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Joe Nocera and Kate O'Leary: Unpacking HBO's Succession (Season 4).
Description
*Prior episodes reviewing Succession:
0:00 -- Intro.
2:12-- About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel.
2:58 -- Start of interview.
3:54 -- On the influence and leadership style of Logan Roy. The "ultimate corporate governance challenge."
6:41 -- Comparing the (fictional) Roy family with the (real) Murdochs and Sultzbergers. "Why is Logan trying to sell Waystar? The answer is simple. He knows his kids can't cut it. So, his way of getting out of this whole dilemma is to sell the company, give the kids billions of dollars, you know, as their share for their stock, and then let them all go their own way."
09:47 -- On dual-class share structures. "[In the media business] just because you have dual shares doesn't mean you will always be protected from the vagaries of the marketplace." (example: the Bancroft family with the WSJ).
13:06 -- On the role of media and politics. Joe Nocera: "My line on succession is using succession to understand corporate America is like using the Simpsons to really understand small towns."
18:42 -- On corporate money in politics: "Forget Presidential elections. The real thing that happens in real life is that companies give lots of money to congressmen and senators who are on committees that they care about and who are willing to do their bidding. That's how it works. And that's why the little guy always gets screwed in these things, because they don't have the potency. They don't have the money. They don't have the access. And in terms of influence, it's not just media. It's all kinds of companies that are doing this for their own interest. And that's the way the world works. Is it nice? Is it good? No, not necessarily, but that's how it works."
19:57 -- On fraud and stockholder litigation. The overstating of subscribers in India by GoJo.
24:05 -- The role of the board of Waystar Royco in the takeover negotiation with GoJo. The example of Twitter acquisition by Elon Musk, and HP-Autonomy. Joe Nocera: "Companies overpay all the time because the CEO wants to build his empire, because they think there's something there that turns out not to be there, because they're in a competition with another company and they got to have this victory. Overpaying is very normal and then you have these multi-billion dollar write-downs blah blah blah."
28:23 -- Comparing Lukas Matsson to Elon Musk. "The rise of the ungovernable CEO."
30:34 -- On obstacles to women in the workplace. The cases of Shiv, Geri and Ebba. Kate: "It's an extreme version, but these are real issues that real women face all the time. I don't know that there's a corporate governance solution to it, other than culture, right? You know, it all comes back to culture and how you build culture."
36:35 -- On corporate culture: Joe: "In the modern age, the Rupert Murdochs and the Logan Roys are anomalies. I mean, you've got a situation now where David Solomon at GS is being widely criticized. Why? Because he's a harsh boss, he's a brutal boss, he makes demands, he's not an empathetic person. And nowadays companies wan