The company in Belgium that makes most of the world's cinema projectors
There is a godfather of executive pay.
Hi there,
This week I discovered that executive pay has a godfather and his name is Arch Patton. Mr Patton (a consultant at McKinsey) was hired by General Motors in 1951 to conduct a study of executive pay. His findings showed that the average pay of workers had more than doubled over the previous 15 years whilst executive pay had gone up by a mere 35%.
It didn’t take long for executives everywhere to cotton on to the fact they were being ‘underpaid’ and engage the services of Arch Patton to confirm this. Patton personally accounted for more than 10% of McKinsey’s billings for several years and to consolidate his work he wrote the inclusively titled Men, Money and Motivation: Executive Compensation as an Instrument of Leadership.
Faced with increasingly absurd levels of executive pay and openly self-serving approaches to improving compensation in the 1980s, Patton was asked how he felt about the impact of his work - “guilty” was his response.
Gimme the loot,
Hugo
Chief Compensated Officer
The Business of Stuff
The Stuff
Sir Paul McCartney becomes the first UK billionaire musician 🪲 - Britain’s resident cheeky chap for the past 60 years has edged over the £1billion mark, helped by Beyoncé covering Blackbird, a tour and the Platonic ideal of a cash cow that is The Beatles back-catalogue. Macca was probably quoted as saying “I was never in it for the money man”.
Shares in Reddit rise as deal with OpenAI announced 💸 - the ever-incensed group of senior Redditors will not be happy as users' posts are included in the training data for ChatGPT. Whilst admittedly annoying for them there are a lot of random but plausible insights to be found on Reddit so it will certainly add to the value of the answers given by ChatGPT.
Reality TV stars charged for pushing a dodgy trading platform 💱 - the problem with having no core skillset if you have to peddle whatever random shit comes your way. Usually, it’s something relatively harmless like some very average skincare products, potentially distributed in a pyramid-type business model. ‘Finfluencers’ have become a big thing in the past couple of years where people tout advice on trading, usually to get people to sign up for some sort of course. The Financial Conduct Authority is fortunately trying to crack down on this sort of thing.
Kellogg’s closes factory in Trafford Park, resulting in 100 job losses 🥣 - people just aren’t falling for the ‘cereal is good for you’ routine anymore and are replacing Frosties with overnight oats or something like that. Well, that and the production process has changed completely from the 1930s when the site opened and no longer requires six floors of space. They were producing one million boxes of cereal per day.
Raspberry Pi is going to list in London 📈 - the minicomputer manufacturer is planning an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange to enable it to expand its employee base and offer new products. The company has been instrumental in providing millions of children with access to a computer science education through its affordable mini-computers. It is the best-selling British computer of all time (the ZX Spectrum previously held the title).
OpenAI launches its latest model 🤖 - the slightly flirtatious Chat GPT-4o is here and more talented than ever. It can replace your half-hearted attempts to help your child with their maths homework and act as a live translator as you struggle to ask for directions to the swimming pool. Much of the functionality has been made available to free-tier users where previously it was only available to subscribers.
Eight-year-old is furious at £4.50 ice creams 🍦 - a girl has amusingly kicked off at how much a couple of cold treats cost and the refusal of the seller to accept cash. She is either old beyond her age or has had to listen to one too many “world gone mad” speeches from a close relative. Ice cream vans or “mobilers” are inevitably having a tough time as it is so irate eight-year-olds (irate-year-olds?) going to town on them must just add salt to the wound.
Tiny Mexican taco stand wins a Michelin star 🌮 - El Califa de León only has room for about six people to stand inside but it now ranks amongst the best restaurants in the world. Bemused locals who are not used to waiting more than five minutes for a taco discovered queues of excited tourists waiting to try the tacos.
Samsung makes the most out of Apple’s dodgy advert ⚔️ - forget the Kendrick-Beef, there’s nothing like a massive corporation sending for another one. Samsung has released ‘Uncrush’ which shows a guitarist picking up a guitar from the mess made by Apple and using a Galaxy Tab to read the sheet music while she plays. Great work guys.
A company in Beligum makes most of the world’s cinema projectors 🇧🇪 - Barco has been around since 1934 and has a 55% market share. They didn’t actually start making video equipment until the 70s and led the charge from massive rolls of film to digital projection.
Quote of the week
Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now, let's write a swimming pool.' - Paul McCartney