Expert360 Heartbreak, CTM is Back, Iran Stalemate gets less Stale and The Athlete Rich List

25:39Medicine was like a side hustle for me, right? And so I'm going to use Monash University as a microcosm of what's going on in Australia, which I think is really important and nobody knows about. And I didn't know about this. I was at Monash University last week, finally I am. Yes, well, I didn't know if you wanted to say that, but yes, that's why I didn't raise it. I did a tour of the law, the Prof Prac School and the guy who was the head of Prof Prac when I did it 22 years ago, he's still there, which is pretty remarkable. That's impressive. So people say, student politics, who cares? I get it.

26:12I'll be well in that category. Okay, but the thing is this. If you look at where the societal upheaval is coming from right now, number one, it's coming from people of student age. Like, that's who's in the streets protesting. Isn't that right? That's been the case for 100 years. Correct. That's right. And number two, like, the views that students hold today, they are the views that society's probably going to hold tomorrow. If you look at who's in power today in Australia... I'm not... It's the... Would you call the Albanese government the far left? The left? It's... There's a famous comment, if you're not a socialist when you're 20, you've got no heart.

26:49If you're not a capitalist when you're 50, you've got no brain. I think people do change their views. I agree, but this country is very much governed by... Currently, yeah. The very left, let's call it. I don't want to call it... It's not the extreme left. I don't know if you call it the hard left. The very left. I think for the first term, Elbow and Chalmers were a pretty centre-left government. They've just veered massively left. The car's swerved off the road in the last 18 months. And the other thing that's happening in Western countries is polarisation. Political polarisation, that's an issue.

27:15And so I think it matters because what happens, because we have to just be honest about this and say, regular people don't seem to go into politics anymore. People that are in politics today are people that have had careers in one form or another of representation, politics, bureaucracy. Labor politicians tend to come from unions or the Labor Party itself. But Kevin Rudd didn't come from a union, right? Kevin Rudd was not a union guy. He was unusual. But increasingly, people in politics grow up as political apparatchiks and student politics is where they learn stuff. But also I would say this.

27:54Student politics does have quite a big effect on the lives of students on campus. So this is what's going on at Monash University right now. Who do you think won every single office-bearing position at Monash University last year? They don't call themselves a party, but they're aligned to parties. Who do you think won it? Oh, the far left. Yes, that's right. So they're called change, exclamation mark. And I would like them to change. And so they are, we would call them the Labour left, who they're aligned with, but the way they feel about the Labour left government is they think the Labour left government is a tremendous embarrassment in how moderate they are.

28:40These are like veering towards Green policies. Of note, the Greens are not actually represented much as a party at Monash anymore. This year, there are basically three parties that are going to be running off. So one of the parties is called a joke party, but I would call them more a satire party. They used to be called Party in the MSA. That's a pretty good name, right? But Moness Student Association. But they were like legally forced to change their name. So they're now called something like Party of Le Red Act. Are they left-wing as well? They are a party who position themselves as a joke party.

29:17Like the bin-faced guy. and Raj. Except really what they're saying is there's so much corruption that's going on in the student association, e.g. the head of the association increased their salary by 62 % with an opaque vote. That's been the case since this thing got established. So there's that party. Yeah. Are they ideological? They're satirical, is how I would call it. They're not aligned politically either way. So centrist. They just think the far left and what they're doing is terrible, but probably that's also because they're impassable. power and so so there's this far left left left left left left aligned labour party who do you think the third party is that's like in these elections that it's gonna that has got votes previously and probably will win some seats is there like a hamassal one oh very close free palestine okay free palestine which is the social it literally is what i said socialist socialist alternative.

30:13Socialist alternative. So that is who is running all services at Monash University. What percentage of the university do you think votes of student and student body? 10%. 11%. Very good. 11 % vote. I certainly never voted. Because you have to vote in person on the day. And what I've heard from people... You have to be wearing a cafe on your head? Well, the thing is, what I've heard from people is, and I asked Claude, is there evidence of this online? And there was. that there's quite a lot of... Harassment is maybe too strong a word when you go into the voting area. And so most people just... We'll just go with an AK-47 pointed out if you don't vote for the far left.

30:49So I'm sure it's completely legitimate. Most students stay away from that area because it's so unpleasant. And you can't vote online. You can't vote... There's no postal voting. Yeah. And so basically... I'm surprised they don't hold the election on Yom Kippur. Well, they might next year or this year. Well, it's coming up pretty soon. Yeah. And so this is what's going on at student policy. You seem much more relaxed about this than I am. Because it's always been like this. But it hasn't always been the ultra far left and the ultra ultra far left. Yeah, true. And so I think that's probably... Yeah, my cousin's actually a Liberal candidate.

31:19This is in the early 90s. Oh, the Liberals don't exist on campus anymore. They're completely gone now. There was a functioning young Liberals back in the day. Even the Labour right has given up at Monash University. They've given up. I mean, I think they exist. The question is why they need anything. Why is this needed at all? Well, this is where politics starts, okay? And I think, like, this is where people learn how to be politicians. And if the Liberal Party and even the Labour right can't get a foot in here, personally, I think it bodes badly. I think people need to go and get the vote out to go and stop this happening.

31:54Or hopefully this spin-face mob get in, because they're the only ones who aren't reprehensible. Well, but they're not getting in. Like, what's getting in is the far left and then eventually the far right. I mean, the far right doesn't have much power on campus, right? But I'm surprised you're so relaxed about this. Because I wouldn't have assumed anything different is probably why. But do you not – so when you go to campus, I have students that say to me, and this would be dozens of students, that say they don't want to go to campus, they don't want to be there, it's not fun anymore, the social side of it is vastly different to when you went to university.

32:30Do you not see that as – I mean, I know maybe – I'm not sure your sample size is amazing. Dozens. Yeah. Dozens. Like, no one says any difference. When I was at Monash walking around, it felt similar to how I remembered it. I didn't sense any huge difference to walking around 20 years ago. So you think maybe just Jewish kids don't feel... Possibly. Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me. It'd be justifiable. I mean, because one of the Monash Student Associations, I don't know if they're called pillars, but it is like from the river to the sea, Palestine, World Free. They say it's not exclusive, it's inclusive.

33:01Of course they do. And so, well, I'm more... This is where university administrations have so much to answer for. They've just allowed this hate to fester unbridled. This is an independent, unaffiliated with the university student... But you can just ban them. Ban all of them. Well, you know what happens then. People say it's an infringement of free speech, right? They can say what they want. But you say, when you come to the uni, we're not going to allow this. When hate becomes so normalised, you've just got to stop the hate. So at least I got you interested eventually in this topic. And so I think that...

33:30These Vouse Chancellors earning$4 million a year can do something better than what they're doing. Well, I think maybe the reason that you feel so much less worked up about this than I am is because you've ridden off universities altogether. Yeah, absolutely. But I think this is a huge problem, and I think that we can turn a blind eye to what's going on on campus, but this is basically what happens in democracies. Like, we're all terrified of the far left. In general, the far left just creates an opportunity for the far right to say, we'll save you, and then they end up generally taking power historically in democracies, which is not good for anyone.

