POP QUIZ: Roblox, female leadership, HSBC’s glass cliff CFO, and Jana vs. Lamb Weston’s econ majors

Live from the Founder’s Diamond Mine in Botswana, where all diamonds are worth 50 votes per share, it’s an all-new Terrific Tuesday edition of Business Pants. Joined by Analyst-Hole Matt Moscardi! On today’s chocolate-filled summary compensation table called October 22nd 2024: It’s Double Quiz Tuesday, featuring a heartbreakingly mediocre ESG News Quiz and a relatively thoughtful data drop quiz!

Our show today is being sponsored by Free Float Analytics, the only platform measuring board power, connections, and performance for FREE.

DAMION1

1. Let’s start with a report that came out a week or two ago that claims Roblox is <WHAT>?

1. Bonus question 1: <WHAT PERCENTAGE> of influence is held by women on the Roblox board?

2. Bonus question 2: <WHAT PERCENTAGE> of influence is held by brothers named Baszucki?

3. Bonus question 3: CEO and co-founder David Baszucki undemocratically controls the pedophilic landscape known as Roblx because his Class B shares are magically worth <WHAT>?

4. Roblox’s 2024 proxy statement cites a Trust & Safety Advisory Board comprised of world-renowned digital safety authorities. The company invites shareholders and stakeholders to “learn more about each of our Safety Advisory Board members at: corp.roblox.com/parents/.” Here’s Bonus question 4: Yes or No, Does Roblox list names and qualifications of the members of its Trust & Safety Advisory Board at corp.roblox.com/parents/, in any of its SEC filings, or anywhere else on its corporate website, or anywhere else in the world, including the back on a Chipotle napkin?

5. As a sidenote, the board’s Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee is tasked with overseeing Roblox’s initiatives related to trust and safety:

1. The chair of that committee, Anthony Lee, has been on the board since before Obama was president, is the VP at a VC firm called Altos Ventures management that “invests in founders”

2. Committee member Andrea Wong who serves on the boards of:

1. media company Liberty Media, which is controlled by billionaire John C. Malone;

2. Qurate Retail, an American media conglomerate controlled by billionaire John C. Malone; and

3. Hudson Pacific Properties, a real estate investment trust controlled by Victor Coleman

3. And committee member Christopher Carvalho, who currently owns options worth about $5 million today based on an exercise price of SIX CENTS.

4. There’s no real quiz question here: so Bonus Question 5: Do you like this committee?

1. ?

6. And finally, let’s get to executive pay at Roblox:

1. According to the company’s 2024 proxy statement, <HOW MANY> of Rolox’s 5 named executive officers are women?

2. Over the past 3 years, has founder and CEO and chair and majority voting powerman David Baszucki, averaged <greater than or less than> $50 million a year?

2. Let’s move over to a recent research report from Russell Reynolds called Gender Diversity in the C-suite: Women’s representation in the 2024 S&P 100

1. Just to put the collective power of the S&P 100 into perspective, what is the market cap of the S&P 100?

1. What is the market cap of the entire S&P 500?

2. In 2022, women held 12.2% of the ~15,000 C-suite positions across publicly traded U.S. firms. At the end of 2023, what  was this percentage?

3. Russel Reynolds’ report looked specifically at 1553 executives at the 100 largest S&P 500 companies (the S&P 100). Out of all S&P 100 organizations, how many have achieved gender parity on their senior leadership teams?

1. Of the six organizations that have achieved parity, name one notable feature of five of those six companies:

2. What percentage of S&P 100 companies have leadership teams consisting of at least two-thirds men?

3. What percentage of S&P 100 companies have leadership teams consisting of at least two-thirds women?

4. The study looked at gender distribution by executive roles:

1. Name the top 3 executive roles held by women:

2. Extra credit: what percentages of those roles are held by women?

3. Name the bottom 2 executive roles held by women:

4. Extra credit: what percentages of those roles are held by women?

1. Double extra credit: what’s another name for the CEO role?

1. In 2022, RRA research found that 43% of CEOs in the Fortune 250 companies were promoted from the COO position, making it the most commonly held internal role prior to taking the top job.

2. In the S&P 100, of the 35 men who were a COO in 2022, eight have been promoted to CEO at their same organization and one left to be CEO elsewhere. But of the four women who’d held the COO role, none had been promoted—and three out of four left their operating roles to pursue boards/advisory work 

5. Let me add one bit of research that stood out to me from McKinsey's “Women in the Workplace 2024: The 10th-anniversary report”

1. Since the anti-DEI/anti-ESG movement took off over the past year or so, the following four data points have all shown remarkable rebounds after several years of declining percentages:

1. Any competence-based microaggression 37% to 57%

2. Having judgment questioned in area of expertise 22% to 39%

3. Being mistaken for someone at a much lower level 10% to 19%

4. Being interrupted or spoken over more than others 21% to 40%

3. Moving over to the news: 

1. As HSBC embarks on a major restructuring, including a new geographic setup where HSBC plans to divide its operations between an “Eastern markets” branch, reuniting Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, along with a “Western markets” division, comprising the non-ringed-fenced U.K. bank, the continental European business and the Americas and consolidated its operations into four business units: Hong Kong, U.K., international wealth and premier banking, and corporate and institutional banking, what has HSBC done for the first time in its 159-year history?

2. Super duper bonus question 1: CNBC released a 615-word article called”HSBC embarks on major restructuring, names first female CFO.” How many words before the article actually names HSBC’s first female CFO?

3. Super duper bonus question, part 2: How many words before the article names HSBC’s male CEO?

4. And finally, On HBO’s hit show Industry that takes place at a 150-year-old Goldman Sachs-esque investment bank in London, what exactly led to the company’s near total Lehman Brothers-esque financial collapse?

MATT1

A data drop quiz

Activist Jana builds Lamb Weston stake, pushes for possible sale

Jana said it owns 5% of the Eagle, Idaho-based company and wants to see a strategic review in which the company and bankers would review capital spending, operating deficiencies and share-repurchase strategy

1. What percentage of the board has Economics knowledge (from an MBA, a degree, or acting as a CFO)?

1. 72% (8 of 11).  MBAs, TWO accountants, econ majors

2. What about Food Production?

1. 20% (2 of the 10 excluding the CEO).  Unless "lawyer at Krispy Kreme" or "3 year stint as Arby's CEO" counts as food production.  CEO Tom Werner and Andre Hawaux both from Conagra, Robert Coviello from Bunge and Cargill.

3. How many directors of a fried potato company have addictive product backgrounds?

1. 45% (5 of 11).  Benson was at McDonald's, Blixt was at Krispy Kreme, Hawaux was at Pepsi, Moddelmog was at Arby's, Sharpe was at Pepsi

4. How many directors are connected through boards or companies in common?

1. 45% (5 of 11).  Hawaux to Niblock and Benson; Jurgensen to Niblock; Sharpe and Hawaux at Pepsi;  Wener and Hawaux at Conagra

5. Least liked director?

1. Blixt, head of comp in the year the CEO Werner was paid 20.3m in summary comp but took home a staggering 40m to sell fried potatoes - and it got him a team low 96% FOR

6. What creative new directors are being considered now that Jana has a 5% stake?

1. ROLL IT BACK!  They've secured former executive chair Tim McLevish, who became a director in the spinoff from Conagra and has deep experience in... corporate finance, along with the 72% of existing board members