombian family whose collective fortune makes them among the richest families in the Americas. They have also been known to dominate the beer market

10. Michael Sapir

1. WM: Co-founder and CEO of ProShares, asset management firm that launched the first U.S. Bitcoin-linked ETF, BITO

11. Eric Schmidt

1. WM: former Google CEO/Chair

12. Andy Snyder amongst others.

6. An airline founder flew to an airport to personally apologize to passengers after they got stuck there overnight

1. The founder of Starlux Airlines flew to an airport to personally apologize to passengers.

2. Chang Kuo-wei went to Tokyo's Narita airport following the delays and cancellations due to high winds. 

3. Passengers were stuck overnight at the terminal on May 6, according to Taiwan News.

7. Cash App founder Bob Lee dated his murder suspect's ex-girlfriend before he started seeing his sister

1. Cash App founder Bob Lee was part of an underground party scene of sex and drugs called 'The Lifestyle'

8. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is close to raising $100 million for his eyeball-scanning Worldcoin crypto project

1. The start-up wants to give people cryptocurrency in exchange for scans of their eyes.

2. Worldcoin is in advanced talks to raise the cash from both new and existing investors ahead of a potential launch within the next few weeks, the Financial Times said Sunday, citing three people with knowledge of the deal.

3. The startup wants to use eyeball-scanning technology to create a digital identification system that would give people across the globe access to a free crypto token called Worldcoin.

4. It's previously received backing from Andreessen Horowitz's crypto fund, Coinbase's VC arm Coinbase Ventures, and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

9. BlackRock CEO Fink trains successors, with no imminent plan to retire

1. Larry Fink has been preparing five key leaders to take his role whenever he decides to step down in the future, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

2. Though Fink has no imminent plans to retire, he along with President Robert Kapito has been training these candidates for "The Great Race" - to choose the successor - in what Fink calls is the "No. 1 priority", the report said, citing an interview with the CEO.

3. The five contenders are Mark Wiedman, who runs the global commercial business; Chief Operating Officer Rob Goldstein; and Chief Financial Officer Martin Small along with Rachel Lord, head of the Asia Pacific business, and Salim Ramji, the head of ETFs and indexing products, the report said.

4. Fink told the newspaper he hoped to build camaraderie among the five, and not competition, so they will keep working together.

MATT1

NERD ALERT!

Study: Who Is Leaving and Why? The Dynamics of High-Quality Human Capital Outflows

Authors: Sima Sajjadiani (Saunder School of Business , U of British Columbia), John D Kammeyer-Mueller (Carlson School of Management, U Minnesota), Alan Benson (Carlson School of Management, U Minnesota)

Year: January 2023

Jist: When people who are, you know, actually good at their jobs leave - does everyone else quit because it makes their jobs suck more?

• Uses Turnover Event Theory (Frederick Morgeson and Lyonel Lulie) showing downstream effects of turnover events on “stayers”

• 1,620 retail stores over 22 months studies

• Nearly 1m employees

• Findings:

• You get fired, has the least effect on voluntary leaving

• Layoffs has the highest and immediate effects

• Quitters were in the middle

• 0.17 additional quits per firing, 0.23 quits per quitting, and a staggering 2.2 quits per layoff!

• Usually OTHER high performers leave if it’s a high performer, where low performers are more likely to leave if it’s a low performer

BOARD SABERMETRICS ANGLE?

Ebay

• Lost FIVE DIRECTORS in 2022, with Bob Swan the sixth to leave this year

• Including Matt Murphy, an All Star performer who batted .645 overall, who quit

• Is Bob Swan a 0.23 quitter??  Does this apply to boards?

On S&P 500 companies as of April, there are 111 Hall of Famer directors who bat an average of .752, out of 4,600 people. 99 of them sit on multiple boards actively, and 20 sit on 3 or more boards.

Of those companies, some stand out as having one HoFer and a bunch of scrubs - quit alert?

• Molson Coors - 1 Hall of Famer (Louis Vachon), the rest are all Rotation players or Rookies

• Centene - Chris Coughlin is the only Hall of Famer, 69% are rotation or benchwarmers with a handful of rookies

• Norwegian Cruise - how they even got Zillah Byng-Thorne is a mystery