34:02And so I think that we should be more alarmed about how extremely radical in a terrible direction campuses are becoming. Because you can say, well, this is what it was like in the Vietnam War and neither one of us were there. But there's no such thing as a moral equivalence. Like, that was a good thing to protest against and this is a terrible thing to be in favour of. I think the problem, as you said, 11 % of people vote and maybe... Yeah, get out the vote. Maybe 6 % of the 11, maybe half the 11, just over half the 11 vote for these far left crazies. No more. I looked at the vote numbers. 9 % of the 11%.

34:39So it's 9 % of 100 % of voting people. It's about the proportion that vote for the Greens. So it's still a tiny percentage of... Oh, yes. No, you're absolutely right. Some of the other 89 % may have voted for them, but it's a very small percentage of people who actually are a real society. That's why I think these associations aren't representative at all. They're actually completely non-representative. That's why they should be banned. Just remove this student bullshit completely. There's no need for it. They don't do anything. They just pay themselves all this money. I know, but they're their own independent organisation.

35:07It's like saying remove luxury escapes. There's no reason, even if I feel that, which I don't. It's not my right to remove you. It's your thing. I don't sit with any public universities funded by taxpayers. They run stuff in the university. I hear you, but it does emphasise how important compulsory voting in Australia is. I mean, there are lots of libertarians I know that I like a lot, and that you know and you like a lot, and they think that compulsory voting is a huge infringement on their rights, and I understand that. But when you see what goes on at student campuses, when you have 11 % of the vote, or even in the US, where they struggle to get the vote out, you realise how important compulsory voting is to keep things in the middle, As close to the middle as you can get.

35:51Can I pivot just to a quiz? See, Mike's eyes light up over there. It's a bit similar to our last quiz, but a bit of a tweak on it. This is the world's highest earning athletes of all time. In total? Including endorsements? I'm pretty sure it includes everything, including ownership of clubs, all that kind of stuff. Oh, okay. Well, that's true. Yeah, we have to because these numbers are pretty big. Well, if it includes anything, I can just tell you. Adjusted for inflation. Well, I'll tell you if you'll know if it includes everything. Is Michael Jordan number one with$2 billion? Because I think he's earned$1.3 billion from Nike.

36:25This is career earnings. Mike and Joel and Will, do you have a guess? Hang on. Is Jordan there with one point? Well, I'm going to give them a chance to answer. Oh, you want them to answer?

36:37Tiger Woods, maybe? Yep. Joel? I only know the trendy guys, so maybe... Oh, I've forgotten his name now. Sorry, give me two seconds. Which sport? I don't know. You don't know which sport? I mean, I feel like the credibility of this answer. Ronaldo, Ronaldo seems like he's doing pretty good. So basically the way I think about this is that everyone is going to be, my guess is everyone's going to be either in soccer or basketball. Those are the two big global sports. You're missing one sport, but yeah, they definitely are very high. And so no one else as far as I know. I mean, Roger Federer has on, so he's in tennis, but he's got a company.

37:17but Jordan has got a brand that is paying him royalties every single year. How can anyone compete with that? So Will, what's your guess? Clearly unlike everyone else here I read the show notes. He can't answer because he read the notes. So he's qualified and you're also qualified for sheer honesty. So you all actually did pretty well. He's right with Michael Jordan. Wrong on quantum at$4.5 billion but right on directionally. That's unbelievable. He does own other stuff as well. He owns a piece of... He owns the basketball team. Yeah, but you know Sport Raider. He owns a chunk of that. He invested with Cuban and with Ted Leonsis in that.

37:56So that's pretty... Is he number one? Remember, this is career earnings. He's not wealth. He's number one. Number two, Tiger Woods. So Mike got number two. Can you believe that? I mean, I haven't watched the Jordan movie. I don't really want to talk about it, because people have probably seen it. Is it Last Dance? No, I watched that on Netflix. That was amazing. But, you know, there's a movie... Space Jam. Space Jam. I think it's unexpected. I mean, I did watch that. That's what I think of the Michael Jordan movie. There's this documentary about how we did the deal with... Not documentary, it's docudrama or whatever it's called.

38:27Oh, not air. Yeah, air. Oh, okay. Okay, well, I haven't watched that. But my point is, putting all of the dramatisation to the side, that might be... I mean, it might be. The Jordan-Nike deal. The greatest deal by a brand and an athlete. in history I don't mean together I mean that is the greatest value creation by any brand and by any athlete in history it's almost the greatest deal like forget athlete brand greatest deal full stop in terms of value creation there would have been no Nike brand without that deal is my guess in the mainstream Nike was still publicly listed and doing well but it just went to the stratosphere exactly in the mainstream the way it is I mean they've had a bad run obviously since the Dylan Mulvaney deal I'm not blaming Dylan for this but it's down 85 % so what comes goes I just still to this day just when I think about that deal, I'm like, how can I do a deal like that?

39:18Like, everyone just, like, both sides of the deal got a deal that was better than their wildest dreams. Adidas had a chance. Jordan loved Adidas and Adidas just didn't really care enough because they were too dominant. Who's number two? Two was Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods, wow. $2.8 billion, so not far behind, really. And Joel got right, Cristiano Ronaldo, $2.5 billion, so not far off, really. This goes to show the credibility of your survey. Is that a guy that is a bit unsure of what sport actually is? gets to number three. Can you guys get four or five? What was the other sport? You said there was one more sport.

39:52Well, I've just named all three. I've just said basketball and soccer and golf. Okay. And golf's definitely represented well. Is someone like Tom Brady in there? Well, that's American football. He is on this list, but about number 18. The problem is the only reason why he's so low? Because he's only American. There's only American sponsors. No one else is going to sponsor him except Americans. He also got divorced. Well, this is career earnings. They're divorced. The reason why, historically, NFL players are way less than NPL players is because they're heads of covered in helmets, so they can't build a brand because you can't see them properly.

40:26Although Tom Brady, of all the NFL players, everyone knows his face in the US. He's on American Airlines or Delta. All I remember is he's one of the... I don't even remember which airline it was. But the problem is that no one outside the US really knows who he is. I think Tom Brady's one. A bit. But he's massively famous in the US. Yeah. But he doesn't... NFL's the richest sport by a long way. I know. But the thing is, he doesn't have the recognition globally of a Cristiano Ronaldo. He doesn't. Well, there's an element of that, but I think the bigger reason is the value capture, value creation in NFL accrues to the NFL owners because they're the richest franchises on earth versus in NBL and soccer especially.

41:07A lot of the value accrues to the players and the way the salary cap's structured. there's also a lot more players in the NFL team so the money's shared over more players thank god there are a lot of players in the NFL team it's great for catapult yeah and a really strict salary cap as well so there's a few interesting reasons in the NFL I'll tell you the other problem with the NFL the clothing they wear can't really be sold yeah like no one really plays that sport NBL's made for it yeah that's right and so that's another problem that sponsoring them for clothing doesn't sell much clothing yeah what about David Beckham see you on there it might be too old he's number 9 3 8 number 8 oh ok he's got a lot of non directly because he had the whole Miami thing.

