Morning Brew Daily - Amazon Dabbles in the Luxury Biz & How Euro Elections Impact Global Markets

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

Episode 360: Neal and Toby recap the historical elections happening across the pond in the UK and France, and how they will impact the US markets. Then, some mega mergers from over the weekend: Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus create a luxury behemoth, Skydance and Paramount link up, and Six Flags and Cedar Fair become the largest amusement park operator in the US. Meanwhile, four volunteers emerge from NASA’s year-long experiment simulating what it’d be like to live on Mars. Also, Steve Ballmer briefly surpasses his former boss, Bill Gates, in net worth. Plus, the Caesar salad turns 100 which reignites the debates of who actually invented the iconic dish. Lastly, the biggest news you need to know this week.  Expand your world with Meta AI. Now on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and Messenger. 00:00 - Boeing pleads guilty 3:00 - French election surprise 6:30 - UK elections 9:30 - Saks Fifth Avenue merges with Neiman Marcus 12:00 - Paramount merges with Skydance 14:45 - Weekend winners: Mars crew & Steve Ballmer 19:45 - 100-year anniversary of the caesar salad 23:00 - Week ahead Get your Morning Brew Daily Mug HERE: https://shop.morningbrew.com/products/morning-brew-daily-mug?utm_medium=youtube&utm_source=mbd&utm_campaign=mug Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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pwc.com slash US slash brew AI. That's pwc.com slash us slash brew a i. Good morning brew daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, France just held its big elections. Who's popping the champagne and who's drinking sparkling wine? Then it was Caesar's salad's 100th anniversary on July 4th.

What's the secret to its longevity? It's not walking 10,000 steps a day. It's Monday, July 8th. Let's ride. A lot of you are no doubt, easing back into the swing of things after the July 4th holiday. Neil, we haven't seen each other in four days now, which might be the longest we've spent apart in like two years at this point.

Anything you care to report? No, it was just pretty much the perfect long summer weekend, sat by the pool, played games, ate ice cream, broke 90 in golf for the first time. I just, I can't really scripted any better than that. It was pretty awesome. Did not get sunburned also. Well, you do look very sunk as.

I have nothing to report here other than a bit of a sunburn and a reminder that we did release two interview episodes, one with the WMBA Commissioner, Kathy Englebert, and then one with the founder of Major League Eating, host of the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest, George Shea, on Thursday and Friday. So if you haven't had a chance, go listen to those episodes. Got a lot of awesome feedback on those interviews.

Also just want to report some breaking news overnight. Boeing is now a felon. The struggling company agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge tied to the fatal 737 max crashes and will pay an additional $244 million fine for violating a 2021 settlement that shielded it from prosecution. And as part of the handshake with the DOJ,

Boeing will be placed on probation and an independent monitor will be installed to oversee compliance. A judge needs to approve this deal before it goes into effect. Yeah, Boeing was presented with two roads here. One, either enter this guilty plea, pay a fine, or two, face a trial on felony criminal charges

of conspiracy to defraud the United States. So it chose the former, which families of the victims of those Boeing crashes are not happy with because they wanted to see Boeing go to trial. And then just to be clear, this plea deal only covers wrongdoing by Boeing before the crashes. So it doesn't cover anything like the Alaska door popping off and these other instances that we've talked about with Boeing in the news. Now a word from our sponsor, Meta-I. You know that feeling when you have a creative block all the time? Trying to come up with an intro for Neal's numbers.

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The real shock came in France yesterday, and it was a stunner when a leftist alliance won the most votes in Parliament. No one, no one had this on their bingo card. Everyone was expecting a victory from the far-right National Rally Party who got the most votes in the first round of elections last Sunday. But the week in between round one and round two was the wild card. President Emmanuel Macron's centrist and the left wing got together and said, hey, we need to do anything possible to prevent the right wing from winning. So what they did was ask more than 200 candidates to step down in order to consolidate votes against national rally. And this strategy worked like a charm, blunting the rise of the far-right party. party they feared would erode democratic institutions. So what happens now? Well, in a word, chaos.

