It's the mat work. Something else that uh that bothers me is my angel gears. It's just boy that artist boy boy This artist be bothering me. Um, you know a lot of artists When they are a while notice because you know, I have a show coming up and I have artists sending me stuff And if you call yourself an artist, right? I'm gonna need you to have recent music. I have artists right now that's sending me stuff from 2016 Right, and I'm like and you're saying that you're an artist right now So there there ain't no way that you don't have up-to-date music So for all of you guys and now I'm not saying that what it sounds great though So is it like this because it sounds old or just the fact that it was created back then the fact that first of all I feel like sometimes a lot of times music gets dated So you can hear a song and the beat the vibe it feels like something from years ago You know, I mean and with this show in particular I had multiple artists sending me stuff now. I have requirements like I need you to have a video all of this So all of it looked Old You know, I mean like all of it looked old and I'm like, what do you have that's right now?  Like what have you done lately if you try to get booked for shows you get and you you can't send me anything That's up to date that kind of tells me as a booking agent as a promoter like If you don't even got nothing recent that tells me you probably don't even got no fans right now Or you don't have nobody moving for you. It's just like a bad look, man So it's like first of all artists should be recording or producing music on a regular basis Now there's no like, oh, you need to bust down a song once a week or release a song once a month But you definitely should be recording and creating music if this is what you do for a living on a Continuous basis, you know what I'm saying? So it's like if you are artists and you don't really have anything new Maybe your thing right now is to get a project together create some new music Get your your imagery together get your presence together Maybe you are trying to go through a rebranding phase and maybe that's one reason why you kind of took a moment off But like you got to hit people with some stuff with right now And and stop like sending all of this old Super old music that sounds outdated the visuals look outdated You know in the video you had braids and now you got a cut like brand-man shan You know, I mean you you sent me pictures where you had locks and now you got a low cut like Everything has to translate with who you are right now because if you want people to promote you as who you are Like and we're putting out flyers and we're putting out content And then people are seeing like people that look too different like two different people It don't correlate like it don't go together. So we need to update everything You need new music now's the time to start working on something new get some fresh sounds You know get everything that's that's new I could say as a like to artist What you're hearing right now is the type of person you want to do business with because the people who don't care about those things The quality of their show or whatever they're doing in the other spaces Is going to be on the same level. So they're not caring and holding you to those standards Yes, you can say oh, I got in but now you can also expect those low standards to be in the other aspects So it's actually not worth being a part of that thing in the first place So you want the people that you do business with to hold people to those types of standards to have barriers to the level of quality of artists and the other people they do business with because I've definitely been through that Especially when I was doing my festival, that's my biggest biggest experiences with artists and things like that But one even if the music doesn't sound outdated and isn't wack You have the idea just from a business standpoint Am I trying to put an artist out there and promote an artist that isn't active? Right. They're not committed and they're not You know constantly working towards their career because it's like, yeah, I believe in you But I'm not your manager trying to build you up. Right. So I want like my incentive is to have an artist that's dope right now And for that artist to continue to be dope and enlarge in their platform because now I'm associated with that That's how the people who are doing events or doing certain things are going are going to be thinking So it's in your best interest or in their best interest to work with people who are currently active Currently grinding and doing work without them Because now I can add my sauce onto it and then if people really see you doing that stuff They'll add something extra or they're really old Man, this artist is dope and I think this artist is going somewhere I see the momentum let me get him on because I want to let everybody know about him And I want them to know that I was the one that told them about them Right, I mean, but you have to put yourself in a position to look like that Because then people will start coming to you more or doors are opening for you a lot faster Right and from us, uh, like a fan standpoint Like if if you if somebody hears a song right, I just hear a song, but now I want to look you up So I go look you up on youtube People look at dates. I know I do like I look at like when was this video posted? You know what I mean? And it is a video especially. Yeah, right? And it makes me less on Spotify though, right? It's less on Spotify, but I feel like a lot of people Oh, I know me personally. I think when I listen to something new I'm always trying to find the visual because me. I'm just Activated visually like I like to see something, you know Sometimes you watch videos and it makes you like a song more because you've seen some type of visual to it and it kind of like Engaged with you to it like ruled you in versus you just hearing it You know I'm saying so it's like a lot of people will go and start to look you up And I'm one of those people like I go to youtube because I want to see like what your visuals look like Especially when I hear artists that I don't know who this person is like I want to see what you look like You know what I mean? So I'll go to youtube and search for some type of video And then I always look at the date like is this video is like is this a recent artist? It's old. What does it mean to you? Like if it's if it's old and I can't find anything that's recent it makes me feel like I'm wasting my time Oh, and and you can't find something right and I can't find something recent I'm just like, okay. Well, maybe this artist not even doing music no more. So like what's the point? You know, oh dang they were dope. They could have went somewhere or did something Yes, but you got me on a hyphen inside or a hot and bothered, you know, I mean and then just let me down. I'm unfinished So it's like boy, you gotta come with the package and and you should want to Not cause I don't know if I could pause Whatever but it's like yo before you it's like yo a lot of your artists are constantly reaching out to people to To like put you on to do this and do that and then they're asking you like, okay send me what you got send me pictures Send me this send me that and it's like you just don't have nothing recent So it makes people feel like they're wasting their time Trying to to put into you, you know, I mean when you don't even you're clear It looks like you're not putting into yourself. So no 100% like I I still always go back to this artist who rejected him for his show and I was like, bro, you don't have anything Right like literally I could tell he was an artist look from looking at his instagram. I couldn't find music But he literally had nothing and then this artist had the nerve to get mad And say look man, you don't know what you missing out on.  I have no idea about so I I don't understand how artists put themselves in that position to to think of themselves I get the having to build up confidence and that becomes a part of the game sometimes But the level the goal that some of these people have like as far as not understanding the other side of the business And the value that you need to be bringing not just the fans But to these to the other people what what matters to them, right? The more you can put yourself into the mind state of the person you're doing business with Understanding their business model and just what matters to them the more you can make it easy for yourself to be a value to them and to Um, just just create a relationship that actually gets an impact You


Hello and welcome to episode 62 of the market maker podcast and in this episode we are going to focus on Elon Musk and his attempt to take over Twitter. I've had lots of emails sent to me privately asking for us to do an update on this and yeah we gave it a miss last week during Easter so we're raring to go. And as much as giving our take on the situation, it's obviously an evolving story but hopefully we can deconstruct it explains some of the kind of finance jargon around it as a subject matter hostile takeovers LBOs white nights poison pills. You name it, this story's got got everything so before I begin his just how's it going has your week been before I give a quick summary of the week. Yeah, going very well actually I was something quite cool happened yesterday I was credit Swiss I was doing the running the spring week programs which we've been involved with this week and actually yesterday I was like I don't get to be on the front line and much study more not like I used to be in terms of getting out and running our simulations and you know being in well certainly being in front of people right obviously covids pushed us all online so yeah it's quite nice to just get back on the front line, but what was quite cool I was running we were actually running our IPO simulation, focusing on the IBD side but yeah there were there are a few people in the group. There was a credit Swiss kind of spring interns who were just coming up and saying oh my god I listened to the podcast. In fact, I would, you know I've been I listened to the podcast the night before my interviews, you know just to make sure that I'm fully up to speed. And so yeah it's quite no pressure that right yeah that was nice to I guess it's odd when you're doing recording these things because basically it's me and you in a zoom meeting. And it's nice to know that there are actually people out there that listen to this and well by the looks of it get get some good value out of it so so so yeah it was it was nice nice to hear. Well look well we'll do our best to cover all investment banking divisions today because I can give you a quick a quick overview on my side from the global markets perspective. And then perhaps I can play a little naive and ask you the questions to go into this Twitter, you know must situation which definitely compasses a little bit more of the more investment banking side. Yeah, so let me let me run through a couple of the highlights of the week I'm sure everyone would have read and seen it by now but Netflix shares got absolutely decimated after they reported a loss of 200,000 subscribers during q1 the first such in a decade going one step further they forecast a further drop of 2 million this quarter. The other kind of related stocks like Spotify were down 11% on the same day. Disney were down about 7% as well, but the infamous fund manager Bill Ackman, you know if you thought those 50 bucks I've got in Netflix shares got hammered. The guy got it hard on that day he lost a cool $400 million in that one earnings release, he accumulated a stake of 1.1 billion, just in the last couple of months. And I can't remember the stat for the top of my head but roughly, I think they were 54 odd Wall Street analysts covering the