41:43That's right. He went to the US and got a chunk of the team, right? Yeah, that's where he's made his biggest win. I mean, I think what we're seeing now, I know I'm digressing from your list, but this is the theme we're seeing now, is that in the social media era, athletes are taking ownership of their personal brand much more than happened previously. And they're leveraging that brand in deals where they take an equity ownership of the company they're involved in, often without paying. I mean, often they'll pay, but sometimes they'll pay but often they won't and that is how they're generating massive amounts of wealth.

42:14I don't know if you saw but hugging. Well that said other than Ronaldo and actually there's a couple but there's a lot of older athletes well not old old but like not super super not socially media era athletes I say on here. Take out Ronaldo obviously as the number one Instagram person in the world but there aren't do you guys know number four? Number four is actually pretty straightforward. Four or five pretty straightforward. Like LeBron James? Yep, LeBron 4. It is. 5. 5's pretty easy as well. Another soccer. Messi? Yep, Messi. Got it. 6 and 7, I don't think you'll get 6 and 7. If you guys get 6 and 7, I will get our deers coffee next week.

42:54Is it a different sport or a different sport? There's coffee at stake. I'm not giving any clue. I think we should pivot on sports and not go for basketball and soccer. I think there's almost no chance you'll get deers. Ronaldinho? Well, who's involved in soccer? No, Ronaldinho's not. Maymars on here, a bit lower. What about an F1 driver? Oh. I don't know how that... I mean, they earn a lot of money, but maybe they're not that well-known because they don't have that much sponsorship. Who would be the number one? Lewis Hamilton? Don't give me that. That's a really good guess, actually. So Lewis Hamilton is on the list at about number 15 at a billion.

43:26And there's another F1 driver that is on the list as well. Higher? Yes, much higher. Older generation or modern? This will give it away if I had that question. Is it Michael Schumacher? It is. Oh, wow. He's sadly not in a great way. He's 1.4 billion. but five and six you guys haven't got tell us tell us the sport it's a sport we've talked about before golf let's go for golf I don't really follow golf very closely so I don't really know who plays Mickelson is he a golfer he's number 10 okay so good guess could it be is it tennis well who's the number one tennis player okay you said Federer yeah Federer's there he's number 9 okay so directionally right but not five and six these people are I'll give you another clue they've been around a while these are the two oldest people on the list by a long way are there any women in the top 10 no okay are these two people from the same by the way that's how you have to ask questions so i can't ask who six and seven are but i can ask if there are any women in the top 10 and we've basically covered the whole top 10 except six and seven yeah so now we know they're not women yeah which would probably be quite predictable unfortunately anyway are they in the same sport these two same sport oh that's interesting is is it kobe bryant kobe is I think Kobe was on here yeah Kobe's about number 20 16 I'll go through the other basketballs just because Shaquille O 'Neal is about number 13 1.3 then Kevin Durant I'm surprised he's so high 1.3 could it be hang on let me try for 6 or 7 is it like Greg Norman and Jack Nicklaus oh you're so close Greg Norman is on there but he's about number 15 Jack Nicklaus is number 6 ok there you go I've got 1 and number 6 was Arnold Palmer ok well I would not have guessed that was a good effort though Like the Jack Nicklaus one was good one.

45:06So I want to tell you something that's happening with athletes as well just to break up your list a bit. So do you know... I'll put it on my list. So you saw that Hugging Face got sold to NVIDIA? Before that, there's one young person on the list, but we'll go... There's one young person on the list? Who's the youngest person on the list? Current youngest. Current young person. Youngest person, yeah. No, because... Yeah, and current. Usain Bolt? He's not that young. Oh, 40 now. So who's going to sponsor him? I don't know. Usain Bolt is not on the list. Okay. a young person on the list I'm trying to think of a really young I don't reckon he'd be early 20s I reckon this guy and he's got 800 million dollars to his name pretty amazing for early 20s yeah I wouldn't have thought it was this high at all I don't know how it's this high like basically same as Sinner Sinner is too new basically same as Tom Brady it's not Sinner I don't know who is it very similar to Sinner though you're very close am I Carlos Alcaraz.

46:03Oh, okay. Somehow he's 800 million. I should have gone for that. I thought Tinner would have more, but you're right. Carlos is more well known. He's obviously very marketable. Lovely guy. So let me just tell you this story. So Hugging Face, bought by NVIDIA. Absolutely. How many billions? 13 billion, right? Okay. You know Kevin Durant, the basketball, that was a significant investor in that. No. Well, maybe that's why he's on the list. I think he turned like, I'm going to just say something like, 300K into 60 mil. And so this is what's... Can you explain what Hugging Face does? because many people wouldn't have a clue.

46:33Other than that open AI hack of two weeks ago, no one would have a clue what hacking-based stuff. People basically know a few of the most well-known frontier models, like Anthropic and ChatGPT and Gemini. But there's a gazillion open source models. Or Chinese models. Yeah, and serious developers and people working with these models, they want to use these open source models. And so HackingFace is basically a... A GitHub of open source. Yeah, pivoted into being this place where you can use all these different open source models in one place. It didn't start off as being that. It started off being a social platform of some sort.

47:08It pivoted. It's like 10 years old, this business. Oh, really? Yeah. It's amazing. It went from being, no one's heard of it, to being hacked and everybody hearing it, to being sold in the space of two weeks. It's unbelievable. The hacking episode with OpenAI did not have anything to do with. That was not the PR that could have sold. It was a coincidence. It was just a coincidence. It was unbelievable. But it makes sense that that was hacked because that's the platform that hosts all of these open source models. But yeah, you're increasingly seeing, I mean, you know, you saw the actor Ashton Kuchar.

47:34He invested early in all of these stuff. Uber and Twitter and everything, right? Airbnb, I think, pretty early. Airbnb. And so, but now what you're seeing is athletes. Because the thing is, all of these VCs, they're all, mostly male, fanboys of athletes. Their dream is to be... A lot more females now, in fairness. All right, but their dream is to befriend athletes. Yeah, for sure. And so they befriend a mentor, in quotes. Yeah. All of these athletes, which means I'm investing in this thing. You can invest as well. And the founders, often they're starstruck by the athletes as well. And so - Also free PR as well.

48:06Right. And so what we're seeing now is, look, it's especially common in consumer brands, but increasingly we're seeing it in tech companies where athletes are a significant part of the early stage cap table. Yeah. So I suspect there'll be a billionaire that gets minted. An athlete billionaire will get minted from an exit at some point. I'm surprised that hasn't happened. Obviously you've seen all the Jenners and Kardashians and those guys have all, and Shay Mitchell had an exit recently with my friend, you know, who, uh, with a great luggage brand. So there's, there's happening constantly in this.