None of the three main parties, the left, the centrist, or the far right, established an absolute majority in parliament. So you're going to see a lot of political maneuvering to form a government that shares power and actually gets things done. And talk about a country that needs to get things done because France is a nation that could do with some stability. They have the mother of all events coming up with the Olympics right around the corner. Then you also have France kind of emerging as this maybe top five AI power in the world behind the U.S., behind China. But they have this, they're trying to turn themselves in this innovative tech hub. And now you have a new, much shakier government that's trying to usher in this kind of technocratic

era that France has been dipping their toe into. Right. So what does the leftist party want? Because they're going to have a lot of heft here in negotiations with Macron. Macron is seen as pro-business and he's enacted a lot of policies in order to, spur investment. The new popular front, which is the leftist, they basically want to roll back everything

that Macron has done. Remember, Paris burned when Macron tried to raise that, he did raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. This new leftist coalition wants to bring that back to 60. They want to reinstate a wealth tax. They want to shake up the

tax code and bring the top marginal income tax rate to 90%. They want to raise the minimum wage. So they want to do this tax the wealthy spend big government, which does fly in the face of what Macron wants. The thing is he doesn't have a lot of options here because he has to work with the way these things, this parliamentary system works is you have to work with your opponents in order to form a government. So he might have to concede on some of their demands, which some economists say

is wildly too expensive with France being very cash strapped as it is. Yeah, Macron made this massive bet calling this snap election early. He was gambling that voters would rally around his party. technically the game will work, but voters didn't rally around his party. Instead, they rallied around this loose coalition of parties in order to keep kind of the far right out of control. But the problem is that Macron has built himself as pro-business as this technocratic competence, this regime that does favor investment from foreign countries as well. It was neither left nor right, but then you see how that starts to fracture when you're neither left nor right when you're centrist. Usually when the fracturing happens, they tend to go to

one side or the other. So the new popular front was not projected to finish first. They did finish first. So now we have this interesting conglomeration of parties. And they're going to have to do some politicking to figure this out. Moving on to another country who was still alive in the euros. The UK also had a landscape altering general election before the weekend. The center left Labor Party defeated the conservative party in a landside victory on Friday, which means there's a new party in charge for the first time in 14 years. The Labor Party's reward, a sluggish economy, stagnating incomes, deteriorating living standards, chronic housing shortage, among other macroeconomic headaches. It's a tough spot Britain finds itself in right now. Much like the U.S., it is dealing with a massive

debt burden that is bigger than the GDP of the country, so spending cuts or tax hikes are likely on the way. But those won't be enough on their own if they can't kick economic growth into gear. So new prime minister care, Starmor, has quite a job in front of them to turn this economy around. I think what people are looking for from Starmor is some sort of stability. I mean, the conservatives have gone through five prime ministers in eight years. Remember there was that one year with Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, where they had three prime ministers in just one year. Political instability has really hampered economic growth in Britain. And so they're looking for Starmor to come in and just kind of provide this stability.

this ability to just be consistent. And what labor did was not really promise anything big. If you look through their policy proposals, it's kind of very vague. So he doesn't have a lot of promises to keep, which may be a good thing for him. So that's what UK is looking for, just some sort of consistency from their leadership. It's also easy to see why there's been little to know economic growth. I mean, first there was a decision to leave the EU back in 2016. Then there are all these years of reduced government spending.

Then there were five prime ministers in eight years. So also just looking at the data, it is pretty ugly to look at. When I say income is stagnant, wages roughly have been staying the same since 2010, the British pound, 14% weaker than it was in 2010. And then productivity or GDP per hour grew 0.5% annually since 2010 compared to 2% for the decade prior. So it's really been a rough slog in the past decade or so. So hopefully just some stability can turn things around. And if you're looking for a man in finance, don't look to the UK.

