Story of the Week (DR):

The Cracker Barrel BS

Cracker Barrel scraps new logo design, keeps 'Old Timer' after listening to customers

Restaurant chain's stock price sank following removal of 'Uncle Herschel' from branding

Uncle Herschel wasn’t just a marketing creation, he was a real person. Born Herschel McCartney, he was the younger brother of Cracker Barrel founder Dan Evins’ mother and served as an early goodwill ambassador for the brand. A salesman for Martha White Flour Company for over three decades, Herschel traveled through rural America, building relationships in small-town general stores — the very kinds of places that inspired Cracker Barrel’s original design and ethos.

When Cracker Barrel introduced its iconic logo in 1969, the old-timer sitting beside the barrel was long thought by fans to be based on Herschel himself, though the company later clarified that this wasn’t the case.

In 2004, the Justice Department (during the George W. Bush administration) sued the chain for discriminating against Black customers. In 2006, they settled a lawsuit involving three of their Illinois restaurants for “discriminatory practices, racially charged language, and inappropriate touching.”

Cracker Barrel’s inconvenient fact: all the customers who loved its old logo had stopped going to the restaurant

Founder Dan Evins

His tone was considerably harsher when it came to defending a January 1991 directive to all the company’s restaurants to fire employees “whose sexual preferences fail to demonstrate normal heterosexual values.” Mr. Evins’s explanation for the edict was that gay people made customers in rural areas uncomfortable. As many as 16 openly or suspected gay employees were promptly fired.

“They actually put a policy like this in writing, which was, and still is, shocking,” David Smith, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign.

The New York City Employees Retirement System, which owned more than $6 million of Cracker Barrel shares, led other stock owners in using their votes and other legal means to organize resistance. In March 1991, Mr. Evins apologized and said the policy had been rescinded. But New York and its allies fought until 58 percent of the shareholders in 2002 persuaded Cracker Barrel’s board to vote unanimously to explicitly forbid antigay discrimination in its equal employment policy.

In July 2001, shareholders replaced Evins as CEO with Michael A. Woodhouse, who at the time was serving as the company's chief operating officer. Evins maintained his position as chairman of the board.

Prior to founding the company, Dan worked for Consolidated Oil, a company founded by his grandfather.

Cracker Barrel took down Pride page after rebrand fiasco

Company faced criticism over modernist redesign and support for LGBT causes before stock rebound

The website link for Cracker Barrel’s Pride page, which used to boast that the company was "bringing the porch to Pride," now redirects to its "Culture and Belonging" page.

Cracker Barrel previously sponsored the Nashville Pride Parade in 2024 and unveiled a line of rainbow-colored rocking chairs for Pride month. The company also has an LGBTQ employee resource group called the "LGBTQ+ Alliance," along with groups for veterans and other communities.

Despite claims it's 'too woke,' Cracker Barrel actually has a fraught LGBTQ+ history

Cracker Barrel received a score of zero on the inaugural index in 2002. The chain was criticized in the 1990s for discrimination against gay employees. In 1991, the company adopted a corporate policy stating that any worker who failed to demonstrate "normal heterosexual values" would be fired. 

Eleven employees were terminated under the rule, leading to boycotts and protests nationwide. Over time, Cracker Barrel’s HRC score improved, reaching 80 in 2021 after the company took several public pro-LGBTQ stances.

58 percent of the shareholders in 2002 persuaded Cracker Barrel’s board to vote unanimously to explicitly forbid antigay discrimination in its equal employment policy.

Proud Representation: Business Resource Groups: These voluntary, employee-led organizations are open to all employees and provide opportunities to network, develop leadership skills, and serve as cross-functional resources for our teams.

AMPT (Advancing Modern Professionals for Tomorrow) aims to connect and empower modern professionals by promoting a community of inclusive, ambitious, and diverse members that unify through the Cracker Barrel to equip our community and leaders for the future. This BRG provides networking, development, and community outreach opportunities that supplement the professional and personal lives of its members.

The mission of Be Bold is to cultivate and develop Black Leaders within the Cracker Barrel organization utilizing allyship, mentorship, and education to create a path to continued excellence as well as a vibrant and diverse community.

B-Well: Cracker Barrel's Wellness BRG partners with the Benefits Department to improve the employee experience by sponsoring health and wellness activities that nurture employees' physical, emotional, financial, and intellectual well-being. Balance in these areas reduces distractions and allows employees to improve their focus and productivity.

HOLA's mission is to promote Hispanic and Latino culture through hiring, developing, and retaining talent within Cracker Barrel. To create a culture of inclusivity and awareness through community outreach.

LGBTQ+ Alliance: Supporting Home Office and Field employees to bring their whole selves to work while strengthening Cracker Barrel's relationship to the LGBTQ+ community.

NeuroVerse Collective is focused on advocacy and education around Neurodiversity.

Our Veteran's BRG, SERVE, is dedicated to advocating for leadership and development opportunities for its members. We foster an environment of networking and volunteerism while focusing on recruitment, retention, and advancement of Veterans at this company.

Women’s Connect: Our mission & goal is to inspire the women of Cracker Barrel by empowering, educating and engaging to achieve the strategic initiatives of Cracker Barrel.

The anti-DEI purge continues: MM

Fed emphasizes its commitment to 'independence' as Lisa Cook pledges to sue over Trump's 'illegal' firing

White House fires CDC director [Susan Monarez] who says RFK Jr. is ‘weaponizing public health’

White House names RFK Jr deputy Jim O'Neill as replacement CDC director

Unlike Monarez, O’Neill, a former investment executive, does not have a medical or scientific background. He served as a speechwriter for the health department during the George W Bush administration, and went on to work for the tech investor and conservative mega-donor Peter Thiel.

Trump Fires Member of Board That Approves Railroad Mergers

Robert E. Primus received an email from the White House terminating his position, but he said he would continue his duties.

The Oligarchy Rules!: Trump makes the government Intel’s largest investor

Intel has entered into an agreement with the U.S. government, specifically the Department of Commerce, for an $8.9 billion investment in the company. This investment is in the form of the government purchasing Intel common stock.

The U.S. government will gain a nearly 10% stake in Intel.

This funding is part of the CHIPS and Science Act and the Secure Enclave program, aimed at boosting the domestic semiconductor industry.

The government's ownership will be passive, with no board representation or governance rights.

Each Warrant represents the right to purchase one share of common stock at an exercise price of $20.00 per share.

On August 18, 2025, Intel Corporation entered into a Securities Purchase Agreement with SoftBank Group Corp. pursuant to which SoftBank agreed to purchase 86,956,522 shares of the Company’s common stock for an aggregate purchase price in cash of $2.0 billion, representing a price per share of $23.00 per share.

Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):

DR: Korea passes boardroom reform, curbing chaebol power MM DR

MM: Red Lobster Is Betting on Black Diners With Its Brand Comeback

MM: Bluesky now platform of choice for science community

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

Shareholder democracy

From Mike Levin, host of Shareholder Primacy and writer of the Activist Investor newsletter: 

Followers here should recall ten current and former TSLA directors agreed to repay about $735 million in comp they received from 2017-2020 as part of a settlement of a derivative lawsuit, Detroit v. Tesla.

February 25, 2025 - TSLA receives $735 million in cash and returned options from ten director defendants, five of which currently serve on the TSLA BoD, without specifying how much each defendant paid

March 31 - We filed our opening brief, acknowledging that receipt of the damages and noting the five director defendants currently on the TSLA BoD had not filed SEC Form 4 showing a change in options holdings to reflect returned options

April 29 or 30 - TSLA BoD authorizes cancellation of options to reflect the settlement

May 1 - The five defendants currently on the TSLA BoD file Form 4 showing return of options as part of the settlement.

It is impossible for Tesla to have received Settlement Options from Current Director Defendants by February 25, 2025 and for Current Director Defendants to have conveyed them to Tesla on May 1, 2025. Either Tesla misrepresented receipt of the Settlement Amount in a sworn affidavit or Current Director Defendants failed to timely file Form 4 with the SEC.

From Kevin Barnes of K-Bar Holdings LLC, shareholder proponent at Eagle Materials:

Files shareholder proposal to de-classify the board by amending the charter via Special Meeting in the June 23, 2025 proxy statement

At the AGM held August 4, 2025, Barnes wins the advisory vote… by a LOT - 92% in favor (92%!!!) - made more impressive given that 37.3% of shares are held by Fidelity, Vanguard, BlackRock, and JPM, not exactly communists

Kevin emailed me Tuesday to say Eagle “has yet to notice a Special Meeting to formalize [the amendments]”

On August 16th, 19 days after Samsara (where Marc Andreessen and Sue Wagner spend their time) held its AGM, the company added Gary Steele (whose company Shield AI is private and funded in large part by Andreessen Horowitz)  to the board

Qorvo, after John Cheveddan’s shareholder proposal asking for the right of investors to call special meetings failed with 44% in favor and approved pay with just 59% in favor, ONE DAY after the annual meeting the board “approved” giant golden parachutes for the executives

Meritocracy

Robert Primus: Trump Fires Member of Board That Approves Railroad Mergers

“Robert Primus did not align with the president’s America First agenda, and was terminated from his position by the White House.” He added, “The administration intends to nominate new, more qualified members to the Surface Transportation Board in short order.”

Primus is a black man who went to Harvard and Hamton and has more than 20 year experience in politics - he was given the position originally by Trump

Lisa Cook: Trump says he's removing Fed governor Lisa Cook, citing his administration’s allegations of mortgage fraud

Letitia Jones: Justice Dept. Abruptly Escalates Pressure Campaign on a Trump Adversary

Muriel Bowser, Karen Bass: Cities led by Black women are the first targets of Trump’s political power grab

Know your surrendering boards DR

Cracker Barrel CEO Under Pressure To Resign After Logo U-Turn

Carl Berquist (2019), Chair, ex Arthur Andersen

Jody Bilney (2022), ex Humana

Steve Bramlage (2025), Casey’s General

Gilbert Davila (2020), diversity marketing CEO (PoC!)

John Garratt (2023), ex Dollar General

Michael Goodwin (2024), tech at PetSmart (PoC!)

Cheryl Henry (2024), ex Ruth’s

Julie Felss Masino, CEO

Gisel Ruiz (2020), ex Sam’s Club (PoC!)

Daryl Wade (2021), ex Union Square Hospitality (PoC!)