stock. So this is when you're talking about an equity research team specifically putting out some notes, when they talk about the financials and forecasting of these companies. And I think it was something like 48 of them had a buy recommendation, and only three had a sell at that point so there's a lot of people nursing some severe hangovers on Netflix this week. Well, well Ackman that he actually bought you know yeah so as you say bought his stake in the last couple of months to do you know what he was trying trying to do. Not realizing there was another massive dip still to come, because what happened on that last earnings call for quarter four earnings, which was in January of this year. They revised down the subscriber growth forecasts for quarter one of 2022 and they revised it down to a growth of 200,000 subscribers. Obviously now it materializes it's lost subscribers right but that revision down of subscriber growth rates led to the stock dropping 30% in January. So that's where Ackman came in and waded in, got the bat out, bought a massive chunk and obviously now it's just dropped another 30%. And he's wearing a $400 million. I did read that his fund Pershing Square isn't it that he had record breaking 2019 2020 so I'm not going to cry over bills 400 million just yet. But let's pivot over to kind of broader economic view I guess that's impacting central bank thinking and the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell outlined his most aggressive approach to taming inflation to date yesterday. So on Thursday this week, potentially endorsing two or more half percentage point interest rate increases. He described the labor market as overheated. I read this morning came out overnight latest report out of the Japanese bank Nomura, they're now expecting the Fed to go in to 75 clips now in June and July, following up on the 50 so they their strategy is they think they're going to go 50 75 75. Now, well I can tell by your face that this is can't see it but yeah we've been here before it feels like. So what world, what world are these analysts living on. Well, do you know, well, this is, I guess one thing that definitely students should be aware of these are sell side institutions. And so Nomura is the one that I've seen mentioned everywhere this morning, like everywhere doesn't doesn't go miss when you put out a bold call. The financial media love it. Now. I mean how often any of these calls correct I mean you could only go to like most big bank forecasting and they're woefully off the mark a majority of the time, but that the Nomura's names been out there dominated the news for the last 24 hours on that front but Nomura are right. We will have a very large recession in the United States in the second half of this year, large recession. They're talking about raising rates by 2% in over the course of what three, three months that that would be catastrophic. I would suggest. And then looking in Europe, the theme continues, because the Vice President, Louis de Gwendoz said the bank should be able to phase out asset purchases in July. That will pave the way for interest rate increases early as that month. That hawkish turn comes as several ECB officials have kind of said similar types of hawkish things. Money markets now betting on three quarter point rate hikes by December from the ECB. And then sterling is lower. It's quite a bit this morning actually it's just dropped through Eastern the futures market the 129 hand or against the dollar. It was trading around 131 24 hours ago so seeing significant weakness is a dual force effect here there's dollar strength apparent with a lot of the yield moving and rate expectations on the US side. The equally we've had retail sales come out of the UK this morning dropped more than expected UK consumer confidence sank for a fifth straight month. Economists in a regular Bloomberg survey say they now put the chance of a UK recession in the coming year at 30%. That's the highest it's been since early 2021 so that's the kind of the overall theme here is that rates are rising. And the markets certainly from yesterday's reaction to power getting a little bit more serious and hardening that kind of rhetoric. We saw tech stocks get hit quite aggressively yesterday. In particular stocks in general came under pressure as the dollar surged and then taking this to the political and geopolitical space France Macron. I'm going to say this, Macron looks set to win the election on Sunday. That follows the live TV debate we had midweek the general snap poll outcome was that again, much like he did in 2017 came out slightly stronger. The overall volatility bonds credit markets aren't showing particularly high degrees of stress at the moment. One thing I would say then is, although this looks like it should be fairly smooth by function of what I've just said means if there is a shock. It's going to be pretty forceful in the initial reopening of markets on Sunday night so that would be at least a knee jerk reaction. Euro weakness European equity weakness particularly in the French market, but also the peripheral bond market people would look at, namely things like the Italian yields and the subsequent spreads and so on. Yeah, the only way it's going to happen. The only way the pen can win is if the complacency amongst the Macron supporters is so extreme that just a whole big portion of them just don't bother turning out, which isn't the care France are pretty good in terms of turnouts and getting out there and actually voting so it's just these macrons are shooing isn't he. So it's done I think. Well, we weren't going to leave the EU either so. So, one thing just for you move on on Europe and rates, because that's quite a big, well, I guess it's a hawkish pivot from the ECB. And obviously we were quite used to central bank hawkish pivots these days given what's happened with the Fed and the Bank of England and all the rest of them. But I think the timing of it's interesting because if you look at, we don't often talk about currencies, excuse me we don't talk about FX and exchange rates much. But if you look at the euro against the dollar, then I mean that things down over 10%, it's down 10.7% this year. The euro weakening ends the dollar in the world's biggest currency pair that's a massive move in a pretty short space of time, you know driven by this monetary policy divergence where you've got a super hawkish US central bank leading to dollar strength and the ECB remaining a bit more new one not a bit remaining neutral on the fence until now. We've seen this euro weakness dollar strength, but one thing to note is the 2020 low for euro dollar is that 10650 roughly. And more than that the large the big lows we had in the eurozone debt crisis is down around 105. So the currency exchange rates 108 on the on the nail right now as I speak 10810650 and 105. It's very very key, really key very long term kind of technical levels and I think the ECB are a bit mindful that these are approaching because you know if you get a move below certainly below the sort of 2014-20-2015-2016 kind of triple bottom you may well see an acceleration to parity. And then this is where you know the currency, then the euro weakness is so accelerated that it's just going to exacerbate the inflation problem that obviously everyone's so panicked about so I think I think the exchange rate is one of the reasons the ECB have just decided you know what let's you know let's probably just tweak up the dial on the hawkish front. And for those not aware of it that's not uncommon right the ECB comparative to other central banks specifically when it comes to currency are quite vocal and have been as a historical precedent so why would that be they have been vocal although their official stance is that their mandate is not to hold the exchange rate of course although clearly that's what they're doing. They're more a bit more sensitive to it just because well certainly Germany who's the obviously the biggest and the powerhouse economy in the eurozone. I mean, unusual as an economy in that it's quite geared towards exports unusual for a large developed economy, right. If you think about the US or the UK about, I think it's a roughly very roughly about 80, about 15% GDP is exports. In Germany it's more like 40% of GDP is exports so for Germany actually a cheap currency can work in their favor, but flip it onto the other side look if you're a developed nation you're importing like all the other countries in the eurozone you're importing huge amount of your goods that consumers pay for buying shops right and if your currency devalues then these goods that you're buying from abroad become more expensive. And so that price rise then feeds into inflation. Obviously we've already got a big inflation problem. So I guess the ECB are worried that if this continued accelerated devaluation of the euro continues and it's just going to have a negative feedback loop into what is already a big problem on the inflation front. But the talking of currencies there is one specific currency which is heading for its worst weekly drop since the pandemic began. Yes. I think you are. Yeah. The Chinese remedy is is actually heading for its worst weekly drop, going all the way back to when the pandemic took hold deterioration and economic outlook there's also the COVID situation. They're still tackling at the moment. And of course as we mentioned rising US yields and the dollar strength that we're seeing imparting further pressure on the currency so yeah, as we've kind of always had simmering in the background it builds on this channel. China continues to just be a little bit of a going concern. Well, not yet and that little bit. I think that's a big understatement. I think I think it's, it's a concern that is not getting priced properly into markets at this point. Again, I was just talking to show who runs our China office. I was talking to him this morning. He's still stuck in our office in China is in Shanghai, which is obviously one of the key big cities that's in full total lockdown at the moment. And he's actually in Beijing at the moment he wasn't in Shanghai when the lockdown happened. And now he's just hanging out in Beijing, because apparently the kind of morale in Shanghai is just has been destroyed people are. So, like to the point where expats are just leaving now, like permanently looking to now leave Shanghai, they're worried that I was just talking to him about stuff that we've gone in China in the summer like June and July, and people in Shanghai just thinking that there's going to still be a lockdown by then there's no there's no visibility on when this ends and they're locked out China lockdown is proper lockdown, right, not allowed out of the building lockdown. It's not like the lockdowns we have in Europe where I guess fine go for a walk in the park once a day whatever not like that. So, you know, I think the medium to long term damage being done, huge, and an economically, I just, yeah, I, well, we've been pretty vocal about our opinions on China's handling of this but yeah, I think the COVID situation in China right now is the worst it's going to be, not this I'm not talking let's let's say cases and deaths are more more in terms of the nation and their mood around what's happening, and how the government's clamping down on everything and it's the, it's the way the lockdown has been implemented and the way it's been policed that morale is a record low, basically. And then linking to China, Russia, test fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile as you do in what Putin said, it will give the US and allies a little something to chew over. That's pretty much of a basic quote from Putin that not not unusual I guess the flexing of military muscle but obviously context is right in the middle of this ongoing Ukraine situation, but the