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Analyst Report: Fedex Corp
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Hard-fought battle over Alameda County ethical investment policy comes to a mixed resolution — and a muted response
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The debate over Alameda County’s investment policies has been raging since December, when Alameda County Treasurer Henry Levy sold the county’s holdings in Caterpillar Inc. as the company faced accusations of supporting illegal Israeli settlements amid the political firestorm over Israel’s war in Gaza.
The Board of Supervisors directed Levy to create an ethical investment policy for its $10 billion investment portfolio. Alameda County, which previously boycotted apartheid in South Africa in the 1990s, has not been shy about stepping into the political fray. Meanwhile, supporters of the policy have lobbied hard for it, and opponents have just as vehemently claimed that it is not actually about avoiding companies that do business with human-rights violators around the globe, but specifically a tool to punish Israel for its ongoing military assault on Gaza.
That’s why it was a strange scene when the Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to adopt the policy, with silence from the scores of pro-Palestinian activists in the room who had demanded it. Their ambivalence stemmed from the supervisors’ motion to seek a peer review of the policy that would delay its implementation for months.
Ultimately, for both the policy’s supporters and opponents, the results of the Oct. 3 meeting were a mixed bag. Israel supporters like Oakland resident Ofra Pleban, a representative of the Oakland Jewish Alliance, had argued the policy would foment antisemitism in the community, unfairly single out Israel and harm future yields from the county’s portfolio.
“It’s driven by anti-Israel activists and could lead to blacklisting companies simply for doing business with Israel,” Pleban said at the meeting. “Policies like that only make things worse, legitimizing efforts to demonize Israel and creating a more hostile environment for Jews.”
But Palestinian supporters, many of whom identified as Jewish, said the county had a moral responsibility to approve the policy. Supporters said it did not single out any one country, but offered a universal standard for the county. Berkeley resident Cynthia Papermaster, who said she had lost family members in the Holocaust, encouraged the supervisors to adopt it.
“I do not speak for all Jews, and I very much resent the Jewish people in this room who are turning this issue into one about antisemitism. It has nothing to do with antisemitism. It has only to do with ethical investing,” Cynthia said. “I urge you to vote yes on this policy to make us proud and take a historical step in favor of justice.”
Levy said he was proud to have started what he considered a necessary discussion on the county’s principles when investing, despite the polarizing effect of the proposal.
“People took what they wanted to mean from that, that I’m part of (the Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement against Israel), and I did it for personal reasons,” Levy told the Board of Supervisors. “I’m proud – I’m glad I did it. I feel like this discussion about ethical investment policy wasn’t going to happen unless I got rid of the one sort of sore point.”
Supervisor David Haubert pushed Levy on the impacts of the ethical investment policy on the county’s coffers and its relevance to Israel’s war in Gaza. He brought up examples of human rights violations in China against Uyghers, a Muslim ethnic group subjected to mass surveillance, detainment and religious persecution by the Chinese government.
“Essentially, slave and imprisoned labor in China doesn’t rise to the level of wanting to get out of an investment? All the other genocides that happened there? None of that seemed to matter?” Haubert said. “It just seems again and again and again like (the ethical investment policy) was made for this particular situation and not another.”
Levy defended the policy, arguing it wasn’t about the Gaza conflict, but to provide a new standard for the county’s investments. But Haubert and Supervisor Nate Miley remained skeptical and said they worried that the ethical investment policy could lead down a slippery slope, inhibiting the county from achieving its financial benchmarks.
Miley then made a motion to approve the policy, subject to independent peer review. Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas voted against the peer review, calling it “disheartening and disappointing” to delay the policy’s implementation. The Board passed the vote 4-1, with Bas voting against the measure.
Though Levy questioned the validity of the peer review, he said the policy carries on the county’s long tradition of standing for human rights which goes back to boycotting the apartheid regime of South Africa in the 1980s and divesting from Burma in the 1990s.
“This is not about a single issue we face today, but a long-term commitment to Alameda County stakeholders to incorporate their values into decisions made about how their money is invested,” Levy said.
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Chase Hunter
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Delta Flies Higher on the Wings of Luxury Travel
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CEO Ed Bastian said Delta has so far been unaffected by the U.S. government shutdown. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images Between the U.S. government shutdown and ongoing economic uncertainty, it’s a turbulent time for airlines. But not for Delta, the largest American airline by market capitalization, which has emerged from the industry’s recent challenges largely unscathed as its investment in high-end travel begins to pay off.