Because for the first time in 800 years, the Chancellor of the Exchecher, which is their finance minister, will be a woman, Rachel Reeves, who likes to moderate herself after Janet Yellen. She considers Yellen a role model. So she is going to try to take a page out of Yellen's playbook, which is put a little more government intervention than the UK has done in the past. I mean, Yellen definitely pushed through the Inflation Reduction Act, which says, gives a lot of subsidies and tax credits to build green energy infrastructure. And so she Reeves is going to look after Yellen to try to do the same things in Britain, but they just have a lot less money to play with than the United States. So it might be a little more incremental than what we did here.

Moving on, while you were busy merging your mouth with a perfectly grilled hot dog, corporate America was conducting a few mergers of its own. Up first, Sax Fifth Avenue announced a deal to buy Neiman Marcus for $2.65 billion, with a little help from its friend Amazon. After being linked for years, the two finally decided to make things official, hoping their combined might will help them negotiate better deals with luxury brands.

Sacks has 39 stores while Neiman Marcus, who filed for bankruptcy back in 2020, has 36. Amazon is playing e-com sugar daddy in the deal, lending its tech and logistical expertise while taking a minority stake in the new entity. Neil, these are some iconic names in the luxury industry, but do we think that putting two, struggling retail brands together will result in a sum greater than its parts or just a bigger

struggling retail company. First of all, is that the last hot dog reference you have? Nope. Still more coming. Okay, I just want to make sure how many we have lined up here. No, this is, yeah, this is all about negotiating power with the brands that fill their stores like the carings of the world, the LVMHs of the world because right now those luxury conglomerates, the people, the companies that actually make the goods are eating the department stores lunch. So they're hoping my gaining scale. They'll have greater negotiating power against the LVMHs, which are getting into retail themselves, and they're also selling direct to consumer. So they present a little bit of a threat to department stores like Neiman Marcus, like Sacks, and they're hoping that actually

they're really banking on real estate. I mean, together they're going to have $7 billion in their real estate portfolio. They have these flagship stores on Fifth Avenue and that big Bergdorf, Goodman in New York, which is owned by Neiman Marcus. So they're banking on these flagship properties to bring in people, to bring in tourists when they come to New York and all other places around the world to drive sales. Yeah, we talk about the shift in negotiating power. That's because the power balance has totally changed between luxury department stores and the luxury brands. Because if you think about when these companies were founded a century ago, they were introducing European luxury to American shoppers. So they wielded all the power there because they were.

were the gateway to America. These days, the luxury brands, everyone knows them. You can buy directly from them, as you mentioned. So they now wield a tremendous power. So hopefully this is a case of department stores banding together, fighting back and saying, okay, we can be a powerful entity still. I'm not hopeful. Okay. It looks like Paramount will finally be bought in a deal that was more drawn out than the last hour of Oppenheimer. The board approved a deal for the upstart production from Skydance Media to merge with Paramount Global, the company that owns MTV, CBS, and the film studio that brought you the godfather. The deal marks the end of an era and a lucrative cashout opportunity for Sherry Redstone, the mogul who controls Paramount Parent Company National Amusements,

and it also mince a new media mogul, the head of Skydance, David Ellison. That last name sounds familiar. It's because he is the 41-year-old son of Oracle founder, Larry Ellison. David dropped out of USC to try his luck in the film business. And everyone suspected he was just another Nepo baby who didn't have the actual chops to make it. But David built a really impressive business with Skydance, producing blockbusters like the latest Mission Impossible and the top gun sequel. Soon he'll be the head of the combined Skydance Paramount Company. And it's really a sign of the times that this struggling entertainment dinosaur like Paramount is being taken over by a guy who comes from tech money. Yeah, the big winner in this deal is Ellis

because he's gone from a little bit of a Hollywood outsider to now one of the most influential executives in the entire business. So that is a big deal for Ellison. The interesting part about this deal is that there were so many stops and starts saying, will this deal or won't this deal happen? Part of the issue was that a lot of shareholders thought that it was basically just enriching Sherry Redstone. Like it was a sweetheart deal for her. Details around this one are still kind of emerging, but apparently this new offer appealed more to shareholders, which is why it's looking like it's going to happen. So it still requires regulatory approval. We have to put that little asterisk on every single merger and acquisition that happens