48:34It's just a great talking about Jordan was the prototype of this. Really like that, that great deal merging celebrity and commoners. The flip side is what you often see in Australia is cause I've looked into this pretty extensively is that, um, in Australia, appeal is very geographically specific. So lots of people are known in Melbourne and not Sydney and vice versa. Cause there's a big sport difference. Yeah. Athletes do not have the pull in Australia that they do overseas. It's golf, tennis. Yeah, they can't just shift. Like a footy player, whether it's AFL or NRL, they can't just shift stock by their brand being attached to it.

49:13Cricket maybe as well is one of the... Yeah, but it's just these athletes do not have the same cachet. I would suspect like, you know, even one of the businesses that Chris Hemsworth was attached to wasn't able to survive, right? but it sold the one I was talking about you might want to eat this was he does other business that's why I'm going to talk in general it was like Byron Bay something his wife was involved in it yeah and so I think just getting an athlete smacking them together with a brand and driving that in Australia it's just more difficult than doing it in the US one exception that did incredibly well was Radic at Swiss who used athletes unbelievably well as sponsorship but I'm talking about these deals where the athlete comes along and says I'll take 20 % like obviously Steve Smith was involved or is involved in Koala but he didn't drive one sale in my view for Koala he was just an investor I'm talking about what if Steve Smith would have been the face of Koala I mean they might have sold some but it wouldn't have built the brand by itself which isn't it you need to have an international level I think Chris Hemsworth can do it actually but he's an international star with the right brand yeah for sure with the right brand Chris move on there's a really interesting it's been a bit off a bit off Broadway this last couple of months but the Cold War blockade stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz has rammed up in the past week as both Iranian and American frustration grows.

50:31The Wall Street Journal reported last week that by squeezing the Strait of Hormuz, both the US and Iran expected to outlast their foe, believing time will work in their favour. Now it looks like the trend is moving against Tehran. The US naval blockade prevented Iran from shipping any oil from the Persian Gulf since July. At the same time, despite Iranian drone and missile attacks, Washington has been able to assist Gulf states in moving significant amounts of their crew through the waterway, keeping oil prices from surging above critical levels. A fleet of US warships is still imposing the blockade on Iranian ports.

51:01And as of last week, US redirected 87 commercial vehicles. And while the mainstream media continues to report that time is on Iran's side, Iran is actually winning this stalemate, the viewpoint appears to be changing as inflation roars and living standards for Iranians plummet. tanker trackers meanwhile which is a really credible tanker tracking website reported earlier this week on average five million barrels a day of crude oil basically none of them iranian have exited the persian gulf i didn't have no idea that there was this much oil escaping generally via the state of humus alongside 2.5 million barrels via the gulf of oman and as well as via fujiraya in the uae these exports represent more than 40 of the region's pre-war flow of oil this obviously The escalating situation led to Iran starting to attack US warships last week and the US hitting three Iranian tankers over the weekend.

51:53We haven't talked about Iran for a while. It's kind of off-Broadway, but what's your view? Attacking US warships is a move of desperation. I mean, they can shoot down drones, but the reason there's no Australian ships imposing anything is because we can't shoot down drones, unfortunately, which is so terrible. It's beyond words. It's not a geopolitics podcast, but I want to say the following. We can start by saying the Iranian regime is a terror regime. So anyone you see supporting that regime, they're supporting a terror regime. That's beyond a doubt. The Australian government accepts they're a terror regime.

52:29And so you had a situation where Trump had made an effort to try to knock out the terror regime. And as I discussed with my dad during the week, my parents are very smart, and this is basically what they want to talk about in life. So I said to my dad, the thing about revolutions and maybe just geopolitics in general is there are a million small factors that go on that are too imperceptible for us to understand or notice and they determine outcomes. And although it sounds like a bit of a cop-out, I really believe the reason the Iranian regime didn't fall is because when the butterfly flaps its wings, the confluence of factors were just not the right time for the regime to fall.

53:07and if you can make all sorts of reasons why it didn't fall, but whatever the case is, it just... It was pretty hard to fall externally as well. Yeah, it was just not the time and no one was going to run a ground invasion, which I think rightfully so, don't run a ground invasion. And so now we're left with a situation which is very complex and it's complex because largely almost the whole world wants the Iranian regime gone. Russia and China would be the exceptions, a couple of other exceptions, but all of the Arab Gulf states want the regime gone in Iran. The Iranian people want the regime gone.

53:34I think even China marginally wants it gone, but I don't think it would be that disappointing. Well, China likes that it's using up all of the American interceptors and missiles, right, which is handy for China. But I don't think they've got a huge dog in the fire. They're not friends with the Iranian. I mean, China doesn't really have friends in the traditional sense, right? The regime I'm talking about. And so then you've got the complexity, which is, like, we have to be blunt about this and say, like, Netanyahu's attack on Qatar, whatever you think about it, it terrified a number of people in the Gulf, including the Saudis, and that has now pushed the Saudis into the hands of the Turks and the Pakistanis.

54:14That massively complicates the region because the UAE and Saudi have taken divergent paths now geopolitically. And the Saudis, by aligning themselves with Pakistan, Pakistan and Turkey, these are complicated countries in geopolitics. Turkey's in NATO, they're not in the EU. Pakistan feels like they're on the wrong side of the conflict, but they're kind of a perverse US long-term ally. And so these are like very... Pakistan walks both sides of the street. They do. But so does India, right? Look, I'm a huge fan of India. But like these are countries that very much feel like they are allies of convenience with the US.

54:49And so these are very complicated geopolitics that are going on. And there is a stalemate. And the stalemate is that it is much harder to defeat a country than to defend a country. and the Iranian regime just has to stay alive to win. And the more that the US blockades Iran, the more that regular people will suffer. But the regimes always somehow find a way to get Urbis handbags. That's the truth. And so it's a very difficult situation. But I do agree with the analysis that says it's getting worse for the Iranians just by virtue of the fact that they tried to attack US warships. The Americans also have a corridor that they've established through the Strait of Hormuz.

55:28On the Amman side. Yeah, on the Oman side, but it's on a very secure corridor. And Oman is playing both sides of the game as well, right? Oman historically has been a USLI, but also is next to Iran. And they're like, well, we don't really want to get bombed by Iran. And also maybe we can charge some money for ships using this, make some cash as well. So I think in the short term, look, we've seen oil prices go up. You know Ampol? Remember that brand? Still around. That's a public company. All-time highs. Yeah. All-time highs because of the price of oil. My view that I've come to is that everything is connected, full stop.

55:59That's my view about everything in life. All people are connected. Every part of your body is connected. Like as in, you know, gut microbiome is connected to mental health. We're all connected to the universe. Everything's connected. And so what's connected here is that we are seeing big problems in debt markets globally. We're seeing US bonds at very low prices with very high yields. High interest rates, yeah. High interest rates. 20 plus years, yeah. We're seeing like the world is basically panicking about high inflation, high interest, etc. We're not panicking. We're kind of back to historical norms after 15 years of bizarre great moderation.