connection to China, which I thought was interesting that no one really talks about is the fact that it comes as China has said also this week will continue strengthening strategic ties with Russia. Which I know we talked about many times, but just given what's going on, and the type of maneuvers Russia's been pulling, because China kind of moved a little more to the west I'd say, a few months ago, but now kind of reverting back to type to a certain extent So, then the final thing to lead us into Twitter is Tesla, but in a record profit. Just to throw it in our faces, again, revenue growth was driven in part by an increase in the number of cars Tesla delivered, increasing average sales prices shares spiked 10%. And on the recommencement of trade on Thursday, however, they did pretty much reverse most, if not all of that came by the close so when we start talking about a trillion dollar company popping 10%. That's pretty normal standard business day for Tesla shares but then of course that leads us into Elon Musk. So, Twitter, I was kind of thinking prepping up for this. Where do you even begin with this it's just so messy to a certain extent so I thought, going at it from a chronological order makes the most sense so he started accumulating his state. He had a 42% stake in Twitter to become the platform's biggest shareholder he was offered a board seat. He originally agreed to abide by several rules set out by Twitter when he joined the board, including not increasing his stake in the company past 14.9% of shares internally at Twitter. I think it was particularly popular when when the news emerged to put it lightly, he then flipped declined the board seat, and then has made a hostile bid for Twitter with the value valuation of the company at around 43.4 billion. So, I guess, let's start at going hostile before we then talk about self defense if you're Twitter and poison pills, and then we'll take it from there. Yeah, I mean it's such such I love these stories. This is such a great saga. We haven't had one for a while like this. I guess, in fact, have we had one like this and it feels like quite a unique kind of situation but yeah going hostile I mean, it's just simply trying to buy a company without the permission if you like or without having the board of directors who manage and run that company without having their backing to do so. So you're just going hostile against those that control and run the company. So several months ago Twitter is not looking to sell itself. It's not looking for a new stakeholder. He starts accumulating on the sly it then emerges when he does it was at 13D or one of these filings comes out comes to like bang he's got 10% of the company pretty much. Then, then what happens next then so Twitter now goes into defensive mode. I mean it's a bit odd isn't it because he filed that 13D, which is you only file if we talked about this I think last time but he filed it late. It was like 11 days late or whatever but you file that if you don't have an intention to take over the company. So then it was like filing that and then right yeah, there's a board seat you know I'm, you know, large shelled and then I think I don't know what happened behind closed doors on that discussion on right here's a board seat Elon do you want it. And I think probably what happened was well look, here are the restrictions that you need to agree to if you want that seat and musk when actually you know what I want to buy this whole thing so I can't sit on the board because I'll have to agree to not purchase more than a 15% Then he stepped back then he filed this 13G I think it is which is a separate filing which then expresses your intention to look to acquire the whole company. Then it's like the board are obviously clear now that what musk's intentions are to buy the whole lot and then they go into emergency defense mode, and they trigger the poison pill. She's got to be one of the best named corporate actions out there. So what is this, you know, I just think of like Rambo and Arnie when I hear that type of thing so what's this got to do with like a corporation. The extreme model the most extreme sort of defense mechanisms that a board of directors can put in place to block someone buying a majority stake or buying, you know the whole company so what happens here with this particular one with with Twitter. See what happens is they've geared it so that if musk buys shares in excess of 15% ownership and for every share that musk buys a new share gets issued. So that new share is then purchasable at a discount by other shareholders, other than musk. So musk is the only share would be the only shareholder that's not allowed to buy the newly issued shares. Other shareholders can purchase this newly issued discounted value share only unless they themselves another shareholder then accumulates ownership above 15%. So it's very basically anybody above 15% can't buy these newly issued shares the point about these newly issued shares is then diluting the, the value, and indeed then the actual proportional ownership of existing shareholders. Right so it just makes the, for my I don't know let's simplify it let's say there's, let's say there's 100 Twitter shares. Let's say let's say musk buys owns 15 of them right so he's got 15% if he buys the 16th right then a new share is issued so there's not then then musk owns 16 shares out of 101 shares in issuance right. There's another one he'll own 17 shares when there's 102 in issuance and so it dilutes his value and prevents him from basically or prevents him or makes the, oh yeah prevents him in this case but in other cases where there isn't a mechanism that prevents the person from buying the newly issued shares it's way more expensive, because you have to not only you're buying the existing shares you're having to hoover up and buy all these newly issued ones as well. And it, you know, makes the actual in the end the price that you have to pay. Is there a, is there a set marker for the discount that the existing shareholders would get. I mean how severe is the discount is it like 99% or is it, I have not been able to find that information. Because so they're going to make it as easy as possible right as to that they can buy as the biggest discount. Yes, but the more the discount the that this is a this is a dangerous strategy from the board's point of view, because it dilutes the share ownership of all shareholders. Including Musk, and obviously their intention is to dilute Musk but they're diluting themselves as well, although they can buy these newly issued shares but not everyone's going to be able to buy. Right, or would want to buy right so you are going to negatively impact existing shareholders outside of just Musk. And by the way, this is called there are different variations of a poison pill. This is a what's called a flip in poison pill, which is the most common, which is where the hostile, the person who's, you know, leading the hostile takeover that one entity is not able to buy the newly issued shares but all other shareholders can. That's a flip in version of a poison pill. So what what would be other. Is there any precedents for a poison pill being successful as a strategy. Yeah, there are I mean the poison pill thing. It kind of first it came to the first example of it was in the 1980s, actually, but it's not common, but it has happened. And actually happened with companies that you'll all have heard of so actually a really good example is Netflix. So Netflix use the poison pill strategy in 2012 Carl I can, who is a very famous activist investor started building up a stake in Netflix in 2012 we got to a 9.98% stake. And then the next flip board said look, we need to we need to block this. And so they went ahead with the poison pill strategy, which triggered if I can bought shares in excess of 10% of the company. It worked. I can backed off. Okay, because he bought, I think he bought a $320 million stake for his 10%. Okay, they wanted to buy the company he thought Netflix was ripe to be taken over by one of the big tech giants. So we thought right I'm going to buy it and I'll flip it to one of the tech giants. Okay, the board was successful in their poison pill strategy in 2013. Sorry, in 2015 I can then sold his 10% stake. He did pretty well because he bought it for 320 million and he sold it for 1.9 billion. So he did all right in the end, even though his attempt to buy and acquire the whole company failed because with a successful poison pill defense strategy so. And it has, you know, Papa John's the pizza lot they did it to block one of their founders from trying to take over the whole company to look it happens. And it can be successful, but it's quite high risk. So then, moving the story along we've now got to the point where Musk has put out a whole series of very classic Elon cryptic tweets, kind of inferring that he's going to make a tender offer. So, let's talk about a tender offer and the financing side of what he's been doing a tender offer is you just go to the shareholders. I mean, ultimately, who owns the company, it's the shareholders that own the company, right, who controls the day to day running of it, well fine it's the board of directors. Okay, now sometimes you'll have this standoff where the board of directors don't want Musk wheeling in here and taking over, but it could be that the shareholders think differently.  Are they happy with their board of directors? Tell me that then. I mean, what's the kind of general view on Twitter and how it has performed as a company? Well, yeah, I mean I would say it's, well, I would say and lots of people might say that it's performed really badly and it hasn't ever got anywhere near to fulfilling its potential.  And I think a lot of people think that he's just been distracted by his other stuff and he's not really invested. And the other big criticism of the board, Twitter's board right now, hardly any of them use Twitter and hardly any of them own Twitter shares. You could argue that Musk obviously is the opposite, right? He is a prolific user of Twitter. He's got 80 million followers and now owns 10%. So who's a better representation on the board and to run this company? You could argue it's someone who uses the product all the time and is invested in the business and its success. That's something, but a really good, has Twitter performed well? Yes or no from an investor's point of view. Probably the best measure I could give you is that Twitter was founded in 2006, two years after Facebook, right? Facebook was founded in 2004. Since 2006 to today, Twitter's share price has gone up 77%. So that's a share price bearing mind that Facebook's share price has also been hammered over the last sort of six months. Even with that, the Facebook share price is up four times more than Twitter's share price. So that right there shows you that Twitter never really delivered. And look, there's so many, I guess, revenue streams that have been untapped, perhaps, you know, with regards to maybe looking at subscription kind of based things. Look, perhaps we need to talk about the whole, to talk about can Twitter fulfill its potential or not? I think you've got to talk about, well, what is it and what is it for? This perhaps plays into why Musk wants to do what he looks like he wants to do to take it over and that's kind of comes back down to this, comes down to free speech. Okay. Musk is a huge proponent of free speech. He went as far and I'm going to quote, he said something yesterday, civilization risk. A huge risk, by the way, I love it, but literally a risk to the whole of civilization. He said civilization risk is decreased. The more we can increase the trust in Twitter as a public platform. Freedom of speech. And the problem we've got at the moment is the freedom of speech is progressively being more controlled by a handful of people who run big tech. Okay, this is the fundamental issue here. You've got a handful of people unelected that don't represent the people, yet they control the narrative. This then controls how people think and how they behave and how economies function and XYZ, right? We're talking about big, big things here.  