Your thoughts on the kiss-cam episodeAndrew Ross Sorkin’s note yesterday about Andy Byron, the C.E.O. of a tech start-up caught on camera with a colleague from H.R. at a Coldplay concert, struck a nerve with DealBook readers, who have flooded our inbox with responses: “The moment seems to encapsulate the pervasive schadenfreude within our culture, especially our office culture, and a deep-seated animosity toward bosses and colleagues,” Andrew wrote. “It highlights a zero-sum mentality in which a colleague’s success is perceived as your loss, and their failure your gain.” He added that, “The incident also underscores our surveillance state.”Here’s what readers had to say:“The surveillance state is a bit aggressive of a take on this. They were lovingly embracing at a concert during a love song while the kiss cam was on the prowl.” — Bob McMurtry“The public is not just reacting to someone else’s misfortune, it is reacting to the utter hypocrisy revealed yet again by those in power who dictate rules that others should follow, yet arrogantly disregard following them themselves. Employees endure hours of H.R. training on the impropriety of workplace relationships, especially between manager and subordinate, yet the actual HEAD of H.R. engages in an affair with her married C.E.O. Do you not see the specific irony of this outing?” — Jim Woidat“I don’t think we commoners’ resentment of C.E.O.s is so much about jealousy as it is about pay inequality (their pay rate today vs. what it was a few decades ago) and stuff like golden parachutes.” — Tom EshbaughWhat nobody is talking about:Before the kisscam: 12 executives (11 men and Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot); 6 directors (all men)They’ve also disabled their LinkedIn links and yetAstronomer board launches investigation after viral Coldplay 'kiss cam' video appears to show CEO embracing HR chiefDealBook Hot Take: Board members should be licensedJonathan Foster, a consultant and former managing director at Lazard, has served on more than 50 corporate boards. Along the way, he says, he has encountered directors who have stayed too long, or ones whose “knowledge of financial statements and M&A is lacking.” He drew on that experience in “On Board: The Modern Playbook for Corporate Governance,” his new book.One of his big ideas for improving director performance: “a license,” he told DealBook, like the kind required “for investment bankers, doctors, lawyers, even massage therapists.”That, he said, “might increase confidence in corporate directors.”How it would work: Some of the requirements Foster envisions include 10 years of work experience, being at least 35 and passing an exam covering legal standards, basic accounting and finance principles, and ethics. “It doesn’t have to be particularly onerous,” he said, comparing it to the Series 7 exam for financial advisers.To issue licenses, he says, the New York Stock Exchange could oversee an organization like Harvard Business School or the National Association of Corporate Directors. He says he sees the arrangement as akin to how the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board operates under the authority of the S.E.C. That independent nonprofit group, he noted, “has commissioners, and they go do their thing, but they’re ultimately responsible to and can be pre-empted by the S.E.C.”Is it workable? DealBook asked Edward Rock, a professor of corporate governance at the New York University School of Law. He said he worried that standardized requirements for diverse companies could disqualify board members with otherwise strong attributes. For example, he wrote in an email to DealBook, “Why would anyone want to prevent Mark Zuckerberg (28 at the time of Facebook’s I.P.O.) or Larry Page and Sergey Brin” — both in their thirties when Google listed — “from serving on the board of directors of Facebook and Google?”(Foster said exceptions could be created, including for founders.)Shareholders have an incentive to demand the most qualified board members, Rock continued, and they tend to do so.Coca-Cola will roll out cane sugar version of namesake soda in the U.S. this fallPrivate jet sales are poised for takeoff thanks to a revived tax breakA federal tax change now lets companies write off the full cost of buying a private jet in year oneStarbucks’ formerly remote CEO has bought a home in Seattle and he’s ordering all staff back to the office 4 days a week Jeff Bezos taps former Amazon Alexa head to lead $10 billion Earth fundElon Musk's other companies could soon pour billions into his AI startupSpaceX, the rocket company Musk founded and controls, is reportedly investing $2 billion into xAI, his AI startup best known for the chatbot GrokElon Musk promises Tesla shareholders a vote over buying equity in his Grok startup: ‘If it was up to me, Tesla would have invested in xAI long ago’Musk's xAI faces European scrutiny over Grok's '...
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