Cracker Barrel board member under fire for DEI background

Trump makes the government Intel’s largest investor

Frank Yeary (2009), Chair, PE/VC tech guy

Jim Goetz (2019), Sequoia

Andrea Goldsmith (2021), dean at Princeton

Alyssa Henry (2020), ex CEO of Block

Eric Meurice (2024), ex ASML Holdings

Barbara Novick (2022), ex Blackrock founder

Steve Sanghi (2024), Microchip Technology

Greg Smith (2017), ex Boeing

Stacy Smith (2024), ex Kioxia

Dion Weisler (2020), ex HP

Headliniest of the Week

DR: Pork Industry Leader David Newman Selected as National Pork Board's Next CEO

MM: Jeff Bezos Said He Would Have 'Felt Icky' Had He Taken Any More Shares Of Amazon: 'I Just Didn't Feel Good...'

MM: Sam Altman says colleagues are glad he’s a dad now, because they think raising a child will help him make ‘better decisions for humanity’

Who Won the Week?

DR: Hopeful Susan Collins slayer and oyster farmer Graham Platner: “I did four infantry tours in the Marine Corps and the army. I’m not afraid to name an enemy, and the enemy is the oligarchy. It’s the billionaires who pay for it, the politicians who sell us out.”

MM: Journalists who listen to Business Pants: Cracker Barrel’s inconvenient fact: all the customers who loved its old logo had stopped going to the restaurant - where Dee Ann Durbin of the AP literally took my rant about foot traffic and stock movements part for part

Predictions

DR: The following lines will be deleted from Cracker Barrel’s next proxy statement:

[The Public Responsibility Committee ] “Reviews the Company’s progress in its diversity and inclusion initiatives and compliance with the Company’s responsibilities as an equal opportunity employer”

“ In addition, our nominees — including five (5) women and three (3) individuals who are racially or ethnically diverse — embody the diversity that we believe is critical to the effective functioning of any public company board today, particularly in a consumer-facing industry such as ours.”

“Board Diversity Matrix”

Or at least the following term from that matrix: “Non-Binary”

“Gilbert R. Dávila, age 61, first became one of our directors in July 2020. Since 2010, Mr. Dávila has served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of DMI Consulting — a leading multicultural marketing, diversity & inclusion, and strategy firm in the United States.”

Cracker Barrel board member under fire for DEI background after restaurant ditches traditional logo

MM: Ramon Laguarta, the CEO of Pepsi, quietly scraps a plan for their brand Quaker Oats to remove the picture of the old white quaker guy from the cartons of oats and instead asks the marketing team to make the quaker guy even older and whiter and possible they should consider adding a shotgun in his hands with “boobs rule” written on the side of it

US Senator Sanders favors Trump plan to take stake in Intel and other chipmakers

Bernie: "If microchip companies make a profit from the generous grants they receive from the federal government, the taxpayers of America have a right to a reasonable return on that investment."

Mark Zuckerberg gifted noise-canceling headphones to his Palo Alto neighbors because of the non-stop construction around his 11 homes

Cracker Barrel, under fire from Donald Trump Jr. and Steak n’ Shake, apologizes to fans but won’t drop new logo

“If the last few days have shown us anything, it’s how deeply people care about Cracker Barrel. We’re truly grateful for your heartfelt voices,” the company said Monday in a statement on its website.

“You’ve also shown us that we could have done a better job sharing who we are and who we’ll always be.”

On Monday, the Lebanon, Tennessee-based company emphasized that many things about Cracker Barrel won’t change, including the rocking chairs on its front porches and vintage Americana and antiques scattered throughout its restaurants.

Cracker Barrel also said it will continue to honor Uncle Herschel — the older man in the former logo, who represents the uncle of Cracker Barrel’s founder — on its menu and on items sold in its stores.

But Cracker Barrel said it also wants to make sure that the business stays fresh and attracts a new generation of customers.

Maine’s Populist Senate Candidate Thinks We Are in a New Gilded Age

According to Graham Platner, America has entered a new gilded age and needs a politics that can meet the moment. “I think the comparisons between the late 19th century and now are apt: vast amounts of wealth and regulatory structures that in no way, shape, or form keep that wealth in check,” pointing to the power people like Elon Musk and other prominent Silicon Valley leaders have over the current administration.

He pointed to his state’s famed and tightly regulated lobster industry as an example.

“The state of Maine has passed laws over the years that have regulated the lobster industry in a very specific way, and it means there’s one boat, one captain, one license. Fishing can only be conducted while the captain is aboard. This has entirely disincentivized consolidation,” he explained.

“The result is a half-a-billion-dollar-a-year industry for the state of Maine that has almost no corporate ownership.”

When presented with the alternative theory—that Maine should instead allow consolidation in its prize industry and redistribute wealth back to workers and their communities through other means—he bluntly dismissed its proponents. “Those people are full of shit. The distribution of resources needs to happen at the level where things are being produced.”

Lisa Cook Says She Will Not Step Down From the Fed Board

“I will not resign,” she said. “I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022.”

Meta Defector Issues Devastating Psychological Takedown of Tech CEOs

Nick Clegg, a former Meta executive who left the company at the start of this year: "If you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."

"You’d think, wouldn’t you, that if you were immensely powerful and rich like Elon Musk and all these other tech bros and members of that podcast community that you’d reflect on your good fortune compared with most other people?" Instead, Clegg seethed, they cry persecution.

"In Silicon Valley, far from thinking they're lucky, they think they’re hard done by, [that] they’re victims. I couldn’t, and still can't, understand this deeply unattractive combination of machismo and self-pity."

Red Lobster Is Betting on Black Diners With Its Brand Comeback

CEO Damola Adamolekun, who took over the job last September, a 36-year-old Nigerian American, who is also credited with rescuing P.F. Chang’s.

Red Lobster has been a part of America’s casual-dining landscape since the first location opened in Lakeland, Fla., in 1968. Just four years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, many restaurants in the South were still segregated de facto. Red Lobster embraced diversity, opening its doors to Black customers and hiring Black workers.

The ‘woke’ words Democrats should cut from their vocabulary

A new memo identifies 45 words and phrases for Democrats to avoid, alleging the terms turn voters off. They span six categories: Therapy-Speak (1/11: Triggering); Seminar Room Language (0/8); Organizer Jargon (1/8: Stakeholders); Gender/Orientation Correctness (1/8: Patriarchy); The Shifting Language of Racial Constructs (0/5); Explaining Away Crime (0/4)

Korea passes boardroom reform, curbing chaebol power

South Korea has passed a significant boardroom reform aimed at curbing the power of the country's large family-owned conglomerates, known as "chaebol."

Here are some key changes:

Mandatory Cumulative Voting

For large listed companies with assets exceeding 2 trillion won (about $1.44 billion), a cumulative voting system is now required. This system allows minority shareholders to pool their votes and elect a representative to the board, giving them a greater voice in corporate governance.

Increased Power for Audit Committees

The number of audit committee members elected separately from the controlling shareholders will increase from one to at least two. This strengthens the independence of the audit committee, which is responsible for overseeing financial reporting and internal controls.

Broader Application of the "3% Rule"

The "3% rule," which limits the voting power of the largest shareholders to 3% when electing audit committee members, will now be extended to independent directors. Previously, this cap only applied to internal directors.

Extended Fiduciary Duty of Directors

A previous amendment in July extended the fiduciary duty of directors to all shareholders, not just the company. This change is intended to prevent controlling families from making decisions that benefit themselves at the expense of minority shareholders.

"Outside Directors" Renamed "Independent Directors"

A symbolic but important change that emphasizes the need for directors to act independently of management and controlling shareholders.

Mandatory Hybrid Shareholder Meetings

For publicly traded firms with more than 2 trillion won in assets, hybrid shareholder meetings will be mandatory. This will allow shareholders to participate and vote online, increasing accessibility and participation.

Increased Proportion of Independent Directors

The required proportion of independent directors on the board has been raised from one-quarter to one-third, further strengthening independent oversight of management.

"Yellow Envelope Bill"

This measure, passed alongside the boardroom reforms, secures bargaining rights for subcontracted workers, which could have a significant impact on the labor practices of chaebol.

Revamping Public Broadcaster Governance

The reforms also include measures to revamp the governance of public broadcasters, which could reduce the influence of chaebol on the media.

UnitedHealth forms new ‘public responsibility’ board committee

The committee will oversee areas where UnitedHealth has struggled or faced public scrutiny: underwriting and forecasting, regulatory relationships, reputational matters, and M&A.

Michele Hooper, who’s served on UnitedHealth’s board since 2007, will step down as lead independent director to chair the committee. Hooper, who will remain a director, will be replaced as lead independent director by F. William McNabb, the former CEO of investing firm the Vanguard Group who has served on UnitedHealth’s board since 2018.

The U.S. EV fast-charging network is seeing explosive growth—despite Trump’s policies

Installation of fast DC chargers that can get an EV to 80% charged in less than an hour are up more than 25% from 2024—despite the loss of Biden administration initiatives designed to support the growth of the network.

Companies with climate targets have more than tripled since 2023

The number of companies worldwide with both validated near-term and net-zero science-based climate targets has more than tripled since the end of 2023, from 583 to 1,904, according to the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi).

A total of 10,949 companies worldwide now either have near-term targets or near-term and net-zero targets, or have committed to set them, according to a report by the Science-Based Targets initiative.

Air Canada reaches a deal to end flight attendant strike

The tentative deal secures Air Canada flight attendants at least 60 minutes of ground pay, for their time before each flight, at a rate of 50 per cent of a flight attendant's hourly rate, with that rate increasing five per cent each year.

The airline is also proposing immediate pay increases of 12 per cent for flight attendants with five years or less of service with Air Canada, and eight per cent for those who have worked at the airline longer than that.

Kimbal Musk on Elon's Tesla pay package: 'My brother deserves to be paid'

Story of the Week (DR):

End of summer anti-woke bro rage brigade MM

New Cracker Barrel Logo Sparks Right-Wing Backlash—From Trump Jr. And More

MAGA erupts over Cracker Barrel logo change, and stock plunges

Right-Winger, Others Call Out 'Woke' New Change To Cracker Barrel's Peg Game

The goal of the game is to whittle down the number of pegs on the board to one through a series of “jumping” pegs, not unlike checkers. Previously, directions on the game explained that people who have only one peg left on the board are geniuses, while people with two pegs left are “pretty smart.” However, if you leave three pegs, the game considers you “dumb,” while anyone who leaves four pegs is an “EG-NO-RA-MOOOSE.”

That was the old game. New peg games have removed the playful insults and instead say, “leave three or more ― no reason to be embarrassed. Try again.”

Sean Davis, the CEO of The Federalist: Cracker Barrel didn’t just destroy its logo and restaurant vibe. It also changed the peg game to make dumb people feel better when they do poorly.