Yep, I was going to say, when's he when's he getting his reinstatement of his Twitter account then. Right. And I guess, I guess the point is about people who believe in free speech, it's like everyone should be able to say what they want to say and put forward their view. If you don't like it, don't follow them. Don't listen. It shouldn't be, hang on, if you don't like it, cancel them so that no one anywhere can hear them. So it's about that free speech thing. But the problem with Twitter, I guess there's so much content from every and it's a lot.  Let's be honest, right. So you need some kind of filter and something that Twitter, a revenue stream they've never explored is maybe going a bit more open source and this is something that in terms of the algorithms that are used to kind of control content. And I think one thing Musk wants to do is go a bit more open source on developing of these algorithms and then to the point where you as a user can maybe subscribe to a certain filter. I don't know, maybe, I don't know, let's say you're interested in tech stocks, right, and you want to use Twitter to be knowledgeable about stuff that's going on in the tech industry. So you could perhaps subscribe to a one particular algorithm that kind of filters for news on that front and you pay a small subscription for it, right. So I'm sure people would pay to get rid of all the crap that they're not interested in.   Say what you want. And it's up to you, the people if you want to listen to it or not. So, I think that's the kind of cornerstone of musks motivation here, I believe. So then we talked about, and I'm kind of jumping to different things here but we talked about what the gazillionaires do to get their kicks. We saw Bezos moving into media by buying Washington Post is this the kind of musk equivalent.  Does he believe there's some huge great extra additional revenue potential and can he take this company and 10 exit in the next decade. Fourth angle. Is this all just completely curated narrative so that he can engineer an exit of his setup with Tesla. And so he needs to follow this, this chain of thought, and all of this, you know, he's a smart guy. So he's probably thinking at least several chess moves ahead. He's well beyond this deal success no no success. There's, is there another element here where I for one do not understand or know deep enough, how he's structuring his exit out of companies like Tesla, and whether this is playing into that somehow in order to, you know, tax and all the rest of it options, explorations or exercising and trying to facilitate that. And actually he's just, he's a guy who just wants to make a lot of money and this is just the narrative to to execute. Yeah, I think you're definitely right. I think there's an angle. I mean we've been talking about musks big problem with his, his wealth as a person. Well, it's locked up in that problem. Yeah, so how do you, how do you liquidate that wealth, right, and we've been talking about this for months and months and months and months about how well hang on if Elon starts selling Tesla shares without the signal that this is this is the top. So everyone else says and the share price collapses and obviously his wealth collapses with it but I think this is probably another strategy. You know, along the lines of engineering and exit from Twitter because we've got to talk about financing right because this deal with Twitter has taken another step towards potentially happening on the musk side because he's now come up with the financing. That's all very well and good saying, here's my tender offer, you know, I'm good I want to buy all you shareholds out there I want to buy your shares for what was what was it $54 20 isn't it I think per share adding up to then a 46.5 billion valuation. That's all very well and good saying that but, but 46.5 billion dollars is a lot of money and where you're going to get it from. So the next exercise musk has been working on over the last week is structuring the financing of this potential deal. And part, you know, part I mean the financing is going to involve. So we believe term loans credit facilities cured bridge loans unsecured bridge loans margin loans. And then something you probably will understand better cash cash making up about 40% of the kind of deal. But in terms of the, the kind of numbers hang on a minute, I got the kind of breakdown here if I can just find it so yeah. So he's been talking to lenders musk has and so Bank of America Barclays and the like are apparently are now going to structure some of this and so he's so six and a half billion dollar term loan, a three billion secured bridge loan, $500 million revolving facility margin, yeah, the biggest portion or one of the biggest portions is a 12 and a half billion margin loans secured by musk Tesla shares. So obviously with loans, you need collateral, usually to kind of underpin that loan if you think about a house and a mortgage is probably the best example right your collateral is the house the building and then you're borrowing money against that. So musk is going to put up some of his Twitter, sorry, Tesla shares as collateral. But he's already used a big chunk of his Tesla shares for collateral for loans in the past so there's a bit of. Two different figures as to how many shares he's actually putting up here as a loan and then there's cash right. And so we're talking 21 billion maybe in cash and they're what we believe he's going to have to generate that by selling some of his Tesla shares so here's a great excuse. I'm not selling my Tesla shares, because I don't believe in Tesla, and it's growth story anymore. I'm selling Tesla says purely because I need to buy Twitter for the greater good of mankind and civilization. Now you're talking my turkey now. Right. It's just, if you step back and just it is genius. How long has he been towing the freedom of speech line a long time. Yeah. So he's been engineering this. This is my view for a long, but he's again, he's an incredibly smart guy and to think that this is all randomness. I think this is just his exit strategy, but he started a decade ago. Because he knows. He knows. The big giants in the automotive world are coming. And so it's time to move this up a gear or two. Well, I certainly agree on the Tesla. Yeah, I think this is very top for Tesla in terms of share price. So if he can exit now, I think it'd be genius and this would be a really interesting genius way of finding the excuse to engineer a major exit. The other thing then, of course, is because he's kind of structured the financing now, this obviously makes his bid much more serious, tangible. And that's good from the shareholders point of view. So can he now say to the shareholders, look, you know, this poison pill thing from the board, essentially, no one ever really then goes ahead and tries to buy the company and absorbs this huge extra cost that all these newly issued shares take. So what tends to happen with the poison pill deal is that it forces the hostile takeover person to start to have a dialogue with the board about how we can make a deal work here. If the hostile person has the backing of the shareholders, well, this puts the board in an incredibly difficult situation. And at the annual general meeting, which is actually in May, I think it's towards the end of May. If the sharehold, if there's a shareholder revolt, then you don't allow the board to get, I think there's two people on the board that are up for reelection and they won't be reelected. And then you might get new people that are pro musk deal on the board. So you could play this game of really essentially forcing the board via the shareholder support via these votes at the annual general meeting. And the second thing is, once the financing structures in place, he can then start to talk about maybe bringing on board some partners. Right, so explain to me this part, where does the private equity angle start to come into this? Yeah, so essentially he needs to come up with $45 billion, right? And he's proven, I guess, on paper that he can do it himself. There's a huge risk, even for a man of his wealth. You know, that's a lot of money, right? So what I'm sure he'll prefer to do is bring other people into this so that he doesn't have to stump up this cash all by himself. And so you're starting to get some private equity interest. There's a software buyout group called Toma Bravo, who are thought to be kind of at the front of the queue here. They've got about $100 billion in assets and they've begun conversations with Musk. So they might take on some of a portion of this money, a portion of the $46 billion, they might kind of come in on some of it. It might be on the debt side of it, maybe it's on the cash side of the deal. So I think that would make sense, I would say. And again, that might be a positive from the shareholder's point of view as well if it's not just Musk, the dictator coming in and just doing what the hell he wants. So I think that will probably be the next move as well. And then the other kind of, I guess, alternative would be finding a white knight. So perhaps we could explain what that is and why in this instance is probably unlikely. Yeah, so a white knight is something the board should be working on right now, which is finding an alternative buyer at a favorable price. Now why this might be difficult, because you could say, well, surely the likes of, I don't know, Apple or Amazon, you know, or Google, surely, surely a massive social media platform like this could be a great bolt on to their businesses. But the problem is, the regulator won't allow it. So the regulator would definitely not allow one of the big tech giants to buy Twitter. So cut right there. And because it's such a huge deal, you're going to need north of 45 billion right to have a better offer than Musk's. This is a lot of money. So yeah, the big tech giants can afford that but they won't be able to do it because the regulator so I think this is a situation where finding a white knight that can come up with that kind of capital. I guess who would want to, by the way, I think it's going to be difficult. Well, let's end it there. I think we could go on and on with this particular topic but hopefully that addresses a number of the questions I think came in to my inbox over the last two weeks and yeah thanks for buzzing me over the Easter holiday. As pierce was saying it's just wanted to conclude with that I think it's amazing that people are listening to this podcast still after 62 episodes I think we're on now so a lot of hours of content but as pierce said I actually spoke to a student who runs the main society in Oxford University, which is kindly invited me to go and speak at in the coming weeks, and he said everyone listens to the podcast and follows the market maker newsletter that accompanies the podcast as well so yeah don't forget to check out that newsletter for any interest in just building out your commercial awareness but equipping yourself is staying on top of the news what you need to know with career tips and hacks and so forth as well we share lots of stuff on a daily basis. I'll drop the link into the the bio of this episode but that's it for this week pierce thanks as ever, and yeah take care everyone have a great weekend. Cheers guys.