56:33Yeah, although did you see one of the European countries just moved all of their gold out of the US and Canada because they were so worried about geopolitics? Yeah. And so I think it might be the Netherlands. I can't remember who it was. That feels a bit informative more than anything else. Could be. But I think the real issue with what's going on is the unpredictability because when you play with fire, sometimes, you know, you create an inferno by accident. I think that's the real danger here, not the current situation, but what this might turn into. And the last thing I want to say is there have been also, just to round out geopolitics, there was a massive change in China on the weekend.

57:05So the two most senior generals in the army were purged. Really? Must be running out of generals over there. There's been a lot of purging going on. Well, including a 40-year ally of Xi Jinping. Yeah, dramatic stuff, right? Because I would say, I read that the Chinese regime is, obviously it's not communist, or socialist, but it's more like kind of Stalinist slash Maoist kind of approach. and Stalin has just kept purging. But the one thing I'll say is this. We all know that Taiwan is a delicate issue. I don't know if you've seen more articles recently in the Wall Street Journal advocating for Taiwan.

57:37So it's becoming more of an issue. I'll just say, before World War II, Stalin purged all these top generals. It looked all good on paper, but they were all terrified of being purged. And so when they decided to invade Finland in, I think, 1938, right before the war started, it was meant to be a walkover. Russia literally had a bigger standing army than Finland had population. And in the end, I think Finland killed 150 ,000 Russian soldiers for 25 ,000 casualties, and the Russians withdrew. They got a little bit of land from Finland, so technically they won, but didn't. They couldn't conquer it, right?

58:11And so that is the lesson of the danger of purging top generals and making an army feel scared to demonstrate initiative on the battlefield. So we're in crazily interesting, a bit terrifying geopolitical times right now. Just having a little business element in your golden window analogy. It feels like Iran may have missed that golden window to do a deal with the US because the Strait of the Moose is becoming less and less valuable every day. So not only are the US currently circumventing it, you've got pipelines being built frantically from Saudi and UAE and Qatar. You've got... Thank you. The world having been less reliant on oil with EVs growing up, we've seen China's basically halved their oil consumption.

58:52Yes, they did stockpile a lot before the war, but Iran had a chance to make what would have been a great deal two, three months ago, and they basically reneged on that deal. And that seems like a really foolish decision because now the whole blockage really weakening that position. Every day that goes by, the golden window is becoming less and less golden. Maybe, but I tell you the deal I think Trump would still do tomorrow. Iran could say, we're going to allow freedom of movement to the Straits of Hormuz and you sign a deal that says, you won't attack us for the next 10 years and we will freeze, people can't see my quotes, a nuclear program and they will end up being a more powerful terrorist state than they were when they started the war and I think Trump would do that deal in a second.

59:38So I'm not sure that they've lost the opportunity to do a deal that advantages them, unfortunately. Yeah, it was becoming less and less. I agree with that, yeah. We'll go to a super quick break, back with some great stories just in a moment.

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1:02:20And we're back. And it was a sad week for the Australian startup community with a sale for parts of Expert 360 to International Goliath swipe jobs. The AFR reported the letter sent investors last week in the online recruitment startup were told they had no choice but to surrender their shares to swipe jobs after a deal was signed to acquire the company for just$16 million. XP360 been backed by VC firms, individuals raising almost$30 million since 2013 to help companies hire elite talent on demand. As recently as this June, Street Talk had reported the business was profitable and growing quickly with revenue of$140 million and heading to the auction block, allegedly spelling a payday for co-founder and Telstra director Bridget Loudon-Harris.

1:03:03Former Telstra director. At the time, the article was born. Alas, that article didn't stand the test of time and three months later, the business is essentially being given away. Investors who funded Expert 360 in the later capital raising rounds and presumably had preference shares will share in the$16 million proceeds. These seriously investors include Airtree and Rampersand, as well as Hypercapital Startups, Unisuper and Perennial Private. and they will also get they'll get something back however early stage investors who helped the company get off the ground only had common stock expected to receive zero of course the biggest loser really sadly is Bridget who is expected to get nothing after having walking away from the wreckage but huge credit to to Loudon who honorably told reporters that founders are paid last that's the deal you sign and I'll sign it again those who know me know me know my focus is always on clients, experts, and shareholders and the team, not my own outcome.

1:03:55I expected that Bridget will remain with the business. Market Watchers believe Stripe Drop's got a good deal on the company as itself prepares to list on the ASX, which evaluation upwards of$2 billion, with the business believed to have revenue of 1.5, which actually more than seeks revenue of 1.2. Do you've followed Expert 360 since it started, really? What are your views? Why are you so generous in your comments about this? What's your luck? Have you got some vested interest here that I don't know about? How would I have a vested interest? I don't know. You're mates with these people or something?

1:04:25I've been rich once or twice. I'm a tiny LP in rampers. I have like a 0.001%. That's immaterial. You're very kind about all of this. So let me say what I would. I was assuming you'd be less kind. Well, let me say what I'm kind about with this. This is what happens with startups. I mean, this wasn't a startup. I was already 10 years old. It was at one point a startup. Yeah, but this is like, Bridget is right in saying, like, founders get paid last. I mean, not if they are smart and do secondaries when they're hot, which is what I would advise. But, like, that is true, and I'm sympathetic to all of that part of it.

1:05:02There's some behind... I'm trying to debate how much to talk about behind-the-scenes stuff here. I'll say this. So let me just say the bits I... You weren't an investor in the business at all. I was not an investor. I've got really nothing to do with the business. I've met Bridget a couple of times like I've spoken to her and she's very nice to deal with. So look, I don't have any personal connection to this but I've got these things to say about it. Number one, there was a golden window for this business. It was so... Pre-COVID or during COVID? I can't remember. I just remember. Well, it raised 30 million bucks so clearly it was a golden window of raising...

1:05:36This was so hot. And so I just want to emphasise again and again and again. When there's a golden window, which means everyone thinks the only way is up, including you as the founder, sell some stock. You don't have to sell 20 mil. Sell 2 mil. Sell 5 mil. Like, kind of sell whatever you can sell that still leaves you with a big chunk. I think like 10 % of your holding. Yeah, because you don't know what the future holds, and that will de-risk you dramatically. Now, I'm going to say this just matter-of-factly. Bridget Loudon is now called Bridget Loudon Harris and married into the Harris Farm family.

1:06:12which is a great business. Amazing business. And also, I wish that was in Melbourne, that business. I love it so much. And all the guys are lovely guys. And so I'm not implying in any way that she doesn't need the money because now she's in that family. I'm not implying that. And I think she's intelligent and motivated. But it turns out that sell-down probably is not going to have been life-changing to her if she could manage it. But it might have been. She might not have married into that kind of family, right? So I think you've got to sell down in the golden windows. And as an investor, investors are generally tolerant of some found to sell down when the stock is very hot.