Delta shares jumped more than 4 percent today (Oct. 9) after the Atlanta-headquartered airline reported better-than-expected revenue and profit for the July-September quarter. Quarterly sales reached $15.2 billion, up 4.1 percent year-over-year, while net income rose 11 percent to $1.42 billion. Strong demand for premium travel helped lift results: sales in Delta’s premium unit climbed 9 percent to $5.8 billion, even as main cabin revenue dipped 4 percent to $6 billion.
The airline could soon earn more from premium seating than from economy for the first time. Delta had previously forecast that milestone for 2027, but it may now happen as early as next year, according to the airline’s president, Glen Hauenstein. “We see that there are many, many more opportunities in premium in the coming years,” he told analysts today.
Some of those opportunities lie in Delta’s key markets like Los Angeles, Boston, New York and Seattle due to their concentration of a “considerable amount of premium” customers, CEO Ed Bastian said on today’s call.
The airline is also expanding its high-end offerings by outfitting nearly 1,000 aircraft with free WiFi and deepening partnerships with American Express, Uber and YouTube. Delta has even ventured into retail through collaborations like its recent lounge set project with Spanx.
Rebounding from the ‘spring swoon’
Back in March, things looked less promising when Delta slashed its profit forecast amid economic concerns tied to the Trump administration’s tariffs. The company refers to that period as the “spring swoon.” Since then, Delta has rebounded and offered stronger-than-expected guidance for the fourth quarter of 2025, projecting total revenue growth between 2 and 4 percent over the next three months.
Meanwhile, the U.S. travel industry faces headwinds from the federal government shutdown that began in early October. Flights across the country have been delayed as Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facilities report staffing shortages. The country has also seen a “slight tick-up in sick calls” from air traffic controllers—who, like other essential workers, are expected to work without pay during the shutdown, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at a recent press conference.
Delta has weathered shutdowns before. During the 35-day federal shutdown that began in 2018, the airline lost about $1 million per day in revenue, Hauenstein said. This time, the impact has been smaller, in part because Delta is less dependent on the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport—one of the hubs most affected by staffing disruptions.
“While we are monitoring potential impacts from the U.S. government shutdown, we have not seen a material effect to date,” added Hauenstein.
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Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly
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Wall Street Leaders Split on Trump’s Push to Change Quarterly Earnings Rules
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JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon supports amending quarterly earnings report requirements. Michel Euler/POOL/AFP via Getty Images Since 1970, U.S. public companies have been mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to provide financial updates every three months via quarterly earnings reports. This 55-year-old tradition could soon be cut in half under the Trump administration, which is seeking to move to semi-annual reports. The proposal has drawn both praise and criticism from some of Wall Street’s most influential leaders.
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, voiced his support for President Donald Trump’s suggestion during an interview with Bloomberg TV yesterday (Oct. 7). “I would welcome it,” he said, noting that quarterly forecasts make “CEOs get their back up against a wall.” “They have to meet these things—earnings—and then they start doing dumb stuff,” he added.
Trump floated the proposal last month, arguing that reporting earnings every six months instead of three would “save money and allow managers to focus on properly running their companies.” The President previously pushed for a similar change in 2018 during his first term, when the SEC solicited public feedback but ultimately left the quarterly requirement in place.
This time, however, the SEC appears more willing to act. The agency has indicated that the proposal will be a priority, with Paul Atkins, the SEC’s chair, calling the President’s request “timely” and something the SEC is “working to fast-track.” A draft proposal could be released in the next few months, according to Atkins.
Dimon said JPMorgan would still report earnings quarterly, but with “much less stuff.” He described the requirement as part of a larger problem of “endless rules” that make it harder for companies to go public. “We’ve gone from 8,000 public companies in 1996 to, like, 4,000 today,” he told Bloomberg. “You want an active market, and we’ve kind of crushed it.”
Dimon isn’t alone in supporting the potential shift. Adena Friedman, CEO of Nasdaq, praised Trump’s proposal after it was announced, arguing that quarterly reporting encourages “short-termism“—an excessive focus on immediate results. In a LinkedIn post, she called for “common-sense reforms to reduce the burden on publicly listed companies.”