Until October 2017, The Federalist had a "black crime" tag, which aggregated articles related to criminal activity by African Americans

Christian College’s Hot Take On Cracker Barrel Has People Saying, ‘Huh?’

Hillsdale College in Michigan: A post on its official account on X (formerly Twitter) likened the updated logo to a vandalized statue of President George Washington that was defaced during the 2020 protests over the police killing of George Floyd.

MAGA Rep Drags Jesus Christ Into ‘Woke’ Cracker Barrel Meltdown

Congressman Byron Donalds slammed the restaurant chain for daring to rebrand after he had a religious experience in one of its Florida parking lots: “In college, I worked at @CrackerBarrel in Tallahassee,” the Florida Republican wrote on X, “I even gave my life to Christ in their parking lot. Their logo was iconic and their unique restaurants were a fixture of American culture. No one asked for this woke rebrand.”

‘Cracker barrel goes woke’: CEO under MAGA fire for changing logo first time in 48 years, removes ‘white guy’

Steak 'n Shake slams Cracker Barrel CEO for eliminating 'old-timer' from logo: 'We take pride in our history'

“This is what happens when you have a board that does not respect their historical customers or their brand.

At Steak n Shake, we have gone back to basics. Our tallow fries are waiting for you. Oh yeah, you can also now pay with Bitcoin!”

Entrepreneur Sardar Biglari owns Steak ‘n Shake

Owns 9.3% of Cracker barrel

took control of Steak 'n Shake in August 2008 after three years of declining same-store sales and losses of $100,000 per day.

Biglari controls the Steak 'n Shake Company, First Guard Insurance, Abraxas Petroleum, Maxim, Southern Oil of Louisiana, Southern Pioneer Insurance and the Western Sizzlin' corporation. Biglari was born in Iran in 1977

However the chain ran into more problems in 2016 and onward, with revenue declining sharply.

In 2021, Steak N' Shake made a strategic decision to transition away from casual dining and become a fast food restaurant. Steak 'n Shake replaced lunch counters with self-serve kiosks in 2021 to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Changing the service model allowed a significant reduction of store staff

In 2024, Biglari fought and lost a proxy contest with Cracker Barrel, trying to get himself and two buddies on the CB board.

This marks the sixth time since 2011 that Biglari has initiated a proxy contest seeking seats on the Board (the fourth time for Sardar Biglari personally), and the seventh contested solicitation overall during that span.

POP QUIZ:

Was that the original logo?

No. The Cracker Barrel chain opened first in 1969 and had a text-only logo. In 1977, the famous logo with a man and a barrel was introduced.

Is Cracker Barrel's new-ish CEO (11/23) a man or a woman?

Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino and the new logo controversy

Ms. Masino previously served as the President, International of Taco Bell, a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE: YUM) from January 2020 to June 2023. From January 2018 to December 2019, she served as President, North America of Taco Bell.

“Cracker Barrel’s new logo isn’t an accident — it’s CEO Julie Felss Masino’s project. She scrapped a beloved American aesthetic and replaced it with sterile, soulless branding.”

Benny Johnson said the logo change could cause the company to collapse in a similar way that Target and other stores that embraced DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) did.

‘Go woke, you go broke:’ Ohio faith leaders urge Kroger to abandon LGBTQ+ policies

Trump calls on Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook to resign

Lisa DeNell Cook is an American economist who has served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors since May 23, 2022. She is the first African American woman and first woman of color to sit on the Board

CEO-to-worker pay gap surges to 632 to 1 at US’s lowest-paying large firms, study shows: At 100 firms in S&P 500 with lowest median pay, executives’ comp increased by average of nearly 35% over five years

FTSE 100 CEO pay rises for third consecutive year, hitting record high

CEO pay at top US companies accelerates at fastest pace in four years

Starbucks CEO Tops List Of Sky-High Executive Pay Packages

Starbucks’ CEO is ditching a merit system and giving all salaried staff a flat 2% pay raise instead

Succession Theater: Target CEO Brian Cornell steps down after 11 years as sales continue to drop

Target’s Brian Cornell to hand CEO job to Michael Fiddelke in February

Target CEO Brian Cornell will step down from the struggling retailer in February and its COO will succeed him

Target CEO Brian Cornell will step down from the struggling retailer in February and its COO will succeed him

Alert: Target CEO Brian Cornell will step down from the struggling retailer in February and its COO will succeed him

When the C.E.O. Retires but Won’t Go Away

Target is the latest company to keep a replaced chief executive around as an “executive chairman.” Does having two top dogs make sense?

On August 15, 2025, following a comprehensive succession planning process, the Board of Directors (the “Board”) of Target Corporation (“Target”), appointed Michael J. Fiddelke, Target’s current Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, as Target’s next Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board, effective February 1, 2026. At that time, Brian C. Cornell will step down from his position as Chief Executive Officer and will continue to serve as Chair of the Board in an Executive Chair capacity.

Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):

DR: Companies with climate targets have more than tripled since 2023: SBTi

A total of 10,949 companies worldwide now either have near-term targets or near-term and net-zero targets, or have committed to set them, according to a report by the Science-Based Targets initiative.

DR: The juxtaposition of these two headlines:

Scientists Say They've Figured Out a Way to Turn Nuclear Waste Into a Powerful Fuel

Scientists Can’t Figure Out Why Just Walking In Nature Appears to Quickly Heal Your Brain Rot

MM: Why Shop? In Maine, the Library of Things Has It All (Almost)

You can take out an electric lawn mower at the library

MM: Lyft co-founders depart board, convert Class B shares - greatest de-dictatorship in modern history? From 30% voting power to 2% voting power as part of the conversion DR

Shares still worth a paltry $144m

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

 Anti ESG is a joke

Legal definition of a fiduciary: 

The beneficiary has delegated authority to the fiduciary to act on its behalf;

The fiduciary has discretionary powers over the beneficiary’s assets or interests;

The fiduciary is in a position superior to that of the beneficiary due to specialized access, knowledge or ability; and

The beneficiary trusts that the fiduciary will act in the beneficiary’s best interest. (Ponet & Leib, 2011.)

From Florida 2023 HB3

An act relating to government and corporate activism…

The board of trustees, subject to the fiduciary standards … and the requirements in s. 112.662…

Which are… Notwithstanding any other law, when deciding whether to invest and when investing the assets of any retirement system or plan, only pecuniary factors may be considered and the interests of the participants and beneficiaries of the system or plan may not be subordinated to other objectives, including sacrificing investment return or undertaking additional investment risk to promote any nonpecuniary factor

Which includes… any social, political, or ideological interests

Which applies to…Obligations of the United States or obligations guaranteed as to principal and interest by the government of the United States

Which makes investing in Treasury securities illegal because…White House Reportedly Launches A Scorecard Rating 500+ Companies On Trump Loyalty

The rating system evaluates multiple factors, including social media activity, press releases, video testimonials, advertisements, participation in White House events, and other forms of engagement connected to the [One Big Beautiful Bill]

Determines who they’ll do business with

Free speech dictators

Meta spent $27 million protecting Mark Zuckerberg last year, more than any other CEO

Google to Pay $36 Million in Anti-Competition Fines

Coinbase CEO says he watched famous speeches to psych himself up before banning politics at the company

Trump May Further Redefine U.S. Capitalism With an Intel Move, ‘Come to America and lose $1B’: Trump drives new offshore wind losses

Fossil fuel “discrimination” laws prohibit discriminating against fossil fuels - there are no law to prevent “discrimination” against wind or solar

How Ownership Can Shape Outcomes

Hollowing out the corporate middle class MM

Starbucks Sets 2% Raises for Corporate Workers

Coffee giant is in the midst of a turnaround; ‘We need to carefully manage all of our other costs’

Starbucks earlier this year said it would lay off 1,100 corporate workers

In July, the company offered buyouts to corporate workers and said it would step up its in-office requirements later this year, to four days from three.

From May: Starbucks and unionized baristas locked in a wage standoff

National Legal Policy Center actually filed a resolution this year demanding Starbucks produce a report detailing the human rights risks and “loss of shareholder value” if Starbucks “capitulates” to the union - union killing by SHP?

Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol awarded $96 million pay package after 4 months on the job

Use of Starbucks aircraft for travel between city of primary residence and Starbucks headquarters and up to $250,000 in personal non-commuting travel per year; additional use of Starbucks aircraft for travel pursuant to Mr. Niccol’s time sharing agreement

Headliniest of the Week

DR: 10 Candidates Will Vie for 4 Open Seats on USA Swimming Board of Directors

DR: Walmart may have sold radioactive shrimp, FDA warns

MM: Silicon Valley talent keeps getting recycled, so this CEO uses a ‘moneyball’ approach for uncovering hidden AI geniuses in the new era

“There’s different biases and filters about people’s pedigree or where they came from. But if you could truly map all of that and just give credit for some people that maybe went through alternate pathways [then you can] truly stack rank,” Alex Bates, founder and CEO of AI executive recruiting platform HelloSky, told Fortune.

MM: Forests in Certain Areas of the World Can Add to Global Warming  I hate that headline

Who Won the Week?

DR: The term “Bro IPO.” Or is it “BroPo?”

MM: Damion.  And it’s BroPO.

Predictions

DR: Target accidentally announces one of Brian COrnell’s new board roles will be the Chairman of the We-Swear-It’s-Not-My-Idea Task Force

MM: An analytics company somewhere realizes you can take the “moneyball” concept and apply it to people at publicly traded companies, making millions of dollars by giving investors the ability to vote for their fiduciaries by using advanced data, not voting on the fact that John is kind of cute and Leslie is a nice name.

CASEY'S GENERAL STORES, INC.

At last year’s annual meeting in August, shareholders were asked YES or NO on CEO Darren Robelez’s pay plan. To help them make a decision on the pay practices they had information like the ratio of the annual total compensation of Casey’s General Stores CEO to that of its median employee for the 2024 fiscal year, commonly known as the CEO Pay Ratio. Let’s begin the quiz there:

According to the company’s SEC filing, at what point in the fiscal year 2024 did CEO Darren earn the compensation of his company’s median employee?

12:35:33 PM on January 1st, the first day of the work year, meaning his pay CEO pay ratio was 579:1

Additionally, the CEO’s target equity award was $6.7M. In the worst case scenario where every single peer company outperformed Casey’s General Stores in terms of total shareholder return, how much equity could the CEO receive?

$5,025,000, reflecting a TSR Modifier of -25%.

Accordingly, based in part on the information you have just learned, what percentage of Casey’s shareholders voted against his pay practices?

