1 Hero/Zero
Iger to star in “Extreme Makeover” – Disney Edition
HERO: Bob Iger returns to Disney to fix the House of Mouse and hand the keys to a new owner. Another old guy in Hollywood does a sequel to a hit (think: Tom Cruise in TopGun Maverick).
ZERO: Bob Chapek. He took the reins in 2020 from Iger and allowed Disney to get in a public war with Scarlett Johansson over her Black Widow theatrical contract language, stumble into a PR war in Florida over the so-called “Don’t Say Gay“ bill, lost $1.5B (not a typo – that’s a B) just last quarter on streaming while Hulu actually grew subscribers and recently endured public backlash after announcing theme park price increases. No, Chapek didn’t “do” all of this, but he’s the captain and all of it happened on his watch.
3 Articles
1. Google Cloud has been losing money – on sales commissions – huh??
Google sales reps have been receiving commissions on customer contract VALUE (target revenue), not customer SPEND (actual revenue). This bloated commission paid to reps but Google’s CFO apparently has returned from PTO and the party is over. Read about this here.
2. WTF – why did it take this long?
World Taekwondo Foundation (finally) changes its name. Read about this here.
3. Stocked up on airline points on credit cards? Use them NOW.
It’s about to be an expensive holiday season. Read about this here.
5 Stats
1. Tech layoffs jump from this summer. November 1-21 approx. 6,400 people were laid off in tech, which is as many as were let go in June, July and August combined.
2. Instacart delivers 66% valuation cut as it announced valuation of $13B – down from $39B. Yes, the IPO date has moved to “sometime next year.”
3. Women CEO count – NOT Good NOT Great as they now represent 15% of Fortune 500 CEOs (74) and it took 20 years to get there (7 in 2002). Yet, 40% of MBAs are women.
4. Unintended Consequences – is the green lobby hurting unions? Ford says it will take 40% LESS workers to build EVs versus gas-powered vehicles.
5. Hey Alexa, how many layoffs are coming in your division? Amazon revealed it lost $3B in the past quarter and is on pace to lose $10B on Alexa devices in 2022.