Yeah, thank you for everyone who's joined so far. My name is Simon Clark, I'm the EU's committee programs coordinator. Today is World Conservation Day, which is the perfect opportunity to discuss ocean conservation. So welcome to the webinar on said topic. If you have a question, please enter it by clicking on the Q&A tab at the bottom of the screen at any time during the webinar. We can also upload questions and questions to the most votes are more likely to be asked. No, we will try and get through all questions, either way, anyway. The webinar will also be recorded and uploaded to our YouTube channel, which is at your Geosciences. And today I'll be talking to our guest expert, Dr Rebecca Helm. Yeah, so, why should we begin? Could you give me more background in your personal background expertise to a little bit of you are and what your expertise is in. Of course, my name is Rebecca Helm. I'm joining from Western North Carolina, where I'm an assistant professor of biology at the University of North Carolina Asheville. My background is in open ocean life. So I studied jellyfish and organisms that live on the ocean surface. It's been a heck of a year for doing science on the high seas. We haven't been out much, but it's been really amazing to come together with broader communities over the past year to try to tackle some of the questions that we have and some of the challenges that the high seas and ocean ecosystems are facing. So it's really great to be here. Thank you so much again for having me. Sure.  How did you become involved from being a marine researcher into conservation efforts. I have been studying all these organisms that live on the high seas and spoiler alert is that we know virtually nothing about them. So, of course, every field of science can say that about something. But in this case, we really don't even know what species are out there. If a species in the Atlantic is the same species in the Pacific, what their life histories look like, how long they live, how often they reproduce what they eat. It's almost sort of going back to 19th century science in terms of just finding and describing organisms. And so in the process of doing that being involved in that very fun and exciting science is sort of realized. Wow, you know, we're learning a lot about these ecosystems. Some of the ecosystems in the open ocean appear to be potentially very fragile, especially when we start thinking about deeper sea life. So we can sort of slowly move, we can sort of interpret based on some aspects of their biology how long they might live. And some of them may live for a very, very long time. What mechanisms are in place at the level of policy to maybe conserve or protect these ecosystems. If there was an organization or a company that wanted to go in and fish or mine, or harvest plastic resources or things like that. And in sort of asking that question, and then contacting experts, I realized that there are very few, and a lot of potential opportunities are being discussed at the United Nations right now. Through a set of negotiations for a potential treaty called biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. And so that was what really kind of popped a light bulb over my head. Wow, they're all these biologists they're working so hard to try to understand these ecosystems we need to find a way to engage in these discussions on high seas conservation. That's sort of how I got involved. And a lot of that happened before COVID but then a lot of these discussions also been happening during COVID as well because all those negotiations have been sort of put on hold. So really on the, I suppose a lip of undiscovered well, and of the unknown in terms of sea life and I guess that's also kind of anti imperative why we need to caution or protection it comes to this region because there's a lot we don't know about it. So yeah, it's the idea of the precautionary principles so we really need to be careful when there's uncertainty when we're sort of aware of our own ignorance about these systems. And these systems are challenging because this is in areas beyond national jurisdiction so there's no one country that sort of sets the law. And as a consequence, you have the process of negotiation, which can take a really long time even within one country let alone you know many countries coming together to try to figure it out but this area covers nearly half our planet. And so it's really thinking about this forgotten half of Earth's surface that isn't currently sort of under one clear umbrella for biodiversity protection. So, before we kind of explore biodiversity protection on the high seas but further, could we just step back and talk about what threats are facing marine life. So like what kind of threats are there that we should be concerned about. Some of the things that we're worried about on this half of the earth that we're more familiar with are also impacting high seas so things like climate change, plastic pollution. And then there are some things that may be unique to the ocean so overfishing for example. There's coastal fishing and overfishing within easies but there's a lot of high seas fishing. And then when we think about things like deep sea mining which is an emerging industry so a lot of the things that I'm kind of paying close attention to are things that are sort of emerging, they're kind of coming up. So one of the challenges that were sort of for me facing with the high seas is the reality that for a long time this area of the world was sort of protected by virtue of how far it was from shore. It was incredibly expensive and logistically difficult to operate an industry on the high seas, and it's getting easier and easier. And then we are seeing emerging industries that maybe don't have analogs close to shore that don't have analogs on land that are going to uniquely impact the high seas. And so those are some of the challenges that we're really looking at addressing, and within the context of the BB and J. We have an opportunity to sort of address that for particular activities that may be impacting the diversity between the floor and the surface. So deep sea mining, you know falls under its own category fishing falls under its own category, but for any organism that maybe doesn't directly fall into either of those categories. This is how we might protect it. I think one of the key things when it comes to trying to protect the ocean and in particular high seas is being aware of how pollution or social pollution might vary with space so you have things like deep sea mining which might have more impact around the sea beds or how perhaps plastic might embed itself in the sediment and compare to say at the ocean surface while it might be more noise pollution or larger plastics or oils and stuff. One of the challenges that the high sea face is this is true for any ocean system or really aquatic systems that the impact in one place is probably not going to stay in that place. So when we think about conservation, there's almost like this implicit understanding that there is some geographic bound on an impact. And we really have to examine whether or not that's accurate for the high seas. And so this is true for plastic. This is true for oil. This is true for mining. This is true for fishing. You could be conducting some industry, half a world away from where the impact is most acutely felt. And that really goes back to the life cycle of the organisms that are living in these areas, how widely distributed they are the current systems, how far debris is carried. It could take years to really see an impact from one area in another area. And so that creates a huge amount of challenge and uncertainty and thinking about managing these impacts. The main challenge, one of the key challenges, I suppose, is there's a huge amount of variation based dynamic and it's across multiple scales. So quite a daunting challenge really trying to find a way to make sure this kind of region is protected. Can you talk a bit more on kind of impacts you might expect in some real life, how animals are impacted by prediction. So there are so many different impacts that we could see and one of the problems that we're facing and I know that I'm sounding like a total broken record here, but it's just like ignorance ignorance we really don't know it's hard as scientists are not in study these systems to, but some of the impacts that you see on high seas life could be analogous to what you might see closer to shore. So for example with plastic pollution, a huge impact and endangerment is entanglement so a lot of people think about organisms eating plastic and certainly organisms do. So we'll actually have our really great handle on all the ways that that might impact organisms so we know that there are instances where an organism will consume plastic that plastic will block their digestive tract. And then they will suffer some sort of fatal consequence as a result of consuming that plastic. But we also know a lot of organisms may be eating plastic that are sick or starving for some other reason in the same way that we see organisms eating things like floating pumice when they're starving. And so there's a lot of nuanced interaction with that, especially because plastics may hold on to sort of more bioactive molecules that could have toxic effects on animals there may be some sort of exposure to toxicants from eating these plastics. But again, you know we don't have a lot of data so that's certainly an active area of research, you know with regard to jellyfish a colleague of mine did a study looking at the impacts of plastic ingestion on jellyfish and it turns out jellyfish can eat just anything. And they spit it out. But entanglement I would say is huge issue lots of evidence of mortalities associated with entanglement. A lot of this comes back to ghost nets these nets that are cut from ships for a variety of reasons and sort of left to float around the open and their net quality doesn't change just because they're no longer attached to a ship and so their organisms caught in these nets they die. Of course then that may attract other predatory or scavenger organisms, which then come around these nets and then they might get entangled and die layers and layers and layers potential interaction. So this oil has huge impacts that we're just beginning to really see for ocean surface life. So I study life that actually floats on the ocean surface or someone's very near the ocean surface. And you would think we would have a pretty good handle on how oil impacts organisms that live at the ocean surface they're called mucin.  And then when we think about things like deep sea mining, that's going to be potentially releasing a huge sediment plume into the water column. And so that's the big concern that a lot of people in my field that study organisms that living, you know, the live somewhere on the surface are thinking about how far does a sediment plume go. I think is it going to be the clearest water I've ever seen down in the deep sea. So what happens when it's suddenly filled with mud. I think one of the images that came to my mind when you were talking all these images of say whale caucuses of plastic nets in the stomachs or birds covered in oil and beach or something like that. What you're saying it sounds like there could be a huge variation of impacts, for example if you use all dispersants to deal with a oil pollution oil spill on the surface that might stop some seabirds from being contaminated but it might have a worse effect on the Yeah, yeah, it's a complicated sort of juggling match to understand and appreciate it and that is you know one of the big challenges okay so this oil dispersant will allow us to sort of get rid of these big patches of oil and you know for some organisms that's really good, but for other things like sargassum which is this floating yellow seaweed that makes up the bulk of the biomass in the sargassum which is the shoreless sea between the US and sort of Europe Africa in the middle of the North Atlantic. And if you look at the impact of dispersants on sargassum it for whatever reason they sink more in the presence of dispersants. So that's sort of like oh no. Here we've got all this oil, the sargassum is trapping the oil. That's terrible because the little sea turtles and other life are sort of associated with sargassum because that's their natural habitat so you want to get the oil out of the sargassum.  