2%

Bonus question: According to the company’s 2025 SEC filing, at what point in the fiscal year 2025 did CEO Darren earn the compensation of his company’s median employee? Remember, it was 12:35:33 PM on January 1st, the first day of the work year.

12:32:05 PM on January 1st, the first day of the work year: 3 minutes and 28 seconds earlier. 

AGM: 9/3/2025

589:1 CEO pay ratio CEO Darren Robelez 98% YES

Pay committee: *Former BJ’s Restaurants CEO Gregory Trojan, Oobli CEO Allison Wing

2024 AGM

99.1% YES average

33% Influence CEO/Chair: 20% YES SHP independent board chair policy

-13% gender influence gap: Darren M. Rebelez (33%) & Gregory A. Trojan (14%)

CROWDSTRIKE HOLDINGS, INC.

A recent Fortune article called Laying off workers because of AI is more of a fashionable excuse than a real business imperative cites CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz linking 5% job cuts to the cybersecurity company’s need to double down on AI investments to “accelerate execution and efficiency.” Kurtz said: “AI flattens our hiring curve, and helps us innovate from idea to product faster.”

First question, are CrowdStrike shareholders also given the privilege to “accelerate execution and efficiency”? How many total years does it take for a CrowdStrike investor to vote on all nine board members?

3 years, classified board.

This is important because clearly shareholders were not completely pleased this year: 34% said NO Pay Committee Chair Cary Davis while 38% said NO to Nomination Committee chair Laura Schumacher

2% NO CEO Kurtz

Considering the board influence of Founder/CEO/Director and third largest shareholder George Kurtz, investors would typically be best served with a board provides an effective counterbalance to his control. Of the board’s eight independent directors, what percentage has served for at least a decade alongside Kurtz?

Four directors, or half.

Again, to counteract his control, investors should expect regular board refreshment. How many new directors have joined the board in the last 5 years?

One, Johanna Flower, the only director who sits on zero board committees. She joined the board in January 2023

Kurtz already owns $2.7B of Crowdstrike shares. What percentage of his annual pay consists of equity?

90%, with a target equity award of $35M.

Finally, CrowdStrike’s infamous 2024 software update is commonly described as what?

The largest outage in the history of information technology.

In 2024, CrowdStrike released a software update that disrupted millions of Microsoft Windows systems around the world

A faulty update to its Falcon sensor platform led to the "Blue Screen of Death" on millions of machines, bringing critical operations to a standstill across numerous sectors.

The immediate and most visible impact was the widespread and severe disruption to the global economy. The financial toll is estimated to be in the billions of dollars. Key sectors affected include:

Aviation: Major airlines like Delta, United, and American Airlines grounded thousands of flights, disrupting travel for millions and costing airlines hundreds of millions of dollars.

Healthcare: Access to electronic health records was hindered, leading to the cancellation of surgeries and appointments. This disruption posed a direct risk to patient care and safety.

Financial Services: Banks and financial institutions faced outages that affected everything from ATM services to online banking and stock trading. This not only resulted in financial losses but also eroded consumer confidence.

Government and Emergency Services: The outage impacted various government agencies and even emergency services in some areas, highlighting a significant threat to public safety and national security.

For Mr. Kurtz, the amount for fiscal 2025 also includes approximately (i) $104,279 for costs related to personal security for Mr. Kurtz and his family at his residences and (ii) $898,426 for costs related to personal usage of private aircraft.

As part of our sales and marketing activities, we sponsor a CrowdStrike-branded professional racing car, which Mr. Kurtz drives in some races at no incremental cost to us and in lieu of us hiring a professional driver. As we do not pay any amounts to Mr. Kurtz under these arrangements, it is not reflected in the above table.

No vote on pay

TARGET CORPORATION

Target foot traffic is still suffering 6 months post-boycott. An industry veteran says the retailer’s problems are bigger than curtailing DEI

Target Boycott Leader Jamal Bryant Is Arriving on CEOs’ Radar Screens

Inside Target, Frustrated Employees and Search for New CEO

This article from the WSJ says:

Many Target shoppers are frustrated with the retailer. Many Target employees are too.

In early June, a companywide survey showed that roughly half of Target’s employees didn’t think the company was making the changes necessary to compete effectively. About 40% of the roughly 260,000 staffers who replied said they didn’t have confidence in the company’s future. The scores—which declined from a year ago—were even lower for those staffers at Target’s headquarters in Minneapolis.

The worker sentiment data reflects the challenges ahead for the company as it prepares to navigate a leadership change and turn around 10 quarters of flat or falling sales in an increasingly complex consumer environment.

Based on what I just told you, TRUE or FALSE on this next headline from Fortune? Is this real or am I making it up? Target’s CEO succession tilts toward an insider and company lifer

True. The leading contender appears to be: Michael Fiddelke is executive vice president and chief operating officer for Target and a member of its leadership team.

Since joining Target in 2003 as an intern, Michael has held a variety of leadership positions across the organization, including finance, merchandising, human resources and operations. He most recently served as Target’s chief financial officer. In addition to his Target responsibilities, Michael serves on the board of Shipt, Target’s wholly-owned subsidiary.

Compensation & Human Capital Management Committee: “Management development and succession planning. Senior management development, evaluation, and succession planning, including CEO succession planning.”

Ms. Lozano (Chair)Mr. BakerMr. BarrettMr. KnaussMs. Leahy

CORECIVIC, INC.

-17% gender influence gap:

Robert J. Dennis 17%: retiring

CEO Damon T. Hininger 17% (2009-)

On February 15, 2024, in recognition of the substantial contributions made by our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Hininger, to the Company, and to encourage retention of Mr. Hininger for a multi-year period, our Compensation Committee, determined to provide a Special One-Time Award to Mr. Hininger. This award consisted of 70,225 performance-based RSUs at a fair market value of $14.24 per share, the approximate equivalent of $1,000,000 at the time of award. The Compensation Committee believes this Special One-Time Award is designed to incentivize Mr. Hininger’s performance and retain him for a multi-year period.

On August 18, 2025, CoreCivic, Inc., a Maryland corporation (the “Company”) announced that Damon T. Hininger, the Company’s Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”), will step down as CEO and resign from his position on the Company’s Board of Directors (the “Board”), effective as of January 1, 2026 (the “Transition Date”). Patrick Swindle, who currently serves as the Company’s President and Chief Operating Officer, will assume the role of CEO of the Company, effective as of the Transition Date, and will continue serving as the President of the Company. Additionally, the Board will appoint Mr. Swindle to the Board to fill the vacancy created by Mr. Hininger’s resignation as of the Transition Date.

Chair Mark A. Emkes 17% (2014-)

John R. Prann 13% (2000-)

Thurgood Marshall 12% (2002-)

Devin I Murphy 9%

2025 AGM: 99% YES director average; 97% YES PAY

Short-term pay: if NONE of four strategic goals achieved CEO still receives 80% of bonus

Long-term: If Lowest quartile TSR results is only 20% reduction of long-term awards: “If the Company’s absolute TSR for the performance period is less than zero, the rTSR modifier shall not exceed 1.0x for the performance period”

WHO DO YOU BLAME FOR PAYING A MULTI YEAR “RETENTION BONUS” WHO QUITS AFTER ONE YEAR?

Pay committee included Dennis*, Emkes (17%, 11 yrs), Prann (13%, 25 yrs)

Donald Trump - after donating to Trump, his immigration orders have swelled the amount of work Hininger has to do and he burnt out with excitement

The zero female board leadership - there was no mom to say it was a bad idea

The amount of the award - $1m in 2025??  The stock is up 45% thanks to our prison state, and even with the massive stock bump, the award is still worth less than $2m… it’s an insult, not an award

The prisoners who keep claiming the prisons are dangerous - there have been more than 120 reports and exposes in the last 10 years alone that found Corecivic were complicit in family separations, deaths, cancelled contracts due to conditions in the prisons, and other human rights violations

O'Reilly Automotive, Inc.

Vote discount for wearing the uniform:

First appearance in the proxy of the uniform shirts were actually ORANGE shirts in 2021, blue shirt introduced in 2024 proxy

Since 2021, directors who wear the uniform average 92.9% votes for, while directors not wearing shirts average 96.8% for

WHO DO WE BLAME FOR THE UNIFORM DISCOUNT?

Old timers - average start year for a uniform wearer is 1998, and for a non-exec 2006.  Average start year for a non-uniform wearer is 2021.

The color orange - the orange shirt wearers average 90.4% votes for, while blue got 92.6% for

Having a third of the board be executives - O’Reilly is a single class stock where the O’Reilly family owns less than 5% (all execs own less than 3% collectively), and yet somehow investors think there should be no less than 3 executive directors at any time - who are entirely responsible for wearing uniforms in proxy photos

The shirts themselves - we have TWO case studies of directors who switched from no shirt to shirt - Maria Sastre (2023 to 2024 forward) and Andrea Weiss (2023 to 2024 before she quit, probably in protest of being forced to wear a shirt). In BOTH cases, votes for dropped by an average of 2%

Lead “Independent” Director Tom Hendrickson who has been on the board for 15 years, was CFO at a number of sports retail store companies, and lists “technology” as one his core skills (because all 70 year old retired CPAs advising auto parts companies for $347,836 in summary comp have tech experience)

 Bonus prediction: In 2025, ALL DIRECTORS have been forced to wear the shirt, but now they have a variety of O’Reilly shirts - which director will get the lowest votes now?

Blue shirt

Pink shirt

Plaid shirt

Green shirt

Cream shirt

PALANTIR TECHNOLOGIES INC.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp takes a shot at elite colleges and says the company offers 'a new credential independent of class'

Palantir CEO says working at his $430 billion software company is better than a degree from Harvard or Yale: ‘No one cares about the other stuff’

WHICH ELITE IS TO BLAME FOR KARP’S HATE FOR ELITES:

Board member and VC bro Alex Moore, who got his BA in Econ from Stanford

Board member and journalist Alexandra Schiff who get her BA in English from Duke

Board member and co founder Stephen Cohen who got his BS in CompSci from Stanford

Board member, troll, and insecure VC Peter Thiel who got his BA in Philosophy from Stanford and a JD from Stanford Law

Board member and consultant Lauren Stat who got a dual degree in Science and Math from Stanford

Board member and VC bro Eric Woersching who got a BS and Masters in Electrical Engineering from Stanford

Stanford

VISA INC.