given the FCC's kind of rampage they've been on. But it is finally, this deal looks like it's across the finish line. Meanwhile, we talked about long to-do lists in UK and France. And, you know, David Ellison probably has one up there because Paramount is, as I said, a dinosaur. It's lost 70% of its market value since 2019. It tried to get into streaming with Paramount Plus, but that is losing hundreds of millions of dollars per year. It's cable business. The MTV, the Nickelodeon is in secular decline. Everyone's cord cutting. So it really has to do a lot to rejuvenate this Paramount business that he just bought for a couple billion dollars. And so I don't know, which I would prefer. UK, France, Paramount tried to revive all of them, but it doesn't, none of them seem like a

shoe in for revival. Up next, it was a long weekend for some, so let's dive into the winners from it. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three-burner gas grill, or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together. Shop spring backyard days for seven days. at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th. Exclusion supplies to homedebo.com slash price match for details. We're the Hartford with decades of experience ensuring millions of unique small businesses

when it comes to your small business insurance. Thank you. One size absolutely does not fit all. Get a quote or find an agent today at thehartford.com slash small business. Now it's time for our winners of the weekend segment where we weighed through your fireworks filled weekend to find two stories that were bangers in their own right. Neil won the pre-show Farmer's Tan Competition, meaning his tan lines were even worse than mine. So he's up first. Neil, who's your winner of the weekend?

My winner of the weekend is the crew of a NASA mission who completed their voyage to Mars without leaving Houston, Texas. On Saturday, four volunteers walked out of a simulated Mars environment at Johnson Space Center after spending 378 days enclosed in the 3D printed habitat. Besides playing thousands of rounds of Never Have I Ever, the crew tried to mimic as closely as possible what living on Mars would be like. They simulated spacewalks. They grew and harvested their own vegetables. They communicated only with ground control with a 22-minute delay, all with the goal of helping NASA learn what living on Mars would be like. They were willing human guinea pigs in the grand experiment of space exploration. And you're probably wondering, what did they say when they came out?

Were they on the verge of killing each other like you and your roommate? during COVID? Not at all, it seems. They said they were grateful for the opportunity to push science forward and grateful for each other confined for over a year in that 17,000 square foot fake Mars. The group consisted of a research scientist, a structural engineer, an emergency medicine physician, and a U.S. Navy microbiologist, which sounds like a great group to simulate a Mars experience or the intro to the greatest bar joke of all time right there. So, yeah, they did really well. I mean, when they came out, they just said hello to the people gather there, like you have no idea how good it just feels to talk to someone that isn't us. I love this

experiment though. Nutrition seem to be the big focus of all. How does the body react when you have to cultivate your own food in this unforgiving environment? I would love to see actually the nutritional data that comes out of it and what they were using as the most bare bones way of feeding yourself just from a curiosity standpoint. They're probably just all wearing Apple Watchers and everyone was just tracking them. Tracking themselves. But yeah, so this one was focused on nutrition and there's going to be two other missions, missions in quotes, 2025 and 27 in this simulated habitat to learn more about the signs of going to Mars before NASA actually plans on sending people there, which doesn't look like it's going to happen

until late 2030s, which actually means late 2050s in the NASA timeline of things. But I think Elon Musk wants to go there a little earlier on Starship, provided that doesn't explode upon reentry. Think about all the news that they missed. Think about all the Morning Brew Daily episodes that they have to catch up with if you've been in a pod for the last year plus. My winner of the weekend is Steve Balmer. There's a popular refrain in investing, which is do nothing. If you own a good asset, don't sell it. And Steve Balmer is the poster boy for that approach.

