Story of the Week (DR):

Berkshire board names Greg Abel as CEO, Buffett to remain chair

Warren Buffett says he'll propose Greg Abel take over as Berkshire Hathaway CEO at year-end

Warren Buffett makes surprise announcement: He's stepping down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO

OpenAI  backs off push to become for-profit company

In a nutshell, with help from its chatbot: “OpenAI has restructured into a hybrid model with a nonprofit parent company, OpenAI Inc., and a for-profit subsidiary now called a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). This shift allows for investment while keeping a focus on its mission of developing AGI for the benefit of humanity. The change responds to previous criticism about reducing nonprofit oversight.”

OpenAI’s nonprofit mission fades further into the rearview

Sam Altman urges lawmakers against regulations that could ‘slow down’ U.S. in AI race against China

Kohl’s CEO Fired After Investigation Finds 'Highly Unusual' Business Deal with Former Romantic Partner

Kohl's CEO Ashley Buchanan was fired after an internal investigation revealed he violated the company's conflict-of-interest policies. The probe found that Buchanan directed business to a former romantic partner, Chandra Holt, who is the CEO of Beyond Inc. and founder of Incredibrew. Holt secured a multimillion-dollar consulting deal with Kohl's under unusually favorable terms, which Buchanan failed to disclose.

As a result, Buchanan was dismissed for cause, forfeiting equity awards and required to repay a portion of his $2.5 million signing bonus.

This marks the third CEO departure at Kohl's in just three years, highlighting ongoing leadership instability amid declining sales.

Proxy Firms Split on Harley-Davidson Board Shake-Up MM

Glass Lewis= Withhold; ISS =  What’s happening at Harley exactly?

We have a fun twist at the proxy cage match between Harley Davidson and H Partners, who are 9% shareholders and have started a withhold vote campaign against long-tenured directors Jochen Zeitz, Thomas Linebarger, and Sara Levinson: Glass Lewis says “withhold” but ISS says “support”?

Through lackluster reasoning based on hunches and not performance analytics, ISS revealed, without satire, that "[T]here are compelling reasons to believe that as a group [the targeted directors] still have a perspective that can be valuable” and, in discussing the candidacy of departing CEO Jochen Zeitz: “[I]t appears that his time in the role has been more positive than negative, which makes it hard to argue that his vote on a successor is worthless.”

Testimony in House Hearing: “Exposing the Proxy Advisory Cartel: How ISS & Glass Lewis Influence Markets”

A 2015 study found that 25 percent of institutional investors vote “indiscriminately” with ISS [1].

In 2016, a study estimated that a negative recommendation from ISS leads to a 25-percentage point reduction in voting support for say-on-pay proposals [2].

A 2018 study demonstrated that a negative recommendation from ISS was associated with a reduction in support of 17 percentage points for equity-plan proposals, 18 points for uncontested director elections, and 27 points for say-on-pay [3].

In 2021, a study examining “robo-voting”—the practice of fund managers voting in lockstep with the recommendations of ISS—identified 114 financial institutions managing $5 trillion in assets that automated their votes in a manner aligned with ISS recommendations 99.5% of the time [4].

A 2022 study provided further evidence that institutional investors are highly sensitive to an opposing recommendation from a proxy advisory firm. Opposition from ISS was associated with a 51 percent difference in institutional voting support compared with only a 2 percent difference among retail investors [5].

During the 12 months ending June 30, 2024, negative recommendations from the two proxy advisory firms were associated with (1) a 17-percentage point difference in support for directors in uncontested elections at the S&P 500 (96.9% with the firms’ support vs. 79.7% without); (2) a 35-percentage point gap for say-on-pay proposals (92.8% vs. 58.0%); and (3) a 36-percentage point difference for shareholder proposals (42.4% vs. 6.6%)

Why Leo XIV? Pope's chosen name suggests commitment to social justice

Pope Names

Leo: Many Pope Leos were reformers or defenders of Church teachings.

John: often linked to pastoral care and modernization.

Paul: Reflects missionary zeal and intellectual work.

Gregory: Reform, liturgy, and missionary outreach.

Benedict: Benedict XVI emphasized faith and reason in a skeptical age.

Pius: Emphasis on traditional piety and Church authority.

Clement: Reconciliation and peacemaking.

Innocent: Ironically, several Popes named Innocent wielded immense political power.

Urban: Engagement with worldly and civic matters.

Francis: Poverty, simplicity, ecological concern.

CEO Names

Warren: cuddly billionaires who control everything, put family members on board, and say pithy things

Jamie: blowhard control freaks bankers who think they should be President and have something to say about everything

Mark: college dropout social media dictators who have no oversight while charting humanity’s demise

Elon: arrogant and childish Wizard of Ozzian leaders who pretend to be company founders with world domination delusions

Sundar: East Asian stewards meant to distract from actual Tech dictators

Tim: Genteel Southern cruise ship captains who keep a steady hand after replacing legends

Etc.

Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):

DR: Bill Gates to give away $200 billion by 2045, says Musk is 'killing' world's poorest children

DR: This Subaru has an external airbag to protect cyclists: The design helps protect both pedestrians and cyclists in a crash MM DR

MM: Proxy Firms Split on Harley-Davidson Board Shake-Up

The other major proxy firm, Glass Lewis, reached a different conclusion. It said Tuesday that the directors had “overseen starkly suboptimal shareholder returns,” and that removing them from the eight-person board likely wouldn’t create any problems.