Mark Cuban calls for higher tax on companies buying back their own shares

Visa bought back $13.4bn from Oct 2024 to June 2025

$4.0bn from Oct to Dec (Sep 30 close: 274.95)

$4.8bn from Jan to March (Dec 31 close: 316.04)

$4.6bn from April to June (March 31 close: 350.46)

June 30 close: 355.05

WHO’S TO BLAME:

As of Dec proxy, CEO Ryan McInerney owns 822,155 shares worth $259,833,866 - if buyback boost the investor return, and McInerney made a cool $28m in part by boosting the stock.

Board Chair John Lundgren, been on the board 7 years and took over as chair after Executive Chair Al Kelly stepped down (but Kelly left with 589,890 shares)

Francisco Fernandez-Carbajal, the director with the most shares at 31,599 who’s been on the board for 17 years and is on the Comp and Finance committees

Story of the Week (DR):

Is MAGA going Marxist and Maoist? Trump’s assault on free-market capitalism MM

Trump’s risky role as the would-be CEO of America

Trump blasts Goldman over tariff forecasts, tells David Solomon to 'focus on being a DJ'

Trump Calls on Goldman to Replace Economist Over Tariff Stance

Intel stock climbs 7% on report Trump administration is considering stake in chipmaker

Trump says Intel CEO has an 'amazing story' days after calling for his resignation

‘We negotiated a little deal’: Trump says Nvidia and AMD will kick back 15% of China chip sales in potentially unconstitutional arrangement

How CEOs deal with Trump: Praise, face time, remorse, and gifts made of gold all go a long way, experience shows

Trump is tightening the screws on corporate America — and CEOs are staying mum

Trump’s Beef with Bank of America’s Corporate Governance Goes Beyond His Personal Accounts

Walmart's 10% employee discount now includes most groceries amid tariff pressures

Walmart, once ordered to ‘eat the tariffs,’ is giving employees a year-round 10% discount to help them eat

Trump Crypto Firm Announces $1.5 Billion Digital Coin Deal

A publicly traded tech firm, ALT5 Sigma, plans to sell $1.5 billion of shares to fund the purchase of a cryptocurrency created by World Liberty Financial, which the 

As part of the deal, World Liberty will receive shares in ALT5, according to securities filings, in return for $750 million worth of $WLFI coins. Eric Trump, the president’s middle son, will join ALT5’s board, and Zach Witkoff, a World Liberty founder and the son of President Trump’s Middle East adviser, will serve as chairman of the board.

4execs/4directors: dudes

The BroIPO market is bubbling again

StubHub IPO is back on for September after ticketing company delayed plans on tariff concerns

StubHub 5/1;7/1: CEO/Chair Eric Baker controls 90% of voting power because of his magical 100x Class B shares

Bullish Stock Roars in Latest Crypto IPO, Tripling Offering Price

Bullish: 2/0;6/1: 2 cryptobro founder/directors control 53%

61 IPO-related filings since August 1:

11% Female executives: 44 have zero; 13 have one

12% female directors: 30 have zero; 24 have one

Half have more than one stock class

The average major shareholder controls 47% voting power

The “winner”: Classover Holdings: educational technology, specializing in live online courses for K-12 students worldwide.

2 execs/5 directors: all women

Stephanie Luo controls 91% of voting power thanks to her magical 25:1 Class B shares

Debuted at 11.26, down to 1.27

Example numbers 18,000,027 and 18,000,028 why we need more women in leadership:

Major companies reframing, not abandoning, DEI: report

While firms scaled back DEI language and commitments, 79% percent of S&P 500 firms disclosed board committee oversight of DEI, up from 72%, according to the report. For Russell 3000 companies, this figure jumped from 48.4% to 86.8%. Rather than simply abandoning DEI, this suggests that companies are being more cautious about external messaging while integrating DEI into governance to make it more legally defensible, according to the report.

‘Godfather of AI’ says tech companies should imbue AI models with ‘maternal instincts’ to counter the technology’s goal to ‘get more control’

Nobel laureate Geoffery Hinton: AI “will very quickly develop two subgoals, if they’re smart: One is to stay alive…[and] the other subgoal is to get more control.”

To prevent these outcomes, Hinton said developers should make AI more sympathetic toward people to decrease its desire to overpower them. According to Hinton, the best way to do this is to imbue AI with the qualities of traditional femininity. Under his framework, just as a mother cares for her baby at all costs, AI with these maternal qualities will similarly want to protect or care for human users, not control them.

ESG Data Hell

Trump’s BLS appointee suggests suspending jobs report entirely until methods of data collection are ‘corrected’

Trump Bureau of Labor Statistics nominee was a 'bystander' outside Capitol on Jan. 6, White House says

DOJ fires sandwich thrower after he’s charged with assaulting officer in Washington, DC

The man facing a federal assault charge for throwing a Subway sandwich at a federal officer in Washington, D.C., was an employee at the Department of Justice, Attorney General Pam Bondi said: “This is an example of the Deep State we have been up against for seven months as we work to refocus DOJ …“You will NOT work in this administration while disrespecting our government and law enforcement.”

E.J. Antoni, an economist from the Heritage Foundation

I guess he’s not proud of Northern Illinois because his bio says: “Antoni holds master’s and doctoral degrees in Economics.”

Speaking of undereducation: Think tank president urges Gen Z to consider trades over college in tough job market

Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project

APP is a member of the advisory board of Project 2025,[28] a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power

Here’s one of his tweets: In 2021, I pulled my [7] kids out of public schools because of the woke garbage being taught in their classrooms. Today, my whole family is going to see President Trump put an end to the Department of Education.”

Energy Secretary Says Past Climate Reports Will Be ‘Updated.’ Why Researchers Are Alarmed.

The Trump administration plans to release “updated” versions of government climate reports from the past, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said he wants the reports toned down.

Wright said he disagrees with the conclusions in past National Climate Assessments, a benchmark review of climate change that the government puts out about every four years. The assessments are compiled by hundreds of scientists and researchers both within and outside government; the latest one was 1,834 pages. The Trump administration has pulled past reports down from the government website where they were previously hosted.

Before his appointment, he was the CEO of Liberty Energy, North America's second largest hydraulic fracturing company. Also was on the board of EMX Royalty Corp., a Canadian royalty payment company for mineral rights and mining rights.

In January 2023, he said, "There is no climate crisis and we're not in the midst of an energy transition either"

He has degrees in mechanical engineering (the study of physical machines and mechanisms that may involve force and movement) and electrical engineering (an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism)

In 2019 Wright drank fracking fluid to demonstrate that it was not dangerous

Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):

DR: Mark Cuban says companies should be taxed more for buying back their own shares

DR: Danske Bank Cuts Fossil-Fuel Exposure From Its Investments

Danske Bank A/S is removing over 1,700 fossil fuel-related companies from its investment universe, citing their failure to prepare for climate change.

MM: Elon Musk's America Party is nowhere to be seen 1 month later

MM: Netflix (NFLX) Secures Broadcasting Rights for FIFA Women’s World Cup MM

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

Takers MM

Musk says he’s suing Apple for not featuring X and Grok in ‘Must Have’ section of app store

Trump Has Made Himself Commander in Chief of the Chip Industry

Is Trump’s Plan to Take 15% of AI Chip Sales to China Legal?

Trump Calls on Goldman to Replace Economist Over Tariff Stance

US national debt hits record $37 trillion

U.S. Steel Plant Where Two Died Will Continue Operating, CEO Says

In the last 3 days, US insiders sold $463m worth of stock, including…

Herald Chen, 3% influence director at AppLovin - was CFO of company until December 2023, still on board, sold $182m worth of stock

In our database as an overall .477 hitter - slightly below average earnings, but high TSR

The stakeholder value returned by Chen: they sell ads in apps

46% of firm assets are goodwill and intangibles - stakeholder value so ephemeral it’s intangible

Pretending to give back

Walmart, once ordered to ‘eat the tariffs,’ is giving employees a year-round 10% discount to help them eat

No tax on tips?

Bad news for restaurant workers: Tipping in America is on the decline

Sam Altman says Gen Z are the ‘luckiest’ kids in history thanks to AI, despite mounting job displacement dread

Layoffs 2025: Companies have announced over 800,000 jobs cuts so far. There are 3 big reasons why

More employers are giving workers money to buy their own health insurance

Larry Ellison Wants to Do Good, Do Research and Make a Profit

Dual class dictator with biggest individual investments in Tesla, Theranos, and X

Anxiety about the economy is forcing two-thirds of U.S. employers to yank budgets for raises

And distracting you so you won’t notice

Wendy's says it realized it had 'too many' promotions this summer, confusing customers

White House Will ‘Definitely’ Host a U.F.C. Fight on July 4, U.F.C. Head Says

Dana White, on the Meta board of directors

The U.S. military is looking to buy Tesla Cybertrucks to use as missile targets

TikTok claims there’s a hack to get bigger portions at Chipotle: Put men’s names on your orders

Headliniest of the Week

DR: Hand soap recalled due to potentially life-threatening bacteria

DR: Don’t drink this recalled instant coffee from Dollar General. It might contain something dangerous

MM: Werner recalls more than 100,000 ladders over potential fall hazard

MM: Public company CEO resigns amid another leadership shake up

Who Won the Week?

DR: the anti-fascist Subway sandwich

MM: Delaware. Elon Musk called on corporations to leave Delaware. Delaware says it's doing just fine.

Predictions

DR: Subway rebrands with a “we know our sandwiches are gross so throw them at your least favorite fascists” campaign, featuring: Hitler, Stalin, Trump, and Zuck

MM: Paramount, now bought by nepo baby Daniel Ellison, goes full Trad Man and rebrands itself as “Man Media” - UFC rights, UFC on White House lawn, Yellowstone and its spinoffs, South Park manboy comedy.  As part of it, they launch a streaming service for men by men called “Cable”

E

Chemical pollution a threat comparable to climate change, scientists warn

Two companies are arguably the largest PFAs and chemical manufacturers of human pollutants, and both are publicly traded with boards you can vote out: 3M and Chemours

Texas prepares for war as invasion of flesh-eating flies appears imminent

Sid Miller, the Texas Ag Commissioner who once called Hillary Clinton a “cunt” on social media, will protect you from flesh eating flies.

Heatwaves will bring temperatures of 50C to Paris by 2050, weather experts warn

Plastic waste leakage in Asia could rise 70% by 2050: OECD

Washington State Braces for ‘Inevitable’ Megafire. Climate Change May Bring It Sooner

Great Barrier Reef records largest annual coral loss in 39 years

Climate change may be lengthening tick and mosquito seasons

France battles largest wildfire in 75 years amid climate change concerns

S

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is right: Big businesses need fewer people

So if you need fewer people, what will CEOs manage?  Do we also need fewer loud mouth CEOs?