What financial leaders think of quarterly reporting
The benefits of semi-annual reporting are evident, according to David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs. Fewer earnings reports free up time for companies and allow executives to take a long-term view, he remarked during a talk last month at Georgetown University. “As a CEO, I’d obviously rather do two earnings calls a year than four earnings calls a year,” he said.
Still, Solomon admitted that eliminating quarterly reports could reduce transparency. “I’m still thinking it through, and the firm’s still thinking it through,” he added, noting that he has yet to decide whether he supports the change.
Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, however, has made up his mind. “I don’t understand the merits of holding back from the market, readily knowable information,” he told CNBC in September, warning that accountability could suffer if longer gaps between reports are allowed. “In this day and age, quarterly reporting is fair,” added Griffin. Griffin agreed with Dimon’s view that overregulation discourages initial public offerings, saying barriers to expanding the number of publicly owned companies should be addressed.
This isn’t the first time financial leaders have questioned the quarterly reporting model. In 2018, Dimon and Warren Buffett co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed urging companies to reduce or eliminate quarterly earnings forecasts. They argued that such forecasts push companies toward short-term thinking and discourage those with longer-term goals from going public. “Our views on quarterly earnings forecasts should not be misconstrued as opposition to quarterly and annual reporting,” wrote Dimon and Buffett, who maintained that transparency remains “an essential aspect of U.S. public markets.”
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Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly
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Why the Best Leaders Start Budgeting in September
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Most companies treat budgeting like a year-end checkbox. They wait until November or December, then rush to fill in numbers. By the time the budget is complete, it already reflects a past that no longer exists and leaves leadership reactive rather than proactive.
Rushing the budget process creates risk. Instead of providing clarity, hurried budgets deliver constraints. They lock teams into flawed assumptions, stifle strategic conversations, and handicap leadership in the face of change.
Psychology helps explain why. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky first described the planning fallacy in “Judgment under Uncertainty.” Later empirical work by Roger Buehler, Dale Griffin, and Michael Ross found that even when people recall past delays, they still predict that future tasks will proceed smoothly. Daniel Kahneman expanded these insights for executives in Thinking, Fast and Slow. Compressing budgeting into a few frantic weeks magnifies these biases and undermines accuracy and foresight.
What the research says about timing
Timing and structure both matter. A 2021 Journal of Consumer Research study documents “budget depreciation,” showing that budgets set too far in advance lose their constraining power as the pain of payment fades, which can increase overspending unless the budget is refreshed.
For businesses, the takeaway is clear. Start budgeting early enough to allow strategic alignment, and build in regular refresh cycles so the budget remains relevant and motivating throughout the year. Harvard Business Review outlines agile budgeting disciplines that preserve flexibility while maintaining financial rigor. Boston Consulting Group similarly recommends shorter cycles, relative targets, and scenario-based planning in uncertain environments.
Stories from the field
A mid-sized SaaS company we worked with began its budget planning in September. Leadership aligned around strategy first, then built base-case and upside scenarios. By January, they were adjusting resources in real time, shifting capital where opportunities emerged and tightening controls where inefficiencies surfaced. The result was a year defined by agility rather than retrenchment.
Contrast this with a manufacturing client that delayed until December. Their budget locked in faulty assumptions. By the first quarter they were over budget, underinvesting, and scrambling to recalibrate. Instead of using the budget as a guide, leadership was fighting fires.
Another example comes from a professional services firm. They historically waited until November to create their budget, often defaulting to last year’s numbers plus a modest increase. When encouraged to begin the process in September, they instead identified growth opportunities in new markets, reallocated resources toward high-margin services, and trimmed underperforming lines of business. By the time the new year began, the leadership team had both clarity and conviction about where to invest. The earlier start transformed their budget from a backward-looking ledger into a forward-looking playbook.
September as the starting line
Beginning in September transforms budgeting from an accounting exercise into a leadership discipline. It creates the time and structure to align ambition with strategy, test assumptions before they calcify, and prepare for multiple futures.
The most effective budgeting processes include:
- Strategic anchoring. Start with ambition, not arithmetic. Define what the business needs to achieve before assigning numbers.
- Scenario modeling. Build multiple versions of the future, including best case, base case, and downside, while assumptions are still flexible.
- Accountability rhythms. Establish checkpoints throughout the year so the budget drives alignment and action.
- Budgets as living frameworks. Treat the budget as dynamic. Revisit and refine it regularly as conditions shift.
