Some weeks don’t even have one great event….last week had THREE!!!

Event #1

The week started with the Kellogg Corporate Governance Conference at the Global Hub, where more than 100 CEOs and board directors met to discuss the major challenges and issues facing companies and board directors around the world. Professor Apatoff and the team put together a great collection of speakers and panelists to discuss topics ranging from cybersecurity, shareholder and stakeholder activism, proxy fights, risk oversight, and ESG.

The opening keynote from Adam Meyers of CrowdStrike on cybersecurity, “Are You Cyber Prepared?,” was pretty sobering. The potential threats from nation states, E crime, and “hacktivists” demonstrated the need to:

  • Secure the enterprise
  • Prepare to prevent
  • Understand next generation prevention
  • Know your adversary

If this is an area your organization has not focused a lot of time and attention, you probably better get started.

It was the 35th year of the Kellogg Corporate Governance Conference, which was started by Dean Don Jacobs, and the conference gets better each year. I highly encourage CEOs and board members to sign up early for next year!

Event #2

I had the opportunity to moderate an event for the Pete Henderson Society: “Kellogg Legends: A Conversation with Professor Emeritus Alfred Rappaport.” Professor Rappaport was one of the first proponents of using cash flow analysis to understand the drivers of shareholder value. His first book, “Creating Shareholder Value,” which was published in 1986, is an all-time classic that I still recommend to anyone who wants to understand the drivers of stock price and why focusing on EPS and short term management gets in the way of generating shareholder value. His second book, “Expectations Investing,” which he co-wrote with Michael Mauboussin, is another leading book in the investment field.

Professor Rappaport gave a wonderful talk on the history of his work as well as his current work on CEO compensation and deriving better ways to understand cash flow. When the recording of the event is released, I will include it in a future post.

Event #3

This was (selfishly) my personal favorite…! 😀 I had the awe-inspiring opportunity to participate in batting practice at Wrigley Field on Saturday!!! The Cubs were out of town, but a good friend with season tickets let me take his place in the batter’s box along with other season ticket holders. The directions for the event mentioned that if you hit a home run, you would receive a year’s supply of Budweiser. Truthfully, my goal was to simply hit the ball out of the infield!!!

It was a real thrill (I felt like I was 15 again) to be in the dugout:

to be out on the field:

And I told my friends that here is a video of me hitting a home run:

If the video looks like a lot like Javier Baez that is just a coincidence 😉

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