Populist math: if every major business in the US cut 20% of staff, but CEOs were paid the same exact amount, the CEO pay ratio would go from 264:1 on average to 330:1 on average.  The total major employer employees would go from 30,085,694 to 24,068,555.  

Elon Musk has announced that we need to have more births in order to generate growth, and Andy Jassy has announced that less people should have jobs.  Maybe the two of them can start a band called “Bet You Wish You Were Rich”

Starbucks is asking customers in South Korea to stop bringing monitors, printers, and desk dividers into their stores

Match Group’s rape problem: A lawsuit alleges that inaction by Tinder and Hinge’s owner allowed abusers to stay on the apps

There's a new 'Tea' app going viral. This time, it's for men to post anonymously about women

The oppression of men continues, at least we can vent about it

Wendy's says it realized it had 'too many' promotions this summer, confusing customers

G

U.S. Government to Take Cut of Nvidia and AMD A.I. Chip Sales to China in potentially unconstitutional arrangement

MM: Trump said they, “negotiated a little deal. So he’s selling an essentially old chip.”  The “little deal” is an extortion payment, and the “he” is Jensen Huang.  That’s FOUNDER Jensen Huang, NOT shareholders or the board.  The board is busy at happy hour - there are FIVE 1990s/00s tech and VC bros - all bros - Rob Burgess, Tench Coxe, Harvey Jones, Brooke Seawell, Mark Stevens - most of whom have been with Jensen Huang for 30 years.  Who cares about central planning US socialism when your with your bros?

PS: You think Huang regrets flip flopping and kissing Trump’s ass now?:

From 2018: US chipmaker Nvidia's founder and Chief Executive Jensen Huang said curbing China's technological development could not be achieved by adopting heavy tariffs.

From May: “Obviously, I don’t know all of his ideas, but let me tell you about two that are incredible,” answered Huang. "The first one is utterly visionary. The idea of tariffs being a pillar of a bold vision to re-industrialize to onshore manufacturing and motivate the world to invest in the United States is just an incredible vision.”

Congrats on your extortion payments!

Tim Cook fawns over Trump with 24-karat gold gift during $600 billion Apple pledge

By 2050?

One Oregon company paid its CEO 1,300 times what workers make

A

Sam Altman says he's 'uneasy' about people trusting their biggest life decisions to ChatGPT

AI is creating new billionaires at a record pace

Instagram Map lets your friends, and possibly exes, track your every move

Story of the Week (DR):

Trump Demands Intel CEO’s Resignation, Says He’s ‘Highly CONFLICTED’ AND Eric and Donald Trump Jr. to Own Millions of Shares in New U.S. Manufacturing SPAC MM

ESG Analyst Tom Cotton: Trump's attack, posted on Truth Social Thursday, came two days after GOP Sen. Tom Cotton flagged Tan's prior investments in Chinese companies and his previous leadership at Cadence Design Systems, which recently pleaded guilty to unlawfully selling its tech to a blacklisted military university in China.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan (~$70M golden hello in March; max potential $400M) directly addressed employees on Thursday after Donald Trump demanded his resignation over national security concerns, saying he has the full support of the board.

Tan set up a venture firm called Walden International based in San Francisco that pumped more than $5 billion into over 600 companies. More than 100 of those investments were made in China, including deals with once-obscure startups such as Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.—today China’s largest chipmaker—where he served on the board for a decade and a half.

Today, the executive is still chairman of Walden International. And he’s the founding managing partner at Walden Catalyst Ventures, which focuses on investments in the U.S., Europe and Israel. He also serves in that role at another venture fund, Celesta Global Capital.

Tan stepped out of the venture world and joined the chip industry full-time when he became interim head of San Jose, California-based Cadence Design Systems Inc. in 2008. The executive, who had previously served on the board, went on to take the permanent CEO job the next year. He stayed in the role until 2021, when he transitioned to executive chairman, and is widely credited with restoring the company’s fortunes. 

In late July of this year, the Department of Justice announced a plea deal that cost Cadence more than $100 million in fines. Employees at Cadence’s China unit allegedly hid the name of a customer—the National University of Defense Technology—from internal compliance in order to keep supplying it. That organization had been put on the Department of Commerce’s blacklist in 2015. The Chinese university was one of a group of supercomputer operators there that had conducted simulations of nuclear explosions, the DOJ said.

Shares of American Eagle surge 20% after Trump calls Sydney Sweeney campaign 'hottest ad out there' AND Epstein victims are a growing political threat to Trump

The Fall 2025 campaign, titled "Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans," centers on a deliberate pun between "jeans" and "genes."

"Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color... My jeans are blue."

All the hallmarks of a dick-tatorship:

American Eagle gender influence gap is -36%: Jay L. Schottenstein

Mr. Schottenstein has served as our Chief Executive Officer since December 2015. Prior thereto, he served as our Interim Chief Executive Officer from January 2014 to December 2015. He has served as Chairman of the Board since March 1992. He previously served the Company as Chief Executive Officer from March 1992 until December 2002 and as a Vice President and Director of the Company’s predecessors since 1980

Creepy nepobaby son: The grown son of an Ohio billionaire is a hooker-loving drug addict who threatened to destroy the renowned Manhattan psychiatrist his parents enlisted to help him, according to bombshell court papers. Dr. Paul Conti, a Stanford-educated psychiatrist from Oregon, alleges in a federal suit that the son also gambled away millions of dollars during trips to Las Vegas while running up credit bills and borrowing money from mobsters.

SB360 Capital Partners: owned by Jay and his 3 sons (sorry wife): 13 listed executes: all white men

last time there was a vote on Jay (2023)

CEO/Chair control: has been CEO 3 times; chair since 1992; $300k security; 2,011:1 ceo pay ratio; 7% of shares (passive BlackRock/Vanguard/Dimensional/Wellington: 41%; 71% board influence

Audit Committee Chair (which net 20 times last year) and Lead independent Director Noel Spiegel is 77 and over a decade of service

Nominating chair Janice Page is 76 and has served for over 2 decades

Compensation Committee chair has served for nearly 2 decades

Uber’s Sexual Assault Problem AND Uber beats on revenue, announces $20 billion stock buyback

A recent New York Times investigation revealed that Uber has been dealing with a significant sexual assault problem. From 2017 to 2022, the company received over 400,000 reports of sexual assault or misconduct in the United States, which averages to about one incident every eight minutes.

The investigation, based on thousands of internal documents, found that while Uber studied the issue and even developed potential safety features like in-car cameras and a feature to match female drivers with female passengers, the company chose not to implement these safeguards because they were concerned about their bottom line and potential lawsuits.

Tesla Grants Musk $29 Billion in Stock to Keep ‘Elon’s Energies Focused’ AND Elon Musk Accused of Stiffing Small Businesses for Millions of Dollars, Causing Some to File for Bankruptcy AND Elon Musk Shares Shockingly Sexist Tweet About Woman Being Property. This one's disgraceful, even for Musk AND "This Will Open the Floodgates": Tesla In Trouble as Jury Orders It to Pay $329 Million After Autopilot Death AND Tesla withheld data, lied, and misdirected police and plaintiffs to avoid blame in Autopilot crash AND Elon Musk Appears to Now Be the Most Hated Person in America, According to New Research

Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):

DR: Waste from Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factories is now powering the Vermont grid

Now that the ice cream waste can travel by pipe to become biogas, Ben & Jerry’s can also make 600 fewer truck journeys a year, reducing the company’s carbon emissions.

DR: Gates Foundation is giving $2.5 billion to fund women’s health research

MM: Musk, Bezos, and Zuck are going full alpha male. America's girlbosses are fed up.

When companies won't offer work-from-home policies or the flexibility that working parents need, it can embolden people to become more entrepreneurial and build under their own terms.

This is the greatest backlash - if every woman in a “masculine default”, “founder mode” 13 year old man baby culture where “Jamie Dimon says” and John Stankey (see assholiest) says “maybe you don’t fit” goes and founds there own firms, I’m giddy to see them wipe the floor with those smug billionaire assholes.  

Side note - I missed this quote from January FT article in the post-Zuck-on-Rogan “masculine energy” interview, but it would have been assholiest of the decade:

“I feel liberated,” said a top banker. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled . . . it’s a new dawn.”

MM: In that vein - A long-running anti-DEI lawsuit could help companies defend themselves from reverse-racism claims DR MM

Hello Alice as goodliest of the week - take down that fucknut Stephen Miller and his fake Nazi manboys.

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

Alex Karp and the men who go to elite universities and say elite universities are bullshit manbabies

Palantir CEO says working at his $430 billion software company is better than a degree from Harvard or Yale: ‘No one cares about the other stuff’

Karp went to Haverford, then Stanford for a JD where he met Peter Thiel (who also doesn’t like elite education)

This past spring, the company also notably established the Meritocracy Fellowship, a four-month, paid internship for high school graduates who may be having second thoughts about higher education. Program admission is solely based on “merit and academic excellence,” but applicants still need Ivy League-level test scores to qualify. This includes at least a 1460 on the SAT or a 33 on the ACT, which are both above their respective 98th percentiles.

According to Karp, the internship was created in direct response to the “shortcomings of university admissions.”

Here’s the problem: there ARE shortcomings to elite colleges, mostly that they exude exclusivism and a commodity - but it’s still a pretty rich for a guy who WENT to Stanford where he met his future funder and mentor to talk about how bullshit it was

John Stankey and the re-rise of the Jack Welch man-directive manbabies MM

It is incredibly encouraging that 73% of our employees took the time to respond to the survey, with 79% of those respondents feeling committed and engaged with their work at AT&T. While this is reassuring, especially considering the amount of change we've navigated as a company recently, it wasn't a surprise to me that we fell short of our engagement goal.

TRANSLATION: I’m not surprised so many of you think we suck, I’ve been here 5 years as CEO and I’m not awesome at my job… but hold your breath while I tell you how it’s your fault

This note may also help you identify areas where your professional expectations might be misaligned with the strategic direction of this company.

TRANSLATION: It’s your fault

I understand that some of you may have started your tour with this company expecting an "employment deal" rooted in loyalty, tenure, and conformance with the associated compensation, work structure, and benefits. We have consciously shifted away from some of these elements and towards a more market-based culture — focused on rewarding capability, contribution, and commitment.

TRANSLATION: Fuck your job, this is a meritocracy now.  A manly meritocracy.