His Microsoft steak, am mastering the time he worked there and eventually led the company, is now worth $161 billion, meaning for the first time ever, he is richer than Microsoft's founder, Bill Gates. Balmer joined Microsoft back in 1980 as a business manager and eventually became CEO in 2000, taking over from Gates. But unlike Gates, he never really divested his shares or diversified his holdings, and he's assumed to still own about 4% of the company. Neil, Steve Balmer was once Bill Gates' glorified assistant. He was an employee of Microsoft.

Now he is richer than the company's founder. What's the lesson here? The lesson is you don't need to start a company, but you need to be an early employee if you want to be in one, if you want to be super rich, and better yet if that company that you're joining at a young stage just so happens to be Microsoft. That helps. But yeah, there are not that many billion, like mega billionaires on Forbes top lists that are founders or entrepreneurs that didn't create their company because they didn't own a large stake. There's only 26 people on the list of that list of 760 U.S.

billionaires that aren't errors that didn't inherit their wealth or entrepreneurs. That also includes Tim Cook. That also includes Jamie Diamond of JPMorgan. And now Steve Vollmer. So I guess the lesson is find your Microsoft. I do have to go through the deal that set him up for this, though, because when he joined as a 30th employee in 1980, he had a salary of $50,000, but Microsoft was trying to grow. So Gates and Paul Allen, the co-founder, agreed to give Balmer 10% of whatever profit he

could drive. But soon Microsoft started growing really fast and that 10% deal just was untenable. So as soon as Microsoft kind of reorganized as a corporation, Balmer said, okay, I'll give up that 10% rev sharing deal in exchange for 8% stake in the company. Turned out to be a very savvy negotiation as well because, again, Microsoft is now worth $3.5 trillion. So that little 4% stake, 8% stake has become worth a lot of money. The 4th of July was not only America's birthday, but also the birth of an even more important hallmark of human ingenuity, freedom, and global influence. The Caesar salad. So today, let's honor the dish that has persisted through menu changes and food trends for an entire century.

First things first, the Caesar salad was not named after Julius Caesar. In fact, it's not from Rome at all. Like most 100-year-old origin stories, there's some debate as to the exact founding tale, but the most agreed-upon version is that the first agreed-upon version is that the The famous salad was conducted by Italian chef Caesar Sardini, Caesar Cardini, at his restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico on July 4, 1924. According to his daughter, he ran out of ingredients for a meal, so he pulled a dad special and just threw together what was left in his kitchen. That just happened to be lettuce, olive oil, raw egg, croutons, parmesan cheese, and Worcestershire sauce. And thus, soup and salad deals were changed forever. Neil, other versions of the story are floating around out there.

But what a great trivia fact to bust out next Fourth of July that Caesar salad was invented in Mexico. And it's really a remarkable snapshot of this point in U.S. history because prohibition was going on during the 20s. And a lot of elites in Hollywood, those A-listers, they couldn't party. They couldn't drink, well, you know, on the surface. But they decided, hey, let's just drive two hours down to Tijuana, which became a hub for Hollywood moguls in the 20s and other hard-partying Americans who, still wanted to have a good time during Prohibition Area. So Tijuana was absolutely booming during the 20s, and that led to ultimately the creation of the Caesar salad because it created this ecosystem

where there were a lot of Americans present, but I did not know it was started there in Tijuana. And that restaurant still exists. It went out of business, but it's there under new ownership. And for the 100th anniversary, a bunch of top chefs went on a four-day pilgrimage there to pay homage to the Caesar salad,

including Jose Andre. race and just speak to its rich culinary history, it's umami culinary history of just persisting throughout 100 years. So many dishes from the 20th century we don't even know about because they've gone bust, but the Caesar salad is here today, and it's maybe never been stronger. Do you have any Caesar salad hot takes? It has to have anchovies. Okay, that's very interesting because the original Caesar salad had no anchovies. The whole point of the salad was it was supposed to be very subtly flavored.

The only flavor you're supposed to get was from the Worcester sauce, but now, I am totally with you. Anchorage just takes it to another level. I totally agree with that. Another aspect of Caesar salad culture that we need to talk about, that it was the original tension was that it was a finger food and that you don't cut the romaine lettuce. You don't grate the parmesan.