Maybe that is better than having oil associated with sargassum. I don't know. But there's a lot of cost benefits to assess and there was kind of a cost-benefit change all the time given how dynamic the system is as well. So yeah, extremely complex. A slight aside, but when I was reading up on the current conservation efforts around high seas. There was a theme in some of the public comments I found which were interesting and basically kind of a basic asking is why is it that humans should care about this. One, I haven't got a direct quote was very much that they basically called the ocean just empty space and suggested that actually it's empty space why can't we just use that for dumping plastic like a landfill or something. I feel like you've already demonstrated it's quite a dynamic system of impactors in terms of lots of different ways like fishing, etc. But how do you think this might impact humans if it does continue letting pollution in the marine system continue. I mean so first I just want to respond that like the empty space comment is something that I hear a lot so that is a real challenge that as a science communicator. I'm really trying to get across like it's not empty space. Of course I'm sitting here with you know a background that looks very empty. But a lot of the organisms we see are dark blue, they're living right below the surface. So I can tell you I took this picture while I was collecting life at the ocean surface so there is actually life in this picture it's just camouflaged, or right below the surface where we can't see it so this idea that there's empty space out there that we can just jump, dump all of our trash is fundamentally wrong. But I really understand why people think that because it's it's like a world inverted, you know where we're used to looking at a picture like this on land and all the life is above. And in the ocean we really need to flip it upside down in order to see where all the life is. So one of the impacts of dumping trash on the high seas. One of the challenges is that there are probably a lot of impacts that we're not going to see for a very long time. So one example is a colleague of mine at the Smithsonian who is looking at the presence of non native species on trash, floating across the Pacific. So in 2011 there is a huge tsunami in Japan, a ton of debris from Japan was carried out to see, and we can actually use that debris. To try to understand what impact of sort of large scale plastic distribution might be like. And one of the things that we're seeing is, even now 10 years later, plastic from the tsunami is washing up on US Canadian coasts. And it's carrying non native species that are from Japan that aren't local to our habitat, and these species could potentially colonize they could disrupt local ecosystems they could disrupt local fisheries local industry. We really don't know and if you think about it this is happening on an ocean wide scale all around the world right now. Plastic persists in ways that natural debris does not so woods, things like that that flowed out to see driftwood. That's eventually eaten up by organisms and sinks, right plastic can persist for years, potentially decades, depending on the size of the plastic, carrying organisms across ocean basins. So it's not out there. It's, it's out there but it's also much closer to home, and we will see very surprising impacts that I think probably won't necessarily anticipate or expect. Pollution or debris in the marine environment, not only can transport invasive species across national borders and environments and ecosystems. It sounds like pollution could also help help other species to thrive as well as being negative to other species so is it possible that our impact might also kind of shift as that I suppose what you could say is an ecological balance where some species might actually benefit from pollution to the other species such as Dechman. Oh yeah it's going to change a lot right and so, and, and then one thing I think that's true for a lot of humans and for human industry is that like changes and always the thing that we want right because you know our industries are sort of built on some production of consistency over time, at least in the national environment right and so you're not wrong there are species that probably do benefit from the presence of plastic one example is this little insect called a sea skater.  They're the only genus of insect that's made it onto the high seas, and these sea skaters lay their eggs on floating debris so there's an increased number of sea skaters in areas with increased plastic and scientists think it's probably because one of the limits to being a sea skater is it's really hard to find floating debris out on the ocean surface. And now there's more of it. The only genus of insect that has made the high seas its home is now being helped by long term ocean plastic so perhaps in the long, very distant future that might lead to a whole new range of species in the ocean. I'd like that idea. I think that's a good idea because that means this plastic.  So innocent, and now you're being associated with something that people really dislike, but, but I mean, you know that animals eat these insects to right like these are tasty little snacks for a lot of organisms and so they're increasing other organisms might be increasing. One thing I'm seeing is that, you know, our, our understanding of the surface ecosystem is actually way behind our understanding of plastic on the surface. So we know so much more about the distribution of plastic than we do about the distribution of surface life. So there are all these organisms that have been like eating tons of trash, and there's this big question the back of my mind like why, why albatross like why are you eating all this plastic right I mean your lighters and like doll heads and things that, you know don't look like a squid why are you consuming it and then feeding it to your chicks why turtles and one thing we're seeing is that if you actually look at the composition of their diet and break it down based on where the organisms can be found like right at the surface or in the dark zone or on the floor. It turns out like up to 80% of their diet by volume maybe surface life, 30% of their diet for some of these seabirds. And so now it's like, oh, you know they're going after these things that float and are brightly colored.  So it's like, you wouldn't even necessarily be queued into the fact that it's not pray from the texture. And that kind of changes things so it's sort of like yeah the impact of plastic on open ocean organisms is going to impact different organisms differently. And it's also going to impact organisms based on ecosystem interactions we're just sort of getting a hold up right now. That kind of leads into that question of why is a high seas a big focus for conservation when it's really like we'd know more about the problem than the impacts of it. So there's animals out there like the ballala ballala divide the wind sailors or the For some reason I can only remember the Latin name Glockus Atlantica. The sea dragons. Yeah, we know they exist but we don't necessarily know how the impact of this problem is. And so that I suppose gives motivation to try and influence negotiations for the UNC treating. You know also if I can be totally honest with you like so many of the environmental challenges we're facing right now are sort of literally or figuratively it's on fire, like what do we do. Right, like climate change is happening is launched, you know our opportunity to sort of have intellectual discussions about intervening have passed 40 years ago, right. So now we're just dealing with the consequences and figuring out how do we mitigate it, how do we adapt to it. Gosh, and this is true for so many things that we sort of in my generation have interacted with you know we were like trying to recycle and that's talking to them. We work out for at least plastic super well so now we've got all this plastic everywhere and we're just figuring out like what do we do, how do we deal with this. And the high seas is like one of the only areas that I'm involved in in terms of conservation and sustainability where it's like, oh we actually have the opportunity to sort of step in and build policy around conservation. You know, like, I'm from Arizona. So the western half of the United States which is just burning up right now. Right, we're sort of past the point of having conversations about conservation like it has been impacted. The ship has sailed, but this is one of those very helpful areas where it's like, oh no we might actually be able to conserve and protect some of these ecosystems, you know, before they're like, totally impacted beyond recognition and we're sort of all grieving and trying to recover some of what we've lost does that make sense. Yeah, absolutely, you need to strike. Whilst iron is hot, or I guess the better way is make sure there's no fire. Actually having to fight a fire. Yeah, like, let's make sure the forest is protected. And what we're thinking about we should be protecting it before it so like, right, if to use the current environmental traumas as a metaphor. Yeah. And, you know, one of my favorite analogies is thinking about Central Park, like it would be impossible to set up Central Park now, if you just like went to New York me like you know what this city needs, like a giant pristine park, you know, that's like very well cleaned and like very thoughtfully sort of curated so that you know people in nature can coexist in this really beautiful way like no way that would never happen, you know. But you know someone had the vision of Central Park at a point in time where it was still possible to develop it. It's like the Grand Canyon right now do you know how many housing developments would be on the edge of the Grand Canyon if it wasn't a national park right I mean everyone will live there it's such an amazing place but we've conserved it we've protected it we've set it aside for the benefit of future generations, and thank goodness we did. So, now that we kind of digging deeper into conservation and you mentioned this is now the time where conservation is to be built into the high seas or how the global community approaches the high seas. Is the high seas currently protected at the moment, is there some kind of there is a patchwork of protections for you know specific organisms are habitats, but you know less than 1% of the high seas is fully protected so you know effectively not really at least not from my perspective as someone who does it study sort of large charismatic or economically important organisms at least not at the moment right. We're thinking about sort of biodiversity in the same way we might think about the Amazon rainforest. Is it easy to point to any particular species in the Amazon and say well like, why should I care. Right. Yeah, I mean you could point to a species in the Amazon that hasn't even been described. But then if you look at the Amazon as a whole, you're like okay yeah this is super duper important to like global function the biodiversity in the Amazon is a really important resource for current and future generations. And we're sort of burning a lot of it down right now. And that's, that's a challenge so there is a little tiny bit of protection, but it would be sort of the equivalent of you know protecting like the big cats in the Amazon at the expense of the trees and then sex. So really focusing on the things that have almost immediate value to us as humans but not necessarily having a big picture of the conservation of the ocean. I would say, yeah immediate value or maybe immediate engagement. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned this path patchwork of protections. Is that mean just, there's lots of little parts of the ocean that are protected and a lot of it isn't, or do you also mean that perhaps as some nations have predicted some areas and some have others as potentially a clash in terms of who manages. What. Yeah, there's a little bit of so what I mean that patchwork is sort of thinking about policy very broadly there are certain areas where there is clear policy sort of in place. And, and sort of clear central or centralized sort of community sort of for managing that. So, for example, deep sea mining. There's already some policies that in place for sort of regulating managing deep sea mining on an international scale. You know, is it necessarily biodiversity is focused and conservation focused. You know, but there is at least some policy we can point to and say like okay this is how this resource at the moment is being managed the same as true for fisheries but then when we think about. You know, the pelagic fisheries fisheries they're, you know, super deep down, you know, who are those exactly who's the regulatory body that needs to be console I'm not yeah it's a little bit unclear. And you know that sort of lack of clarity really propagates out to the vast majority of area on the high seas. So that is set to policy. It's not only per the area or where it is where it's protected but also what's been done. You say there's like new emerging industries or taking advantage of this more and more accessible environment. And some of those industries might be more regulated than others basically. Yes, yes, absolutely. And I mean a lot of them are very new and so there's a big question about like well what do we even need to regulate right like what, what do we need to know from environmental perspective, in order to generate policy that really protects our collective interests as you know a human species that is relying on these ecosystems in some form or another. So, if there's a treaty being built at the moment that could potentially have conservation at its end. And the current policy and regulation around conservation is very patchwork it seems as a whole there which could be filled with for example private enterprise or people trying to take this into their own hands at all the conservation efforts by private companies but might be trying to clean up the ocean or anything. Oh interesting so right now you're sort of wondering are they're right yeah yeah there are so there are gosh a variety of different initiatives at various stages of development that are trying to tackle the sort of high seas ocean plastics issues one example. So, a couple would be the ocean cleanup that is trying to go out and collect plastic in a semi autonomous way so without monitoring their impact necessarily. Of course they're launching a prototype this summer and they will be out and they will be sort of looking at the environmental impact. It's unclear what their predicted impact will be so their current setup is they've got two giant ships and then they've got a big net stretching between the ships. And they're just going to drive these ships around with the net in between and try to net all the plastic and life that is at the surface so it's really really difficult to sort out the two. I've been pretty concerned about this effort for a while. I know they've done an environmental impact assessment on their latest design. I can infer from the comments they've made on their environmental impact assessment that it suggests they will potentially have a significant impact on some life at the ocean surface but they haven't publicly released it so I don't actually know what it says. But I think part of that is there's kind of like almost names like interaction between two of the points made previously by it's a incredibly dynamic system of potential risk trade offs such as previously between the ocean and birds getting covered in oil. But also, a lot of this lack of regulation means that if people do see these problems and people are very passionate about trying to solve them. There's still a lack of regulation. Nonetheless, that means private enterprises looking to clean up the ocean might still suffer from a lack of international policy or regulation. So it kind of impacts both potential polluting industries but also people who might just want to go over and clean up the ocean themselves. Yeah, I mean it cuts both ways and so for the ocean cleanup I know they have a unique agreement now with the Netherlands to try to kind of cross the bridge between the United Nations and their particular high seas activities, but we're all stakeholders in the open ocean and one of the problems with this idea that it's just a bunch of trash out there that whales occasionally swim through is that you end up developing cleanup technologies that may actually be worse than the plastic itself.   So it's sort of one of these like does this even make sense from what we know about the ocean surface ecosystem, but then let's be real what we know about the ocean surface ecosystem is very limited. So what do you do in the meantime, you just kind of hope that you won't mess it up and keep going or do you do pause. Yeah, from. And from what you said previously. It might sound like that some species might have a preference for environments of a high plastic density as well.  Is it other species but are potentially vulnerable because they prefer to live in these denser environments. So we're still not super clear on the ecosystem of the North Pacific garbage patch, but the North Atlantic garbage patch is the sarcastic sea. We don't hear it referred to as a garbage patch as much because we already had a really good understanding of the ecosystem before the plastics issue started to arise.  Of course, I use it because it's a way to discuss these areas of the ocean these, you know, convergent zones of the ocean, but still compared to closer to shore. I mean there's still some of the cleanest places on earth right they there's a lot of plastic in the garbage patch relative to other parts of the ocean. They're still compared to like coastal zones. For example, I mean we're looking at a fraction of a percent of total ocean plastic.  So even the idea that this is how we tackle the issue is that we go to the farthest place from shore where plastic has been found and collected there, when even by the ocean cleanups own studies we know that up to 98% of plastic that enters the ocean ends up back at the coast. Most of those nasty pictures of the garbage patch that you'll see if you Google the North Pacific, you know, are actually from coastal zones.  It's mostly like these very small little flecks of plastic, and then there are ghost nets that are out there and they're not necessarily super easy to find so another organization that's working on sort of cleaning up the patches focusing more specifically on ghost nets. And they're having people tag those ghost nets with satellite trackers, and then they're going and picking them up by hand which really reduces the environmental impact. And I wrap up this section soon and move on to the Q&A and the questions that I've been sent. But firstly, there's a couple of questions left I have for you. And the first one is, so what is the goal then of the current negotiations at UN. What is the next work of conserved areas in or managed areas in the ocean already. What's the end goal from trying to get involved in UN. But the end goal I think is something that is still very much up for grabs right so probably every everybody that's involved in this process has a unique set of goals that they're hoping to see move forward and maybe there's some agreement and there's probably you know some disagreement that needs to be sort of hammered out. For me, you know we're really wanting three things. The first is we want some sort of mechanism for setting aside marine protected areas beyond national jurisdiction. So think about the Grand Canyon or Yosemite or other amazing natural areas of the world wonders of the world. At the moment if those wonders fall beyond the jurisdiction of one nation then there's really no set way to sort of collectively come together humanity together and say, you know, this is special. This is worth protecting, you know, and we're all going to agree that even though, yes, the fish in this area may be delicious. And yes, the minerals in this area may be valuable that it's worth more as a whole than it is for the some of its parts and we're going to protect it using a mechanism like a marine protected area so that's one thing we want is a way to say, this is valuable for the environment. We want to conserve it. The second thing we want is a better mechanism in place that's transparent so that everybody, even if you're not part of the United Nations can be involved for really understanding and evaluating and understanding potential impacts. Right so, you know, it does seem far away, but you know there's a very real possibility that high seas industries will, at some point, impact your life. And so isn't it important if these things may impact your life that you at least have the possibility to understand the potential impacts of those industries on the ecosystem. And be engaged in the discussion so we want environmental impact evaluations continuous monitoring continuous science and we want all that to be very transparent. And part of that transparency means having sort of a central place in governing body that's informed by science that is open, that people can be a part of, and kind of a minimum sort of watch in the same way that you know here in the US it's like you can get your right and you can go sit in on this Supreme Court and you can go sit in on Congress right because it's important that it's for the people by the people and the same, we believe should be true for the high seas. Sure. So, basically, it needs to be transparent. It needs to be as efficient monitoring and it needs to be interconnected as well. So, rather than the patchwork of areas it's an interconnected system with multiple voices to put input on it. Yeah, in a very sort of centralized way so you really know okay where do I go if I want to know what the latest information on this issue is. So, there are lots of other things folded into the treaty genetic resources, things like that, but our sort of hope is, is to sort of push forward these, you know known tested and you know, like scientifically informed mechanisms for conserving biodiversity. Sure. So you mentioned we, if there's people watching us who want to perhaps get involved in what you're doing, and he with in terms of helping push the idea for better high seas conservation, how can they get involved or where can they go to find out more. So, myself and a group of other scientists, 19 incredibly brilliant people is very lucky to work with up, published a letter in science magazine, calling for protection of the high seas, specifically asking for these sort of three wants and hopes. So, we have now available for signature the letter up on our website which you can find right here. You can go to protect the high seas dot marine conservation.org. You can actually also just go to protect the high seas calm and that'll direct you to the same place, add your name to the list. A lot of this work is a little bit like a duck, you know floating at the surface it doesn't look like anything is happening and you're furiously paddling underneath. Right now we're very much in sort of like duck phase of a lot of work is happening behind the scenes and we hope that very soon. We can sort of