1:06:51Maybe not as much as it's going to demotivate them and they say, well, it doesn't matter. I don't think any investor minds you just take 10 % off the table. That's right. Or 20%. I think more than that, it starts becoming problematic. So that's one of my criticisms about this. The other criticism is... Well, it's not a criticism. That's just a missed opportunity. It's not really a criticism. Yeah, that's true. The other thing about this is, you can tell me which of these are criticisms. So I've got more to say about this maybe than you do. There's a co-founder, Emily Yu. She's the co-founder. So Emily, I don't know Emily and I've never met her.

1:07:21She left Expert 360 in 2022. So she was listed as co-founder and non-executive director from 2017 to 2022. so she's totally out of the business and is now a senior executive at Quantium. Okay. Now, there's a lot of similarities between Expert360 and Quantium. Quantium just has these people working for them, but a lot of these types of people would go through. So I suspect Quantium may have been a good customer of Expert360 in terms of buying consulting power. That's speculation. So I'm not, again, I'm not pulling punches here. I'm not suggesting that Bridget is trying to portray herself as the sole founder.

1:08:04No, I don't think so. That is the narrative, though, that seems to have been built up in the media. Well, she's in reality, really, has been the sole founder for almost a decade. It's substance, if not in form. Yeah, so there were two people there. Yeah. The third thing I'd say about this is as follows, and I'm going to be cautious in how I say this. There was some disquiet when Bridget became a Telstra director. That was going to be my point, actually. Because the company had just done a capital raising. and I don't want to get into the ins and outs of individual personalities involved in this and neither should you because I know it in confidence and if you know it, you'll probably be in confidence as well.

1:08:37I don't have any confidence. I'm purely an onlooker here. Okay, but there was definitely disquiet amongst some VCs that that role, because being the, so John Mullen was the chair that put her on. John Mullen found her. It was actually a very smart appointment by him in my view. Remember how I talk about when someone gets set up with someone else, someone's doing someone the favour. My friend Ash had created this great sort of philosophy that if I'm setting up you and Giselle Bundchen, I'm doing you the favour here. Well, I'm going to dispute that. I keep going. I think in this case, Bridget was doing Telstra the favour.

1:09:16Telstra wasn't doing the Bridget favour. I think maybe initially people thought it was averse, but Telstra got a lot more out of that bargain than Bridget did. Well, another way of saying it is someone very smart said to me, the best relationships are when each party thinks they're getting the better deal. I think that might have been that relationship, to be honest with you. And what I heard from the Telstra board is that she did a good job on the Telstra board. And she just stepped off last week following that. Yeah, she just stepped off last week after six years. But I will say, I think that moment of...

1:09:46Because Telstra is 400 pages of board material, lots of governance. It's really not an innovators board, to be blunt. And so that's a big commitment is 250 to 300K of salary. And so that's enough to live on. If that. No, it is. Oh, it is. Yeah, that's enough to live on. Yeah. And so... It's more than most founders get paid. Certainly more than I get paid. And so all of a sudden, you know, they've just raised capital, new capital, and the person running it is now getting 250K plus, doing a lot of work. The bigger issue is the time. Yeah. Yeah, the time. So that's an issue, right? Yeah, I really like Bridget.

1:10:23I think she's great. I thought she gave the business a great crack. I thought that the only real misstep was that Telstra board appointment. Well, I know the VCs didn't like it. Some VCs didn't like that. Forget it as an LP. I don't think any CEO should take an external board appointment ever. It happens all the time. Oh, I totally disagree with that. I know we've disagreed with this in the past. I don't see how you can... But a startup founder, I agree with you. but it's the same principle really but like even more so no it's not I've found it more so but like you're hired to do and not for proper boards it's a little bit different because I think you're giving back and whatever but an actual pay a big Telstra board which is effectively a part time job probably like a 20 % job you'd probably argue it's not yeah I agree with you and so I'm taking 20 % of my time and giving to these other guys when you're paying me and like and you've invested in me I think it's I think it should be done ever I'm going to say this we'll see if you agree with this I think we should have this debate on the Saturday episode because actually it's a debate that's relevant to a lot of people that listen to this podcast.

1:11:22So let's keep, let's debate this on Saturday. We'll wrap it up on Saturday. And so what else do I think about Expert 360? Other than that, I've got no complaints, right? They did their best. It looked good for a while. It didn't. But I do want to make a comment about Bridget's... But they've got 16 million. Like, it's not zero. So yes, it's less than the 30 they raised. But... Yeah, well, I don't know. It's selling a company. It's basically raising a dollar to get 30 cents back. But it's not like... But yeah, I get that. And not getting paid for labour. But it's not, I get the 30 million investor, but it's also like, it didn't go down, I mean, creditors money or like that.

1:11:51So like, it still was a positive outcome. It was a very respectful and high integrity outcome from the outside. Yeah, it's the word I'm looking for. Now I just want to... I thought Bridget conducted herself amazing. Well, I want to refute one last thing. Really? I do not agree. So I don't think it is correct. I'm not saying Bridget's not telling the truth. I disagree with the idea. that I'm not in it for myself at all as a founder. I just want to be honest. I don't think she said that. Well, she did say that. No, she didn't say that. I think she just was very magnificent in saying that, like, I don't deserve to get any money out of this because the businesses succeed.

1:12:31I thought she was excellent there. I think you're being perhaps unfair. Those who know me know my focus is always on the clients, the experts, the shareholders and the team, not my own outcome. So whether she believes that or not is not what I'm saying. what I'm saying is I don't believe that. Like I would, my version of that would be my focus is always on. Well, she said shareholders and she's a shareholder. My focus is always on the clients, the experts, maybe I would say the team, I would put team first, the team, the clients, the experts, which in her case are the clients I think and shareholders because that is how I'm going to get the best outcome for myself and other people that invested.

1:13:14Like, I think she didn't have to say, I was never in this at all for myself. She could have said what she said, which is, like, founders eat last and there was no food left for me and I accept that. That's what I thought she said. But I want to be super clear. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the founders having self-interest for their own outcomes in doing a start-up. And I would go further and I would say, I do not want to be involved in a founder that does not have self-interest. because ultimately on dark and lonely nights, that is what's going to drive her. But I'm not sure she's saying that was the case.

1:13:48I'm saying that in this situation where the business is dying, my priority was on these stakeholders. That's why I'm not saying, criticising her for the statement. I'm just saying to be crystal clear, we should not be hunting down martyrs for founders. Yeah, for sure. Like self-interest is a very important... We're not running a nunnery, we're running a business. That's right. And so I think given... I mean, this business stayed alive for a lot longer than I was expecting. Didn't you think this was going to happen years ago? No, I didn't think it was that bad a business. I thought it was fine.

1:14:13But no one ever said to me it was profitable. Yeah. So eventually, if you're not growing and you're not profitable. I thought it was growing. If you're not growing enough and you're not profitable, no one's going to give you more money. Yeah. And so eventually you're going to have to shut. Yeah. And so I agree with you. So how would you feel as an angel investor after 10 years being dragged? So we should say drag is probably in the shareholders agreement there's a clause that says, what do you reckon, 75 %? If 75 % of people vote in favour of something. 70, 75. then you've got no choice. You have to go along with it.