I understand that many may find the demands of your daily lives challenging and difficult. Elder care, job stress, child rearing challenges, economic uncertainty, community unrest, technology anxiety — the list can get long…We run a dynamic, customer-facing business, tackling large-scale, challenging initiatives. If the requirements dictated by this dynamic do not align to your personal desires, you have every right to find a career opportunity that is suitable to your aspirations and needs. That said, if a self-directed, virtual, or hybrid work schedule is essential for you to manage your career aspirations and life challenges, you will have a difficult time aligning your priorities with those of the company and the culture we aim to establish.

TRANSLATION: We know your life is hard, but shut the fuck up about it because I don’t care.

WHERE THE FUCK IS THIS BOARD?

Here are the “go hard or go home” board members

Bill Kennard, lead "independent" director connected in 13 loops to other directors, been there for 11 years, who got his undergrad in communications from Stanford and worked at the FCC and was an ambassador - proving once again that “communications” isn’t a qualification for communicating?

Marissa Mayer - maybe this business thing isn’t for you?  

Mike Mcallister, ex Humana CEO, who was investigated for duping elderly into thinking Obamacare’s passage would cut Medicare?

Scott Ford, who lead the biggest landline company before pivoting to selling coffee, as your bright star into the future of tech?

That’s where the board is - unqualified for the moment, highly interconnected, with long careers of average performance

Luis von Ahn and the tech bro “sorry, not sorry” we were just “being edgy” no but seriously I know what’s best for you secretly manbabies

Duolingo's CEO says he learned a hard lesson about 'edgy posts' and going viral

First, says Duolingo, the app for learning languages, would be “AI-first”

Then says they’re not hiring anymore as long as it can be done by AI

Then says schools will really just be childcare with AI teachers, and teachers will just “take care of the children” and you need schools for the “childcare”

In his apology, he said sorry for being “edgy”

Yes, it was the edginess, not the assholery

If you want to quickly identify a manbaby, it’s easy: first they “say” something they really think, then their apology basically is “sorry you didn’t get it, I won’t say it again”

Headliniest of the Week

DR: Shareholders Judge Directors by Their Faces, Study Finds

MM: Trump calls for Intel CEO to 'resign immediately'

More ESG analysis:

Boeing’s ex-CFO

BlackRock’s ex founder

The former CEO at Jack Dorsey’s Square

A partner at Sequoia

A Princeton professor

The former CEO of HP

The chair who’s a VC and has been there since 2009

Who Won the Week?

DR: Boston Mayor Michelle Wu for calling out the billionaire Kraft family regarding the new stadium proposed for the New England Revolution: “We haven’t asked for anything out of the ordinary for any significant development, much less a mega-development like this one … To this day, the Kraft Group has provided the city no meaningful technical information … What we’ve heard has stayed at a conceptual level that is insufficient for any serious negotiation.

Citing the proposed figure of $750,000 that the Kraft Group would pay to Boston as a mitigation fee, Wu said, “It is an unserious proposal … the figure is “just 1.1 percent of the $68 million mitigation package that was paid for the Everett casino project right nearby years ago.”

Wu, who as the incumbent is also campaigning against Josh Kraft (son of Revolution owner Robert Kraft) in Boston’s mayoral race, didn’t miss a chance to land a political dig at her opponent: Referencing the proposed mitigation fee, she said that “$750,000 is just one-and-a-half month’s of a billionaire son’s allowance. It is nowhere near the scale of what we need to address the plans that have already been laid out by our residents, with our traffic engineers, with the coordination of the entire region.”

MM: Jamie Smith at EY for writing the only other 2025 US proxy review that included a whole section on director votes

Predictions

DR: Trump tries to fit into a pair of Sydney Sweeney’s jeans (re: the OJ glove) to prove he did not know Epstein. The American Eagle stock surges

MM: Duolingo releases a new language choice, “Manbro”, in which it teaches how to apologize, how to be more intense, and why you should bow to your AI overlords

DAMION1

In our 'Treaty Talks Begin With Bold New Commitment to Avoid Commitment: Delegates agree to form a task force to consider considering action and then unite to Say 'Plastic Is Bad'—Then Go Back to Their Plastic-Filled Hotels' headline of the week. Here’s what to watch for at this month’s global plastics treaty talks

Negotiators from more than 170 countries are arriving in Geneva, Switzerland, this week to resume discussions over the United Nations plastics treaty, eight months after they missed their original deadline for finalizing the pact. Many delegates, advocacy groups, and U.N. officials are hopeful that the 10-day session will result in a final agreement that delivers on the U.N.’s objective to “end plastic pollution.” But progress has been slow at each of the five preceding sessions, in large part due to a consensus-based decision-making structure that has allowed oil-producing countries to obstruct progress.

In our 'Hey Ma, the dude who got his BA at Haverford College which costs $93,600 and received his JD from Stanford is mansplaining about elite colleges, can you grab my water bottle and my red lawn chair?!' headline of the week. Palantir CEO Alex Karp takes a shot at elite colleges and says the company offers 'a new credential independent of class

In our 'It's better off helping people without formal biology expertise design or recreate biological threats like toxins or pathogens' headline of the week. OpenAI says ChatGPT shouldn't tell you to break up with someone

In our 'What an asshole! The next thing he'll probably do is call out other banks for breaking their climate pledges ' headline of the week. Banking CEO breaks from the pack on return to office. He goes in 4 days a week but leaves the rest up to the ‘adults’ he works with

Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters

In our 'Citizen Journalist Robbie Starbuck and The National Legal and Policy Center prepare shareholder proposal calling out Microsoft and asking “What about MEN’S ovaries? This is woke biology gone too far.”' headline of the week. Gates Foundation is giving $2.5 billion to fund women’s health research

MATT1

In our '8Ks revealed that Charlie Scharf, Wells Fargo's CEO, was awarded $30m to open his mindspace, Steven Hemsley at UnitedHealth was given $60M to center his chi, and Goldman's CEO DJ DSol got $80m to attune his crystals and align his money aura.' headline of the week. Tesla Grants Musk $29 Billion in Stock to Keep ‘Elon’s Energies Focused’

In our 'Specifically, the part where they ran someone over' headline of the week. Jury Says Tesla Was Partly to Blame for Fatal Crash

In our 'Reports suggested the awning was made of cybertruck trim, the tables were actually crashed robotaxis, and the chicken wings were made from old Nazi bathroom graffiti' headline of the week. Tesla Diner Patio Covering Collapses, Smashes Mother on Head and Barely Misses Baby

In our 'Retention awards for "continued leadership"?  Or pay for focus?  Pay to show up?  Pay for "energy"? Relocation pay for my sister's cousin's condo in Ottawa? ' headline of the week. 2025 CEO Priorities

Adapt to changing external environments and regulatory landscape

Manage growth and investment amid current fiscal outlook

Create a resilient supply chain

Access to talent and workforce

Articulate a vision for an AI and tech-enabled enterprises

Embrace opportunities for personalized consumer experiences

Understand the changing environmental challenges

Shape the leadership team

Articulate Vision and strategy, and tell your story as a leader

Drive performance

Ensure proper governance processes

Collaborate with the board

Optimize organizational structure

Align communications

Satisfy shareholders and stakeholders

Build the culture

Navigate geopolitical uncertainty

In our 'If you can't tell your kid with a fever of 102 to suck it up and fuck off, maybe this company isn't for you' headline of the week. 5 things the AT&T CEO's sweeping memo says about where corporate America is headed

His name is John Stankey

"If a self-directed, virtual, or hybrid work schedule is essential for you to manage your career aspirations and life challenges, you will have a difficult time aligning your priorities with those of the company and the culture we aim to establish," Stankey wrote.

DAMION2

In our 'I refuse to celebrate until we reach 7.3%' headline of the week. The share of female CEOs running Global 500 companies hits a record high of 6.6% 

In our 'Houston American Energy Corp. announces that finally the phrase “Let’s hear what she thinks” can be said in the boardroom without an immediately ironic chuckle, now it can be an authentic condescending chuckle' headline of the week. Houston American Energy Corp. Appoints Martha J. Crawford to Board of Directors

In our 'Great, when he's done creating a practical application of cold fusion, could he explain why anyone would buy a Cybertuck, have him finish my daughter's algebra homework, and then share the wisdom behind Intel's stock price being down 22% from the day he started as Intel CEO?' headline of the week. Jim Cramer on Intel CEO: “He Totally Understands Everything”

In our 'After a nice brunch, they went to the aquarium and then to a poetry reading' headline of the week. Mary McDowell Joins Zebra Technologies Board of Directors

In our 'They named him Peter Semple, after their great grandfather, and then chained him to his desk ' headline of the week. Depop names permanent CEO

MATT2 

In our 'US companies give investors a break from voting NO on every shareholder proposal this year' headline of the week. US companies deny record number of shareholder votes

Average vote for ESG proposal: 20%.  Average vote against ESG proposal: 80%.

In our 'Please don't say suicidal ideation, aggression, reality detachment, and hallucinations, please don't say suicidal ideation, aggression, reality detachment, and hallucinations, please don't say suicidal ideation, aggression, reality detachment, and hallucinations...' headline of the week. A New Paper Just Found Something Horrifying About Kids Who Get Phones Early in Life

Chief scientist Tara Thiagarajan found that among the more than 100,000 18-to-24-year-olds whose outcomes they tracked, those who got phones when they were younger experienced more suicidal ideation, aggression, reality detachment, and hallucinations as they aged.

In our 'Man leaves gym and goes to Wendy's to get fit' headline of the week. Barclays leaves Net Zero Banking Alliance to combat climate change

If you want to prove your commitment to transitioning Barclays, feel free to use our data to vote out every director that underperforms on climate!

In our 'Olive Garden appoints car mechanic as executive chef' headline of the week. Harley-Davidson board appoints Topgolf executive as next CEO

Artie Starrs has been golf CEO, Pizza Hut CEO, is on a non profit board that helps underprivileged children, got an economics degree from Princeton, and he enjoys hiking, playing golf, listening to live music.  He sounds exactly like someone who rides a Harley.

In our 'SOMEONE IS ACTUALLY FIGHTING. And of course it's a female founder.' headline of the week. A long-running anti-DEI lawsuit could help companies defend themselves from reverse-racism claims

Elizabeth Gore of Hello Alice is fighting Stephen Miller’s AFL lawsuit brought on behalf of a white trucker in Ohio who says they didn’t get a shot at a grant that went to someone black - and Gore is winning because it’s all a fucking joke

Meanwhile, Brown, Harvard, Colombia and the high priced Ivies are folding like cowards

Reach out to Hello Alice or Gore, offer help or support, join the service, because somewhere there is someone fighting bullshit

Figma IPO QUIZ

The Figma IPO

Figma founder and CEO Dylan Field

What percentage of shares does he actually own in the company?