You eat the romaine as a big leaf. You eat the parmesan as a bite as a hunk of parmesan, and then you just have the blocks of lettuce and the dressing with the side of like a side of parmesan. So that's my new Caesar salad hot take is that don't mix it for me. leave it deconstructed. I'm going to eat it like finger food like it was originally intended. Certainly one of the most, you know, popular, successful food products of the 20th century. About 35% of U.S. restaurants feature Caesar salad on their menus.

Should be more. A remarkable percentage should be more, according to Toby. Let's get to the week ahead what you need to know about for the upcoming couple days. President Biden faces a crucial week because Congress is returning to D.C. for the first time since the presidential debate sent Democrats in two, panic mode over his candidacy. Five representatives have already publicly called on him to step aside, and others are mounting a behind-the-scenes push to get him to step down by Friday, according to multiple reports. You ought to hear this. One of the more outlandish ideas being flooded by Democratic

donors is called a Blitz primary that would have Biden drop out and potential candidates campaign for votes in weekly forums moderated by celebs like Oprah and Taylor Swift. Oh my lord. I had not heard that before. Here we spent the top half of the show talking about the UK, talking about the France's French election. But here we have some coalition building problems as well. The year of election soldiers on and so that's entertaining as ever. Meanwhile, Biden will stay plenty busy this week because he's hosting the NATO summit on the Alliance's 75th anniversary. Leaders from 32 member states are coming to D.C. to discuss the Ukraine war and will try to Trump-proof NATO should the former president regain the White House and reduce U.S. support.

It's no Caesar Sout anniversary, but NATO 75th anniversary also very, very important. It's a busy week in the economy. Fed Chair Jerome Powell will testify on Capitol Hill. Then the Consumer Price Index Inflation Report drops on Thursday. And then to cap off the week, earning season kicks off on Friday. And investors are hoping anyone besides Big Tech will step up and pose strong results to keep the market rally going. Crazy stat. Because even though the S&P 500 has hit dozens of record highs this year, About 40% of companies in the index are in the red for 2024.

Yeah, and only 24% of stocks in the index have outperform the index as a whole. So it is so incredibly top-heavy. It is looking like that person at your gym who maybe skips leg day, very upper-body focus right now, the upper body being AI and tech companies. Okay, thank you for clarifying it, Toby. Another crazy week of weather is in store after devastating parts of the Caribbean, barrel again strengthened to hurricane status and made landfall on the Texas coast this morning. Meanwhile, heat waves are scorching the entire West Coast and suffocating the northeast with humidity.

Yesterday, Las Vegas had its hottest day ever reaching 120 degrees. Oh, my gosh. Death Valley had temperatures that could reach 130, not to upstate your Las Vegas back there, but Death Valley is living up to its namesake as well. Everything else. What's going on? It's Shark Week. The 36th annual event is being hosted by John Cena this year,

who also announced his retirement from WWE over the weekend. I watch Jaws, the original Jaws, this 4th of July. It is so good. The last act is so much longer than I remember, but it is just an incredible film. Made me so scared of sharks growing up, though. Me too. The semifinals for the Euros and Copa America take place on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Who you got? My predictions, I think Argentina are going to win, and I think Spain are going to win. It's not exactly the most hot takes you've seen out there. And finally, Wibbledon wraps up this weekend on Saturday and Sunday. It's been so awesome to watch. I'm just sad about Ben Shelton yesterday. I got no hot takes.

they are either. That's fine. All right, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for listening and hope you have an easy transition back into the workday. For any feedback on the show, you know what to do. Write to our email, Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Miliron is our executive producer. Thank you, Emily, for subbing me your computer today as well. Raymond Lou is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Yuchinawa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. Hair and makeup is dreading looking at their work emails. same. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production

of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Spring is the season everyone refreshes everything except their blinds. People put it off because they think it's complicated. But at blinds.com, we've spent 30 years proving it's not. Right now, you can save big during the Spring Cyber Monday sale.

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