Even advanced methods like zero-based budgeting (ZBB) work best when launched early and refreshed consistently. McKinsey shows how ZBB can help organizations reallocate resources toward growth.
Practical takeaways for leaders
If you want your budget to drive results rather than simply record them, consider these practices:
- Begin budgeting in September. Give yourself the gift of time for alignment, discussion, and iteration rather than compression and compromise.
- Lead with strategy before spreadsheets. Start with vision, goals, and desired outcomes. Then let the numbers follow, rather than letting the numbers dictate.
- Model multiple scenarios. Resist the temptation to assume one future. By preparing for upside, base, and downside cases, you give yourself agility when reality deviates from the plan.
- Establish quarterly reviews. A budget is not a document to be filed away. Use it as a framework for continuous review, refreshing assumptions every few months to keep it relevant and motivating.
- Embed accountability. Assign clear ownership for budget drivers, and create rhythms of accountability so financial leadership is shared across the organization.
Waiting until late fall to budget means you begin the year already behind. The best leaders do not wait. They start early, using September to turn budgeting into a blueprint for clarity, agility, and growth.
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Nelson Tepfer
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Ascent Group LLC Reduces Position in iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF $EEM
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Ascent Group LLC trimmed its stake in iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (NYSEARCA:EEM – Free Report) by 23.4% in the 2nd quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The firm owned 11,409 shares of the exchange traded fund’s stock after selling 3,494 shares during the period. Ascent Group LLC’s holdings in iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF were worth $550,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
A number of other institutional investors also recently bought and sold shares of EEM. Brighton Jones LLC grew its holdings in iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF by 1.7% during the fourth quarter. Brighton Jones LLC now owns 118,587 shares of the exchange traded fund’s stock valued at $4,959,000 after purchasing an additional 1,940 shares during the period. GAMMA Investing LLC lifted its position in shares of iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF by 4,270.0% during the 1st quarter. GAMMA Investing LLC now owns 66,948 shares of the exchange traded fund’s stock valued at $2,926,000 after buying an additional 65,416 shares in the last quarter. SeaCrest Wealth Management LLC purchased a new position in shares of iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF during the 1st quarter valued at about $204,000. OLD National Bancorp IN grew its stake in shares of iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF by 10.0% during the 1st quarter. OLD National Bancorp IN now owns 13,511 shares of the exchange traded fund’s stock valued at $590,000 after acquiring an additional 1,232 shares during the period. Finally, Centricity Wealth Management LLC increased its holdings in iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF by 18.0% in the 1st quarter. Centricity Wealth Management LLC now owns 3,996 shares of the exchange traded fund’s stock worth $175,000 after acquiring an additional 610 shares in the last quarter. 81.39% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.
iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF Trading Up 0.5%
NYSEARCA EEM opened at $54.48 on Tuesday. iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF has a 12 month low of $38.19 and a 12 month high of $54.55. The stock has a market cap of $20.72 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 14.46 and a beta of 0.74. The company’s 50 day moving average is $51.04 and its two-hundred day moving average is $47.53.
About iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF
iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF, formerly iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund (the Fund), seeks investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of publicly traded equity securities in global emerging markets, as measured by the MSCI Emerging Markets Index (the Index).
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ABMN Staff
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Sam Altman’s OpenAI Is Officially the World’s Most Valuable Startup at $500B
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A secondary share sale propelled OpenAI’s valuation, setting a new record for private companies. The Washington Post via Getty Images OpenAI has reached a new milestone: a $500 billion valuation that makes it the world’s most valuable private company, surpassing Elon Musk’s SpaceX and widening the gap with other major private companies like its direct competitor, Anthropic, and TikTok parent ByteDance.
The staggering valuation follows a secondary shares sale, first reported by Bloomberg, that allowed current and former employees to sell stock to investors, including Thrive Capital, SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment Group, MGX and T. Rowe Price, The sale didn’t bring new funding to the company but boosted its valuation from $300 billion in March, when it raised $40 billion in a round led by SoftBank.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit dedicated to advancing A.I. for humanity’s benefit, but later adopted a capped-profit structure. The company currently has about 700 million weekly users and $12 billion in annualized revenue. It has signed some of the largest cloud deals, including a $300 billion partnership with Oracle for computing power over the next five years.