1:14:44And if you were a Series A investor, not even Series A, and you invested and you've been in there for close to 10 years and you've been dragged now to an outcome of 100 cents in the dollar lost, how do you feel about that? I think people have written it off. Yeah, I've been zeroed out in a couple of investments. Dragged to zero? Well, it doesn't matter. If it's dragged or it just goes under, No, but as in, do you... I think you get a tax loss, move on. I think it's a good result. But the worst result was when the business goes zero and you can't get the tax loss out. Well, that's true. That's worse.

1:15:19It just happened to me before as well. Very hard to know under the new CGT regime how a tax loss is going to be treated, by the way. So, okay. Well, that's interesting. I mean, I was once involved in a deal on the buy side where the guy who sold... I can say... I think I can say this openly. It was the Exos business that we bought at Catapult where the guy that ran it, Matt Bayros, who's still with the company now in a C-suite role, like we bought that in 2015 that's pretty impressive right um he um had to convince like series a b and c shareholders to voluntarily take no sense in the dollar in order for like d and f to get money and be able to sell the business and he managed to pull it off and managed to buy the business yeah it was not easy yeah yeah um let's move on and corporate travel management made its long way to return to the asx boards last week and it held up relatively well on its first day of trading, to lose, I'd say, only 85 % of its former value because I think a lot of people expected to lose a lot more than that.

1:16:16It literally traded at$3.21 per share, giving the business a market value of almost$500 million. This is still substantial, but obviously less than its previous. Do you remember what it was before it got delisted? Or got suspended, I should say? No, I don't. No, I don't. $2.2 billion. Okay. So it lost about 85%. But what did the... You're probably going to cover this in your intro, what their shares traded at recently. Oh, I'll get to that. CDM backers celebrated, albeit a little prematurely with Forager Fund's CIO Steve Johnson I really like Steve Same, I agree whose firm wrote down at stake in corporate travel by 80 % while she was suspended said he was disappointed the stock did not fall further on Thursday claiming they're very very close to the right number I'm astonished how well the business has held up through a very traumatic period they can keep growing and they can get back to growing it well I said well I do like Steve I think he maybe he was a bit wrong in this one What percentage of a drop just remind me the percentage of a drop he said from the closing price.

1:17:10Well, I said. Look, he, so Steve wrote it down 80%. Yeah, 80%. How far did it actually? About 8.85. But, yeah. Okay, so he was pretty close to the number. Yeah, exactly. And he said it should have been lower. Well, he was, I think he said he was hoping, he said that reflected what he thought it should be, but he was hoping it'd be lower. So he could buy more. So he could buy more. Yeah. Not everybody felt that way, though, with Richard Coppelson, a famous head of Insto Sales at Bell Potter, said, CTM was one of the great disaster stories to hit ASX in a long time. And if it were not for all the short covering today, the stock would have been a lot lower.

1:17:44So as the shorts all cover, that buying will disappear and the stock looks like it has plenty more downside in it. It looks like Coppo got it right and Steve actually got this one wrong. As the share price got smashed as the week went on, ending at$225, a further drop of 31 % and a market cap of$329 million. This still appears significantly overvalued as the premature celebration on CTED's return to profitability appears to very much burn the lead. Last week, the business announced its 226 annual report, claiming it generated a full tax of$25 million last year. This compared with$6 million in 2025.

1:18:18I'm excluding the impairment there. But note that$25 million also included$23 million in one-off accounting and forensic costs. So really, they're claiming their net profit last year was$48 million, which is pretty remarkable. That said, it won't include PEP. PEP gave them $170 million loan, probably about$20 million in interest there. So although the P &L does seem quite removed from its cash flow, its operating cash flow was only$3 million last year after you account for the intangibles payment. The company claimed this included a bunch of one-offs, like moving to daily settlement with IATA.

1:18:49Remember we talked about the whole IATA thing? So the reason they got IATA to continue to let it to trade and buy air is because it moved to daily settlement, so it's paying IATA every day. Most concerningly, though, was corporate travel reporting revenues in July falling from 58 million last year to 53 million this year. And they also refused to provide guidance on future trading. But there were also some currency issues there. Interesting you say that that's bad, that it fell from 58 to 53. I think it's amazingly good. Why is it not 3 million? Because basically everyone thought this thing was going broke pretty much.

1:19:21Well, because you're locked into contracts. So you can't just, like, companies can't just desert it. Are they exclusive contracts? Yeah. You start up with one corporate travel manager. You can only go through them. Yeah. Right. I mean... And they tend to be three, five plus year contracts. So like worst case, you lose everybody, you lose 20%. Are these big companies that are their customers mostly? Or mid-size? Well, UK government. Australian government. So if I'm a big... I just want to be clear. If I was a big company and I had an exclusive deal with corporate travel, I would have just started using someone else and I would have just walked the lawsuit if they wanted to sue me.

1:19:53There is no way I would have stayed with them. Yeah, it's remarkable people have. Yeah. we've got a lot of sales people probably speaking to these guys all the time but yeah we don't use corporate travel manager obviously but no way would I keep using them because what are they going to do sue you for breach of contract yeah exactly I mean what's the damages and you've got a pretty good defence yeah anyway I think I've got better things to do than start suing their customers as well is probably the bigger issue yeah well they're probably busy they're probably busy yeah so admittedly while some of that 10 % drop off is currency conversion it's usually US dollar and UK denominated the one thing that I mentioned last week Flight Hunter reported in its own financials a couple of weeks ago have picked up$1.6 billion new business.

1:20:31A big chunk of that must have come from CDN. I agree, but I still maintain it's good because you have to think about this. People that roll off contract, what do you think the churn rate would have been? 100%. No one's re-signing that was rolling off contract during this debacle, right? Yeah. I think they did get some people to re-sign somehow. All right. 80%. So they got an 80 % renewable churn rate. and so of course their revenue is going to go down because are they signing new customers while they're going through this? Zero is my guess. So they're losing customers, not signing any new customers.

1:21:05I think the fact that it's roughly flat a little bit down is shocking to me, to be honest with you. Isn't it shocking and good? Yeah, I think it's good. Well, the market clearly, we can go on valuation in a second, but the market doesn't agree with you there. I think the market thought it was... What did they think they were going to double the business while they looked like they were going to go broke? But for the last year, CTMM has been saying we're not losing any customers. We've got 97 % retention. So they were announcing something very different to that. And I can't imagine that lying to the market in this case.

1:21:30Well, I think that the credibility level of CTMM is… This is different. This is not Jamie Ferris, though. This is a new broom of management who seemed much better than the previous management. I think, you know, usually I say to you, we've talked about a company for a while. Let's talk about a different company. but this company, I think we should talk about, whatever their next results are, we should talk about them. For sure. Because I think this drop to me is a good sign, not a bad sign. And I think next, I don't know what they're, because a lot of whether you grow or not is how strong the previous period was, right?