begin to engage signatories in some of the efforts that we're making right now so if you're interested if you want to get involved. I mean and this is a signatory page that's open for everybody. We really believe of course we want science we want scientifically informed policy, but this isn't just a science policy thing this is like, Hello, all of us on this planet have a vested interest in this issue. So if you care about it, sign and we're going to keep you up to date on the things that we're doing and ways you can help. So, one last thing for me before I ask a few audience questions. And that is, is there a key message you would like people to take away from this conversation regarding ocean conservation or pollution on the ocean at all. What a great question and like, of course, I'm so busy nerding out about the details, you know, I think for me it's, it's more of an emotional message of, of you know we have an opportunity to do something here that hasn't been done in a century or more. And this is a really hopeful, exciting forward thinking time, and being part of this process. I've sort of watched my thinking shift from like 50 years to 100 years to like okay 500 years to what do we want this to look like in 1000 years right. And this is the very beginning of this process. So, you know if you've ever wanted to be involved in something that has the potential to impact generations in a very positive way that is being formed and developed right now. This is it covers half our planet, you know, join us get involved. It's a really exciting time to be alive. Thank you. So, I'm going to go to a final section which is just a few audience questions that I've been sent in. The first one is what can the average person do to help. You've already mentioned to sign up to your letter so people find out that way. I suppose over any direct actions people can do to help with either conservation or marine pollution. It really depends on your personality right because I think that for me this is sort of how I engaged help is you know I see a problem that I'm like, I'm going to go nerd about it for like two or three years. Put together something like very very specific and then publish it and then you know move forward on that level that's kind of how I do things but gosh you know if you like to be outspoken and go protest I would say one thing is to really be on brands. So, I think recycling our plastic reducing our plastic use it's really important it does matter there are individual things that we can do that turn into collective things, but it doesn't make sense if we're not letting brands know. Right so for example if you're not buying coke products anymore because of their plastic issues right one of the number one sort of plastic polluters from a consumer plastic source perspective right so if you're abstaining from that. Make that clear, you know, go on social media and say so, and at them, if you know if you're the kind of person that's like this is how I want to show up and do the work. If you're someone more like me where I'm like, I'm shy but I you know I don't use code products and I, you know I'm working on the science behind the scenes, get involved with us. I would also say that a lot of this change has the potential to happen at the community level so as ironic as this sounds I think it sort of comes back to the fact that we're living this very dispersed life. And so, you know right now in the context of my community thinking about what are we doing about our waste what are we doing about, you know this surplus now of masks and PPE and things like that, and getting involved on that level. I would also say, like, we know nothing about the ocean surface ecosystem so if you have any interest in studying these topics like the it is a wide open field. So, you're a PhD student if you're you know an undergrad and you're like man I want to be involved what can I do, we have way more data questions then we have people to work on them so come join us. We've also got actually on that front, and trying to understand the ocean surface, a new NASA funded citizen science program to understand how and where ocean surface life is distributed so kind of tackling this question of like how do we know where all the garbage patches are but not where all the surface ecosystems are. So if you like to go walk at the beach or sale or surf, or you know maybe just go to the beach once a year. Join our new community science project so it's go see science.org. It's a really fun community monitoring program we have monthly sort of group meetings with the public. We have fellowships available for community members that maybe aren't scientists but are just like really, really into going to the beach and telling us what they see. And that's what I have to do, go to the beach. You let us know what you see there. It's like, so fun and easy so and we're your excuse. So quite a lot you can get involved in terms of research, perhaps for like a research project as an undergrad or postgraduate. To get behind a more policy oriented areas by getting involved in the project you're working with. Direct action either through pressure in the government or companies alongside consumer choices, but also get involved in community groups as well because always just start with a beach cleanup or something right. Yeah, you know it's funny because like beach cleanups do not make the news a lot right but they are like so effective in terms of the amount of trash that's been picked up around the world like beach cleanups are it. I mean people that run beach cleanups are heroes for sure so that's a great way to get involved. So you mentioned monitoring. I've got a question related to that is, can we monitor the impact of pollution well at all. And I think for me that kind of relates back to what we discussed regarding a simple whales versus jellyfish. I mean I assume you can tag a whale but can you take a jellyfish to see how that's impacted. You can tag jellyfish although the field is still being developed, but you know one of the challenges broadly with monitoring is like, okay and sorry my cat has been really good this whole time and now she's decided that she's going to she's going to sing for us. So if that's coming through apologies but anyway, you know with the high seas, you don't really have like a ton of before data, you know so we're thinking like coastal. Before data that's actual data that scientists have gone out and collected or that has been collected through. You know maybe non traditional mechanisms like looking at fisheries catch right how big were the fish that they caught 100 years ago versus today, and you can use that to kind of infer. You know what was that population of fish like 100 years ago versus today. We don't really have a ton of data like that. And so one of the things we need to monitor impact is some semblance of before data, which is what we're trying to do right now. Right so go out there just try to understand these ecosystems on a baseline level. So that then if when these impacts really ratchet up whether it's an oil spill whether it's more classic whether it's you know the continuing impacts of climate change at least now. We're paying attention and we can say okay. These things have changed. They've changed in this direction. There's a strong correlation. Let's design a study to try to figure out if it's a cause. Excellent. So, we should wrap up sooner quickly running out of time. Unfortunately, we're able to get through all the audience questions. I have time for one more though, which is on jellyfish, and it's just asking, are we expecting a jellyfish boom in the future, then. That's a tricky question because it really depends on where you are so maybe only fish blooming is a totally natural part of their life cycle. So this is something that they do every year in the same way that flowers bloom every year. Right, so come spring. It's flower season as policy pollen season it's jellyfish season different species of jellyfish bloom at different times of year, but blooms in itself they're not really surprising and in fact a lot of species depend on these blooms. I know that for example leatherback turtles will follow jellyfish blooms kind of around and just sort of munch within the bloom as jellyfish season advances. I think what the person might be asking is like are jellyfish going to get worse over time. And that was something that scientists were concerned about for a little bit because it did appear that in coastal regions that were heavily impacted by people that there were more jellyfish and less fish and other things. It turns out that a lot of those are actually coming from more local drivers. So there are areas of the world where we're seeing huge increases in jellyfish, but those areas don't necessarily have the same cause in common. So trying to untangle what's the cause for my ocean backyard and how do we address it. So, for example, in my relative backyard near Chesapeake Bay, there are more stinging nettles than there were a couple of decades ago. And part of that at least is because people have been building these great boat docks off their beautiful, you know, sort of canal houses, and those boat docks happen to be favorite habitat for young jellyfish larvae. So, whoops. Now we know, and that's a local problem that you know is going to require a local solution to address it. And that seems to be the case for a lot of jellyfish blooms that we're seeing getting worse, whether there's sort of a global movement. I, you know, I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that's really played out. Yeah. Yeah, because I think what I've seen regarding jellyfish blooms or the future. What are the reports I've seen it seem to suggest that in the future, we're going to have a hot ocean with just jellyfish and we're going to have to eat and survive of jellyfish and some kind of marine water world, bad max scenario. But actually, a lot of it is just down to local changes and it goes back to what we said. Well, what you said earlier where there's a very dynamic system of high variation geographically and through time. A lot of unknowns as well so local but possibly not some huge world wide world wide trend. Well, and one amazing thing that we didn't know before this question was being asked that we have a much better handle on now is that it turns out like everything eats jellyfish. We didn't realize that because when something eats a jellyfish it's like immediately gone so if you're a scientist doing gut content analysis you're not going to see the jellyfish in the stomach of a predator right because it's just water and it's already been digested as like five minute process in it.  So even if jellyfish do temporarily bloom one of the consequences might actually be. They feed a lot of marine life and sort of potentially that can be a kind of reset to. So, you know initially it was like oh my gosh is it just going to be slime and who even eats these guys and jellyfish burgers and super gross and now it's like oh no no no it's really important part of the ecosystem to. So if all these animals are eating jellyfish maybe we shouldn't be too scared of a jellyfish burger ourselves either. Yeah, you know I mean there are places in the world where jellyfish are super important part of the menu I've eaten jellyfish many different ways salads fried and cupcakes, they're not too bad. It's something to try. And I'm next if I inspiration the kitchen maybe, maybe. But we need to wrap up we've run out of time. So I'd like to say thank you to our guest for back to say for my questions and also to the audience for attending and giving their questions so with that I'll wrap up the webinar. So thank you very much for sending. Thank you so much Simon it's been amazing to be here and wonderful to talk to you today. Lovely to see you too. Bye bye.