17%

What is total voting power?

74%

How many votes per share are magical Class B shares worth?

15 votes per share

What percentage of Class B shares does Dylan control?

99%

There are 5 executive officers and 10 directors, how many are women?

2 (directors)

Who is the chair of the Figma board?

CEO and founder and controlling shareholder Dylan Field

How many friendships with Peter Thiel does Dylan Field have?

1

How many college degrees does Dylan Field have?

0

Where did Dylan Field drop out of?

Brown

Who paid Dylan Field to drop out of college?

Peter Thiel

In addition to his shareholdings, how much is Dylan Field due to receive if the stock price hits $130 (it already was over $124)

$2B in equity

Which CEO’s pay package was Dylan Field’s pay package modeled after?

Elon Musk

How many years does Dylan Field have to reach that stock price hurdle?

10

How  old is this very rich college dropout?

33

In response to a question about how he was going to change the world, what did Dylan Field say?

He was going to build better software for drones.

Then I’m guessing Figma must truly benefit humanity if this guy is so rich, what does Figma do exactly?

Figma is a collaborative web application for interface design, with additional offline features enabled by desktop applications for macOS and Windows. The feature set of Figma focuses on user interface and user experience design, with an emphasis on real-time collaboration,[3] utilizing a variety of vector graphics editor and prototyping tools.

Story of the Week (DR):

​​Mark Zuckerberg just shared his vision for 'personal superintelligence.

"But perhaps even more important is that superintelligence has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where people will have greater agency to improve the world in the directions they choose,"'

Mark Zuckerberg is pouring billions of dollars into AI ‘superintelligence’—so why does his Instagram pitch feel so underwhelming?

Mark Zuckerberg Looks Like He's Been Taken Hostage as He Explains Plan for Deploying AI Superintelligence

Anthropic's CEO says massive salary changes could 'destroy' company culture

"If Mark Zuckerberg throws a dart at a dartboard and hits your name, that doesn't mean you should be paid 10 times more than the guy next to you who's just as skilled."

Amodei said such massive salary changes could "destroy" a company's culture by treating people "unfairly."

Many of his employees have rejected the outside offers, and some "wouldn't even talk to Mark Zuckerberg."

Wells Fargo board to appoint CEO Scharf as chairman and grant $30 million award MM

Special CEO Equity Award

one-time equity award consisting of Restricted Share Rights with a grant date value of approximately $30 million and 1.046 million Stock Options (Exercise Price: $82.65)

the Board approved and adopted the Company’s By-Laws:

The amendments remove the requirement that the Chairman of the Board be an independent director.

The Board also amended the Company’s Corporate Governance Guidelines to require a Lead Independent Director if the Chairman of the Board is not independent

Consistent with this change, the independent directors of the Board intend to appoint Mr. Scharf as Chairman of the Board, and to appoint a Lead Independent Director of the Board.

$30M last year, including $20M in equity

What happens to existing chair Steven Black?

Scharf was former CEO and CHair of The Bank of New York Mellon, when current Chair Black was appointed to the Mellon board

Black on Pay Committee

With Committee Chair Ron Sargent, former CEO/Chair of Staples and current interim CEO of Kroger

Wall Street returns to work after Manhattan shooting that killed Blackstone executive

The investigation is ongoing, but authorities found a note on the gunman suggesting Shane Tamura, who had a history of mental health issues, appeared to blame the National Football League (NFL) for a brain injury (CTE) he believed he had from playing football. His intended target was likely the NFL headquarters, which is also located in the building.

The investment firm's offices were closed on Tuesday after it said senior Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner was among those killed

Report: NFL will acquire up to 10 percent of ESPN as part of NFL Media deal

Just to tweak Matt: ‘Woke is officially dead at Brown,’ Trump says, after Ivy League school settles with federal gov

Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):

DR: Women Now Occupy Almost a Fifth of Top Venture Roles, Study Finds

The share of women in high-echelon postsThat share, which counts those in partner roles and above, has doubled since 2018 to 18.6%, according to nonprofit All Raise

MM: ‘Shame on them’: Standard Chartered CEO decries banks that drop climate pledges DR

Bill Winters criticised banks that had jumped on the climate bandwagon when it was “fashionable”, but had since rolled back on their green ambitions or gone quiet on the subject.

“Shame on them,” he said, without naming individual firms.

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

 Brown University

Trump: Woke Is Dead at Brown University

$50m extortion paid to Trump to restore funding

“Brown will adopt the government’s definition of “male” and “female,” for example, and must remove any consideration of race from the admissions process.”

“Brown will no longer perform gender reassignment surgeries on minors or prescribe them puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones,” Leavitt added, calling it “chemical castration of children.”

Barclays DR

Barclays Reports £500 Million in Sustainable Finance Revenues

In a report released YESTERDAY, the bank said it made $500m on sustainable finance

44 page report detailing how amazing their work on climate is, how sustainable they are, and all the benefits

Barclays latest British lender to quit climate banking alliance

"After consideration, we have decided to withdraw from the Net Zero Banking Alliance," the bank said in a statement on its website. "With the departure of most of the global banks, the organisation no longer has the membership to support our transition."

Microsoft

Microsoft CFO calls for 'intensity' in an internal memo, after blowout earnings

The chief financial officer, Amy Hood, sent an email to employees on Wednesday after the company reported a $27 billion quarterly profit, telling them the year ahead would require "intensity, clarity, and bold execution."

The adult in the room just joined the middle schoolers in talking about “growth mindset” and “intensity” in a race to the bottom where we gut employees but executives keep their jobs

The enigma of adulthood

Hood I’m sure is very worried about her job at MSFT… although she already has a job for life on the board of 3M, so why worry?

Not for nothing, but Amy Coleman got the role of Chief People Officer in March, just in time to fire everyone

She also cashed in more than $24m in options in the last 3 months, and despite being an NEO in the 10k, her contract was not disclosed in an 8K - curious how much she was paid to dispose of employees?  Or is that the “enigma of disclosure”?

Cowering employees

37% of employees have wondered if emojis are professional

Your employees are worried about emojis being professional

Your research team is worried about buying the best governance data on earth because of a podcast with a segment called “Assholiest”

Your rank and file, after years of wages that don’t keep the pace of inflation, have to deal with a Walmart exec saying “nobody” will want to hire you if you’re a “Debbie Downer”

Meanwhile…

Elon Musk Amplifies Bizarre Claim That 'Women Are Built To Be Traded' 

CEO Brags That He Gets "Extremely Excited" Firing People and Replacing Them With AI

Literally, every week Jamie Dimon says something and Sam Altman is afraid of the apocalypse he’s made… and your employees are so tenuous they’re worried about improper emoji use

Headliniest of the Week

DR: Elon Musk Amplifies Bizarre Claim That 'Women Are Built To Be Traded' AND

Elon Musk Pushes View That Women Are 'Anti-White' Because They're 'Weak'

DR: U.S. Women in Coffee welcomes Mark Inman to its Board of Directors

MM: Tesla Robotaxi Gets Stuck in Infinite Loop as Support Tries to Break It Out

MM: Starbucks CEO: The company was 'mismanaged for a couple years'—here's his plan to 'bounce back'

Who Won the Week?

DR: King Chuck

MM: Chainsaw Charlie! Cue memory reel:

Charlie Scharf steps down as Visa CEO in 2016 because he said he couldn’t spend enough time in San Francisco to do the job “effectively”

Becomes CEO of Wells Fargo in 2019 and… commutes to San Francisco from NYC

Immediately cuts staff, gets nicknamed “Chainsaw Charlie”... then complains he can’t find enough black workers because they’re not qualified

Joins board of Microsoft where he can oversee record profits and simultaneous staff cuts, a personal joy

Just got this news, he must be stoked: Wells Fargo board to appoint CEO Scharf as chairman and grant $30 million award

Predictions

DR: As part of of its 10% ownership of ESPN, the Disney board refuses to add an NFL player to its board but agrees to attend all board meetings wearing spandex and shoulder pads 

MM: Wells Fargo’s investors are unhappy with Scharf’s new chair appointment and retention grant, vote 73% approval of Scharf’s pay but 99.6% in favor of everyone on the pay committee who set the pay and voted to make him chair

Traditional

Glass Lewis, ISS sue Texas over law restricting use of ESG in proxy-voting advice

Italian court allows climate lawsuit against energy giant to proceed

Italy’s highest court has given the green light to a lawsuit against the oil giant Eni for its role in warming the planet, rejecting the company’s motion to dismiss the case. The environmental groups Greenpeace Italy and ReCommon, along with 12 Italian citizens filed suit in 2023 against the state-controlled oil producer for “past and potential future damages resulting from its contribution to climate change.”

Honolulu’s lawsuit against fossil fuel companies leads climate change legal fight

Honolulu’s lawsuit is further along than similar litigation across the country. A hearing on Tuesday will indicate how these fights play out in court. In 2020, Hawaii’s capital city sued major oil companies, including ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron, arguing they knew for nearly half a century that fossil fuel products create greenhouse gas pollution that warms the planet and changes the climate. The companies have also profited from the consumption of oil, coal and natural gas while deceiving the public about the role of their products in causing a global climate crisis, the lawsuit says.

Rhode Island is the first state to provide menopause accommodations at work

Citing New Rules, Meta Says It Will End Political Ads in E.U.

Beginning in October, the company will stop ads related to political, electoral or social issues, it said in a release, citing a forthcoming E.U. regulation around the transparency of political advertising

The Country Where 76% of Cars Sold Are Electric

Nepal; 20% worldwide 20%; Norway 92%; US 10%

Speed Round

Is this good because a headline not affiliated with Free Float is saying it out loud?: Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol made 6,666 times more than the median employee at his coffee chain last year

Sub-score: Is this also good because they actually named the CEO in the headline?

Is this good because a CEO is connecting consumer prices to Trump's tariffs?: Procter & Gamble CEO says Trump tariffs are causing the company to hike prices on shoppers

Is this good because a CEO is saying something about AI that is not corporate gobbledygook?: Bluesky's CEO warns you shouldn't 'fully outsource your thinking' to AI

Is this good because JD Vance agrees with me?: JD Vance calls out Big Tech for firing Americans while hiring cheap foreign H-1B visa replacements

Is this good because Hooters is gross?: Hulk Hogan’s death could be bad news for Hooters

Is this good for Free Float Media?: Young people aren’t anti-capitalist. They’re just sick of corporate hypocrisy