Woke Pepsi spent years greenwashing, virtue signaling — and blowing billions on stock buybacks to fizz its share price. Paul Singer’s ruthless Elliott Investment Management has taken note.
Pepsi’s fate couldn’t happen to a more deserving management.
Business
My Morning MVP: QB Patrick Mahomes’ Can of Joe
Patrick Mahomes has already established himself as one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history. In short order, he could also be more closely associated with coffee than Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol.
Mahomes helped concoct far superior coffee beverages.
Fuzzy Math, Fat Dividends, Put Ford Family First
The Ford family once tightened their belts to protect their company. Today? They’re milking it with generous dividends.
Wall Street Journal columnist Jonathan Weil — the first reporter to question Enron’s finances and a relentless critic of private equity’s “fishy” accounting — has sounded the alarm on Ford’s dividend math.
Weil’s take? Ford’s “adjusted free cash flow” is little more than cash flow before bad stuff. Wall Street has a less charitable term for Ford’s financial legerdemain.
Protect Children From Mark Zuckerberg’s Greed
Mark Zuckerberg spent $110M to wall himself off from his Silicon Valley neighbors. He could have used some of his billions to wall children off from Meta’s chatbots.
Reuters uncovered internal guidelines that allowed bots to flirt with kids and even write racist screeds. Meta’s response? The same rinse-and-repeat PR denial we’ve heard for years.
So far, only rock legend Neil Young has expressed outrage — and bolted from Facebook.
Enron Sleuth Jonathan Weil’s Private Equity Alarm
Pension funds. University endowments. Your retirement account. The Wall Street Journal reporter who first exposed Enron warns they could be the next victims of private equity’s “fishy” accounting.
The Narcissism of Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol
Gulfstreams. $14,000 cappuccino machines. A $96M payday—6,666x the median wage he pays employees—while telling managers to cut costs. Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol is the poster boy for CEO narcissism. Here’s why investors should care.
Eureka! The True Value of a McKinsey Consultant
My latest Starkman Approved trilogy:
The true value of a McKinsey consultant—spoiler: it’s not their slide decks.
Corporate America doubles down on toxic stock buybacks while the real economy withers.
Delta Air Lines traps passengers in another tarmac debacle—no air, no toilets, no accountability.
Read and rage — at least that’s my intent.
Why Verizon Deserves to Crash and Burn
Verizon only wants “high-quality” customers, says its $24 million CEO Hans Vestberg. If that’s the goal, investors should demand the immediate deactivation of Vestberg—and the dead-weight board he chairs.
AT&T’s John Stankey Enters CEO Hall of Shame
Mass layoffs. Major data breaches. A disrespected brand. And the architect of one of the worst media deals in recent corporate history.
AT&T CEO John Stankey’s record is a case study in failing upward.
And yet—last week—he told employees they must embrace AT&T’s new performance-based culture.
2024 CEO Pay: Oink, Oink, Piggy, Piggy
America’s CEO aristocracy is delusional if it thinks it can keep gorging on obscene compensation while tossing crumbs to the workers who keep their empires afloat.
At the next meeting of the Business Roundtable—that gilded club of corporate royalty—someone might want to include a short history lesson on a woman named Marie Antoinette.