1:22:07But I think there's a good chance they might report a good next period if this is as bad as it got in the worst time. Well, there's some other bad stuff that I'll do now. The biggest risk is that there's more of this nightmare still to be uncovered. That's got to be the biggest risk. I think the refund stuff, they must have uncovered most of it by now because they've spent 18 months or almost 18 months going through it. So I don't think that's the risk. I don't think, but that is a non-zero risk. Yeah, it's non-zero, but it's not. What is close to 100 % risk, though, is it's about to be a nightmare of class action lawsuits coming its way.

1:22:38From whom? From shareholders. From shareholders. So I think that's going to cost them in settlements and it costs them in legal fees and it costs them in distractions. So to me, that's a huge issue. So basically, it's current shareholders paying out former shareholders. So if you're buying into the business now, you're taking on that class action. You've effectively got a contingent liability of previous shareholders. Off-balance sheet liability. It's almost like... And so what may well happen, because that would really be a one-off cost. Because companies always say it's a one-off cost, but like every year, there seems to be one-off costs in most companies.

1:23:06But this would be a genuine one-off cost sitting class action. But you might end up... But you just take off the enterprise value. It has to come off what you think of. Yeah, well, you might end up with a rescue capital raising to pay this one-off cost that dilutes shareholders another 50 % or 80%. Absolutely. That's the real risk. I agree. That's the biggest issue. That's the real risk. There's actually another red flag amongst all this, and I'm breaking this news here because it's not confirmed yet because I haven't announced it to the market, although this episode drops a couple of days, a day after.

1:23:33Do you trust your source on this? My source is unimpeachable, and probably one of the best sources going around. and it's apparently Morgan's last week did two block trades for an amount that equaled Jamie Ferris' stake in the business. So my mail is that Jamie, the founder, has sold his entire stake in this business. And so what would he have got for that? I think like 50-odd million maybe. So that's a lot of money. He was almost a billionaire at one point. Yeah, but this is a business that I was going to say it had one foot in the grave. It was more like the nose was poking out of the top of a vertical grave, but that's about it.

1:24:09and somehow it was pulled out. I wasn't shocked that it was pulled out, but God, that was a long way in the grave. For him to still be able to pocket$50 million after being the leader of that business into the grave is pretty remarkable. Yeah, he could have some legal action himself, he has to face, who knows, and then he might have some legal fees coming. So the business is currently trading at, it was up a bit on Monday, so$345 million. Do you think that's a fair price? So I haven't looked at the numbers well enough to form a view on that, but I do want to ask you this question. Well, literally made$48 million net profit last year before the one-offs.

1:24:45You've tarnished my view of this firm's numbers, et cetera. I think, you know, I've got a few questions to ask. One is a technical question. So people took shorts in this, which means they sold stock they didn't own with the plan of buying it back, borrowed it and buy it back later. So that must have happened before the suspension, presumably, because no one's going to lend stock. Yeah, Doug Kahn has been showing this for years. Yeah, no one's going to lend stock to short while it's a spender. That's a suicide. But why wouldn't all of the shorts not closed out with off-market trades when this thing looked like it was going well?

1:25:19Especially given it was like one cent, two cent. Do you think the shorts were waiting for it to go broke and they were greedy? Or do you think there was not enough stock available to close the shorts off-market? Possibly a bit of both, I suspect. Yeah. Probably more the latter. I think it was less about greed and more about not being able to, potentially. And how much were these shares trading for when it was suspended? How much per share was a price? Well, the valuation of the business was$2.2 billion before. No, no, when it was suspended. Well, Doug Tynan sold down for$0.16. $0.16. $0.17. And today it is?

1:25:48$2.36. Okay. So you and I, we could have made 15x on our money if you were not so bearish about this. It'd be going broke. Because whoever bought that stock while it was suspended, they made 15x their money today and they might have made 25x their money if they sold out when it listed because they could have easily sold out to the people closing, covering shorts, right? And so the moral of that story is a very interesting one which is an investment thesis. I can't remember who, it's like a lot of people's thesis now but it is one of the very, maybe it was what, Druckenmiller's thesis? Stanley's.

1:26:25Yeah, which is when you trade, the trick is to have an asymmetric trade where there's huge amounts of upside, but you can manage the downside. And so if you bought these shares when they were suspended, you could have lost all of your money. But if it wasn't that much money, it was survivable. But in return, you get the chance to make 25x your upside. That's business in general, asymmetric bets. And so do you know how much Doug Tynan bought in dollars? I'm not sure. How much do you think his 25X turned out to be? You have no idea. 25 mil? Would he have bought a mil? Could have. More? As in how much did he sell down?

1:27:06How much could you think, if he made 25X on his money, I'll even say 20X, how much do you think he would have made on that trade? I'd say over 100 million. He could have made over. So that is an unbelievable story that the Fin Review should be writing up. What has been about? The Doug Tynan trade, he was the first to call it in 2016. We want to know when it closed. because that's really... We closed it a month ago at 16 cents. So I think he stole it short at like 15 bucks. Oh, sorry, I misunderstood. So he closed his short at 16 cents. Okay, so that's even better. But someone sold that at 16 cents.

1:27:42So that was a terrible trade. Yeah. And do you think anyone managed to buy stock at 16 cents other than closing a short? No, I wouldn't have thought. Because not many people are prepared to sell at 16 cents. And how about ECP? what's the story with them? No idea. They'll be interesting to follow as well. Yeah, your mates. Well, they wrote it, well, definitely not my mates, but they wrote it down by 100%. Yeah, I think quite a few people did write it down by 100%. Yeah, so this is going to be a great month for their performance. Yeah. Because, you know, they will have lost, let's say, 80 or 90 % of the value of their investment, but this month, they would have made a huge return because they wrote it down to 100%.

1:28:19So, I mean, I find this whole story is just completely remarkable. Surely someone is going to write a book, right? There's a book coming of this. I don't know if there's nothing for a book, but it certainly sells your tale of what can go wrong. Oh, there's got to be a book. People were criticising this business literally 2016-17. So this is not a new thing. It just took a long time to unravel. It shows that, whether you call this a fraud, it probably was a fraud because they weren't booking the refunds properly. Frauds take a long time. We saw with Wirecard, frauds can be hidden for a long time.

1:28:49Well, we don't know if it was malice or incompetence or what combination of both it was. who knew, who didn't know who the fall guy was. Johnny Shapiro wrote a book about Afterpay. Yeah, I never read that book. This is even more interesting. I don't know what was interesting. This is even more interesting, this story. I think there's a book here. Someone should write this book. For sure. On that note, we'll bid farewell. We've got a great episode on Saturday coming up. Don't miss it, guys. We'll see everybody for our live episode who's coming along later in the week. And we can't wait to release this live episode next Tuesday.

1:29:20You should say, you didn't promote the live show because there's no tickets. Yeah, we are obviously sold out. There's not a ticket to be had. So thank you everybody who's bought a ticket. We can't wait to see everybody next week. And we've got some other live shows coming up. Because this one's so popular, we're going to actually run a few more live shows as well. I agree. I'm very excited for this. I'm pumped for this. So see everybody on the live show recording on Thursday. And we can't wait to release that on Tuesday.

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