MM: 80% of Gen Z, Millennials Plan to Increase Allocations to Sustainable Investments: Morgan Stanley Survey

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

All Zuckerberg edition

Certified watch guy Zuck

Mark Zuckerberg is a certified watch guy. Here are some of his standout timepieces, from a $120 Casio to a $900,000 Greubel Forse.

These are the stories as Trump, whose ass Zuck’s lips are firmly planted on, says you should only have 3 dolls - Zuck’s watches, C.E.O. Pay Raise Sparks Outrage Among Teachers and Public Officers, 58 crypto wallets have made millions on Trump's meme coin. 764,000 have lost money, data shows, The best and worst looks billionaires wore to the 2025 Met Gala

Friend maker Zuck DR

Mark Zuckerberg wants you to have more friends — but AI friends

Mark Zuckerberg destroyed friendship. Now he wants to replace it with AI.

Meanwhile, no wonder: Mark Zuckerberg says his management style involves no 1-on-1s, few direct reports, and a 'core army' of 30 running Meta

Man with no friends says you need more and will provide fake ones?

Human picker Zuck

Zuck’s version of human friends probably the reason he wants to make you fake ones - hand-selected fake friends on the board (Patrick Collison and Dina Powell McCormick to Join Meta Board of Directors):

4 tech bro dictators (Tan, Houston, Collison, Xu)

3 tech bro suck ups (Andreessen, Alford, Songhurst)

1 nepo baby dictator (Elkann)

1 family dictator suck up (Travis)

2 DJT suck ups (White, Powell McCormick)

2 US govt suck ups (Killefer, Kimmitt)

Prediction - Zuck to have the first true AI board member?

Empathetic Zuck

Gaslighting, golden handcuffs, and toxicity: Former Meta employees shared what it was like to be laid off as low performers

A former senior machine learning engineer at Meta described the shock of being laid off, only for a Meta recruiter to invite her to reapply three days later and skip the interview process.

Two weeks before the layoffs, he said, his new manager told the team everyone was "safe." Then came the termination email — and a performance rating of "Meets Some Expectations," low on Meta's end-of-year rating scale. "How could they evaluate my performance when I'd only worked 10 weeks in 2024?" he said, adding that an HR director had said he was "too new to evaluate."

An engineer was laid off after five months of leave for a serious health crisis while in the middle of disability-related negotiations.

Meta exec apologizes to conservative activist Robby Starbuck

Lover Zuck

Mark Zuckerberg's Wife Was Weirded Out by His Strange Gift to Her

He made it for her not out of love, but because…The billionaire is apparently a huge fan of the sculptor behind the statue, the pop artist Daniel Arsham, but decided to go with his wife's likeness, he said on the podcast, because a statue of himself would have been "crazy."

Academic Zuck

Mark Zuckerberg says college isn't preparing students for the job market

Headliniest of the Week

DR: Olivia and John Randal Tyson Named to Tyson Foods Board of Directors

DR: This new mental health service targets burned-out content creators: CreatorCare offers affordable therapy tailored to influencers and digital creators—addressing the rising mental health toll of life online.

DR: Costco co-founder still goes into the office weekly at age 89: ‘To be successful, you’ve got to be pretty focused’

Costco co-founder Jim Sinegal stepped down from his role in 2012. But Sinegal still goes to the office some Tuesdays

DR: Billionaire KKR cofounders say 'emotional intelligence' should be a focus for young investors

KKR leadership page:

1 of 8 are women: It HAS to be head of marketing, head of people, or head of legal stuff: so which is it? It’s Chief Legal Officer Kathryn Sudol

Board is 14:4F; no F in leadership role 

MM: Elon Musk's Urgent Concern: That the Earth Is Going to Get Swallowed by the Sun

"Mars is life insurance for life collectively," Musk said. "So, eventually, all life on Earth will be destroyed by the Sun. The Sun is gradually expanding, and so we do at some point need to be a multi-planet civilization because Earth will be incinerated."

It is slated to happen in 6 billion years

MM: Elon Musk is responsible for “killing the world’s poorest children,” says Bill Gates

Who Won the Week?

DR: Pope #-267, duh. The world’s greatest vampire CEO. And Villanova students (who are not openly gay or have vaginas), who all suddenly now believe they will eventually be the pope. 

MM: Your shitty washer/dryer, which no longer looks horrible: E.P.A. Plans to Shut Down the Energy Star Program

Predictions

DR: Open AI’s CEO, Mark VII, creates a deepfake video showing the country of China eating his baby at one of his homes in Hawaii causing the Trump administration to completely dismantle the SEC.

MM: Sit tight for this, I have two: 

Euronext rebrands ESG in drive to help European defence firms - “energy, security, and geo-strategy” flops, so to LSEG rebrands its ESG Scores to “Emitting, Smoking, Gambling” so that investors can finally do ESG investing and feel good about it

Musk gets his Texas wish. SpaceX launch site is approved as the new city of Starbase - I predict in 12 months, Musk is offering SpaceX employees that live in Starbase (a company town) crypto tokens instead of pay that are redeemable at stores in Starbase.  To avoid them being called scrips, which were outlawed in the US in 1938 but still used anyway through the 1960s, Musk will list them on crypto exchanges that can be used to trade for dollars (but are totally worthless).  Eventually, so indebted to the space plantation and Musk, there is a new renaissance of “resistance music” (a la “We Shall Overcome” and “Sixteen Tons”) with a song ranking number 1 in the US by the end of 2026.