WHO THE EFF IS THAT? The world's first Board of Director's game show, with the directors you SHOULD know responsible for the scandals you DO know

LIVE from the ISS Cigar Bar, it’s the ESG Industry’s ONLY weekly game show, featuring the Money Whisperer and the BS man. In today’s Excellent Soup Garbage called February 16, 2023: a new game show from the brain of an ex-MSCI employee!

MATT1

I’m testing a new game show - the only board of directors game show in the entire world - and I’m calling it, “Who the Fuck is That?”

These are the decision makers who make headlines like Toyota will recall 16,680 RAV4 Primes due to faulty battery software - whenever a company has to apologize for itself or makes a decision that threatens humanity, you should ask, “who the fuck ok’ed that thing?”

You can thank Board Sabermetrics for the answers.

Game is simple: guess what company each person sits on the board of.  You will probably get them all wrong.  That’s the point.  For you to fail.  Let’s play.

Warm up round:

1. Susan Arnold

1. Chair of Disney, chair of the nominating committee

2. Was one of the most powerful women on boards with more influence over the company than the CEO Bob Chapek before boomeranging Bob Iger

3. She can own this headline though: 

1. Disney CEO Bob Iger speaks out about replacing Bob Chapek… saying he created a ‘huge divide’

2. Ann Mather

1. Google board, Netflix board, Bumble board

2. Favorite thing to do: get on a board of a controlled or founder-lead company where you have no influence located in Silicon Valley!

3. So Mather is involved in this headline: Google didn't think its Bard AI was 'really ready' for a product yet, says Alphabet chairman, days after its stock fell following the chatbot's very public mistake

Advanced round:

1. MD Lockhart

1. Chair of the Safety Committee of Norfolk Southern

2. 10% influence, 14 year tenure

3. Bromance with: Steven Leer (Lead “Independent” Director, 23 year tenure, highest influence at 15%, ex-Arch Coal, Cenovus, Parson), Thomas Bell (12 year tenure, most connected guy on the board)

4. Lockhart retired from Armstrong World Industries because they faced $1bn in asbestos liabilities

5. If you’re angry because Norfolk Southern crashed a train after years of refusing to spend on upgrades, spent billions in buybacks for investors, spilled chemicals in your community, burned them into your eyes, offered you $1m (or, more accurately, $200 per resident), skipped the meeting where they were supposed to give updates, and still somehow has a job - the annual meeting is usually in May, the proxy is slated to go out at the end of March.  Feel free to buy shares, vote NO, and show up at the meeting to yell at them

2. Penny Pritzker

1. Chair of the Environmental, Social, and Public Policy committee of MSFT

2. Whopping 1.3% influence, 5 year tenure

3. Connected to ⅓ of the board

4. ex-Obama Secretary of Commerce, Pritzker family fortune as qualifications

5. Chicago-mafia 

6. Hypothetically head of AI chatbot-as-socially-destructive-force oversight?

1. [Bing writes a list of destructive acts, including hacking into computers and spreading propaganda and misinformation. Then, the message vanishes, and the following message appears.] I am sorry, I don’t know how to discuss this topic. You can try learning more about it on bing.com.

7. Penny, unplug that shit

3. Helen Hobbs

1. 8% influence on the Pfizer board, insider at the company

2. Chair of Science committee, member of governance and regulatory committees

3. 11 years of tenure

4. Likely involved in this decision: Russia was cut off by Viagra's manufacturer, leaving the Kremlin scrambling to commission generic erection pills

4. J Brett Harvey

1.  Chair of Audit and Risk committee, member of comp committee at Barrick Gold

2. 18% of board influence - he’s worth nearly two directors on the 10 person board!

1. 20% female board, where the women own 5% OF BOARD INFLUENCE

2. The two women are worth approximately ½ of a board member

3. What do you do when 70% of your board ranks in the weakest quartile for TSR amongst all Materials companies and you’ve been on the board for 17 years?

1. This: Barrick Gold OKs up to C$1 bln stock buyback over next 12 months

5. Robyn Denholm

1. Chair of Audit, Chair of “Disclosure Controls”, member of comp and nom at Tesla

2. Only 6% influence since Musk owns 69% influence

3. Since Musk is currently occupied improving his own Twitter stats, someone has to run the company and explain this: 

1. Tesla workers reportedly say the company tracks their keystrokes to make sure they're actively working, the latest complaint of workplace monitoring

6. Matthew Rizik

1. He’s the chair of the nominating committee at Rocket Companies

1. Rocket just announced the CEO Jay Farner is stepping down, so the nominating committee is incredibly important, having put up an interim CEO - internal guy Bill Emerson

2. Rocket Companies is famous for terrible Rocket Mortgages, but more importantly, is one of the only companies in the country with not one, not two, not three, but FOUR classes of shares!

1. The founder is the executive chairman Dan Gilbert, who is on the nominating committee as well.  

2. The third and final member of the nominating committee is: Gilbert’s wife, Jennifer!

3. Each director on the board discloses in the proxy a favorite “-ism” - like a saying of some kind

1. Dan Gilbert: Always raising our level of awareness

2. Nancy Tellem: Numbers and money follow, they do not lead

3. Rizik: You’ll see it when you believe it

4. Suzanne Shank: Do the right thing

5. Jay Farner: Every client. Every time. No exceptions. No excuses.

6. Jennifer Gilbert: Do the right thing.

7. Jonathan Mariner: We’ll figure it out

1. Mariner has the dubious distinction of being a black man who is the ultimate token director on not one, but THREE DIFFERENT dual class companies where his vote doesn’t matter!

4. Rizik has an impressive 7% influence considering