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Celebrity CEOs Like Jensen "Romeo" Huang: Any Governance Lessons Learned?

  No succession plan. Warnings of a romantic relationship with a suspected spy for China were not acted on. Internal whispers of romance with a subordinate. Yet tech rock star Jensen Huang got away with it. Until he didn't. The Wall Street Journal reports that the board is meeting to oust him. But not before some investors are in deep angst, wondering if the stock will come back. That is, can the business return to normal? In after-hours trading, the stock is down almost 9 points, hovering around 158. Of course, there are plenty of governance lessons to be learned. Lots of experts will be publishing articles on this. But they usually aren't embedded in the collective memory bank.  We should have learned from Enron and from the mess Jack Welch wound up making at GE. We didn't. At law firm Paul, Weiss Brad Karp had established the first practice in the US to help business leaders with governance and related issues. Obviously, they weren't quick studies. The gallows humor...
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AI Rainmakers Poached from Sullivan & Cromwell: Does Paul, Weiss' Scott Barshay Have Something to Crow about?

  According to some AI watchers, the acid test for the near future of the technology is two-fold. One, the initial stock performance for the Anthropic IPO and then how the stock does after that.  In addition, there's the uncertainty created by the crisis of leadership at Nvidia. Meanwhile, OpenAI continues to suffer massive operating losses . And the Dems have abruptly applied the brakes to the construction of data centers. So, it remains to be seen if Paul, Weiss' poaching of two AI partners from Sullivan & Cromwell to launch a third California office is something for chair Scott Barshay to crow about. The two laterals are Nader Mousavi, who represented ChatGPT-maker OpenAI in deals with Microsoft and more, and Mark Schenkel. The first two California Paul, Weiss offices, established by Brad Karp, architect of law firm's growth, are in San Francisco and Los Angeles. This one is in Silicon Valley. But crow Barshay is doing. He tells Bloomberg :  “Nader and Mark pract...
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I Can't Afford Pepsi, Not Anymore

National brand Pepsi seemed to sleep during the flight into private label. It's been years since I purchased its diet cola. Sam's Club is what I not only guzzle myself but which I no longer feel less-than serving to guests. The same for salty snacks. Walmart now features its own generics for impulse buying near the register. I grab. Sure, Pepsi lowered its prices a bit. But not enough. And who is paying the penalty for the price-point mismatch with what we can afford are employees. Across the food and beverage businesses in North America it's laying off 1,000. Meanwhile, the leadership says it's focusing on a turnaround. While it's doing that more will be getting out of the habit of purchasing national brands and tossing in the shopping cart private label. How will Pepsi get those shoppers back? In coaching entrepreneurs I hammer the critical importance of price points, both in products and services. Careers. Forget all that. It’s about earning a good living, no mat...
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Nvidia's Futures

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After Hours: Last | 6:46 AM EST 177.60 -9.04 (-4.84%)   Jim Cramer warns it's going to get worse. The gallows humor could for some of us is that we were too poor to buy Nvidia stock
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Falling for the Wrong Dame - Smart Men, Ranging from Jensen Huang to Leon Black

  Nvidia stock futures are down about 5%. And Jim Cramer warns not to buy when the market opens since it'll probably go down more.  Again, a leading corporation is in freefall, at least temporarily, because the leader fell for the wrong dame. In this case, it's CEO Jensen Huang's affair with much-younger Chinese woman Alice Huang. Beyond the matters of the heart, there's the allegation that his romantic partner is a spy for China.  Currently, the story is that the CEO was "targeted." That is, he was conned in the oldest way men are. But, come on, beneath the surface could be the possibility that he was somehow a participant in the alleged wrongdoing. So, we wonder: What did this leader know and when did he know it. Also, Apollo co-founder Leon Black lost his heart to the wrong woman - Guzel Ganieva. Although that ended years ago, so far, he hasn't been able to shake the reputational damage. Bestselling "Money To Burn" by William Cohan includes...
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Legal Sector: Good Times Still Rolling, But Some of That Now Under Wraps

  Like the rest of the overall job market in October 2026, the legal sector produced jobs. Lots of them: 2,500. And the aggregate number of jobs in legal services is 1,251,200.  Meanwhile, BTI Consulting Group  projects a continuation of high profits for the law-firm niche. Litigation services will especially be the right side of the law of supply and demand. Not so much for entry-level JDs. Modern Counsel documents:  "The total number of entry-level legal positions fell by about 2,700 from the previous class, while federal government and public-interest hiring also declined sharply." Given the comprehensive adoption of AI, even in the current slowed-down mode, timing could be off for the employment of future law classes. There's a lot of jaw-jawing about the need to still stock the pool of those to succeed current leadership but will law firms put their resources where those kinds of declarations are.  A sign of client, Congressional and Main Street unrest ...
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Who You Are - Sorry, But That Style Is No Longer Marketable

  The universal cry out there among those who lost their way of making a living is: They can't find new jobs. Not in their field, not even with stretches into other lines of work.  Too often, I've observed in my intuitive coaching and tarot readings is this: Who they were in how they earned a good living is no longer marketable. Those out of luck range from the former academic to the policy analyst to the wildly creative writer. That person or persona isn't what employers and clients are willing to pay money to hire. At least in a growing number of fields. This isn't new with AI, cost-efficiency and aging.  Way back in more abundant times - we're in an economy of scarcity - those purged in a Big Oil merger 1) Spent years searching for new jobs and 2) Often lost them soon after. It had never occurred to them to tone down or ditch entirely their elite intellectual way of presenting themselves. That was even though they went out there in a labor market as the conquered...
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