The company is also in the midst of a long-anticipated transition to a for-profit structure. Last month, it signed a non-binding deal with Microsoft, its largest shareholder, to convert its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation controlled by the remaining nonprofit.
Elon Musk, who left OpenAI in 2018 and went on to launch his own startup, xAI, has since become one of the company’s fiercest critics. He has filed multiple lawsuits aimed at halting its restructuring and accused the company of straying from its founding mission in favor of profits. Most recently, he sued the company for allegedly hiring former xAI employees who he claims stole trade secrets.
Secondary share sales gain steam
Secondary share sales, an increasingly popular method among startups to retain and reward staff, have boosted the valuation of several already highly valued companies. SpaceX reached a $400 billion valuation in July after a round of secondary share sales; Stripe’s February tender offer valued it at $91.5 billion; and Databricks’ December secondary sale gave the company a $62 billion valuation.
As OpenAI’s tools continue weaving into daily life, the company has had to reckon with the social consequences of its rapid ascent. Earlier this month, it rolled out parental controls for ChatGPT, giving parents options such as limiting their children’s exposure to sensitive content or disabling certain voice and image modes. The feature came after OpenAI was sued in August by the parents of a teenager who committed suicide after ChatGPT allegedly gave him self-harm advice.
More recently, OpenAI sparked backlash with the launch of Sora, a short-form A.I. video app, drawing criticism that consumer-facing products conflict with its loftier goals of scientific advances and artificial general intelligence (AGI). Altman addressed the criticism on X yesterday (Oct. 1), writing: “It is also nice to show people cool new tech/products along the way, make them smile, and hopefully make some money given all that compute need.”
He added that most of OpenAI’s resources remain focused on science and AGI research. “When we launched ChatGPT, there was a lot of ‘who needs this and where is AGI?’ Reality is nuanced when it comes to optimal trajectories for a company,” he wrote.
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Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly
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A.I. Is Changing What Venture Capitalists Invest In and How They Invest
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Despite cooling markets, A.I. remains the engine powering VC’s biggest risks. Unsplash With A.I. leaders like Sam Altman warning of a potential bubble, it might seem logical for investors to pull back. Instead, venture capitalists say they’re doubling down, though in a more deliberate and strategic way.
“Every investor I speak to says 90 percent of new investments are in an A.I.-related field,” Gené Teare, senior data editor at Crunchbase, told Observer. “A.I. is the center. Every one of these investors, they’re looking to invest in companies who are going to be part of the next wave.”
Teare sees current investor buzz centering on coding and customer service startups with A.I. foundations. She added that investors are “very focused on investing in companies at the seed or series A level, who are going to be the emerging or the largest companies 5 to 10 years out.” According to Crunchbase, tomorrow’s most promising companies will likely be in A.I. infrastructure and cybersecurity.
Even with venture funding down from its 2021 peak when it hit $702 billion compared to just over half that in 2024, investors remain active, albeit more selective. “For most of these investors, they’re not investing in a large set of companies. They’re making very targeted bets in companies that they think are going to become formative in the next period,” Teare said. That approach has already fueled record-breaking rounds, including this year’s $40 billion going to OpenAI.
A.I. is changing how VCs invest
A.I.’s rapid evolution isn’t just changing which companies VCs invest in; it’s changing how they invest.
“We are experimenting with how A.I. can help analyze leads,” Michael Stewart, managing partner at M12, Microsoft’s venture capital fund, told Observer. M12’s portfolio includes companies like Livongo by Teledoc Health, HR software Beamery and retail advertising platform GroundTruth. While M12 still sources deals the traditional way, through meetings and networking, the team now uses A.I. to analyze those leads, looking at unit economics, pricing strategies and underlying technology.
Stewart didn’t specify which tools they use, but said M12 has shifted from outside customer relationship management systems to Microsoft’s own technology. Dealmaking platforms like Affinity and Carta also integrate A.I. into their offerings. Last year, Anthropic partnered with Menlo Ventures to launch the Anthology Fund, which uses Claude to recommend startups for investment.
Despite all the changes, some venture capital fundamentals remain. Customer acquisition cost and lifetime value are still pivotal metrics. And founder quality matters more than ever, Crunchbase’s Teare noted. “There are a lot of companies going after the same markets, so it’s the pedigree of the founder,” she said. “That might be a repeat founder who’s done it before, or new founders who have an angle on a market, or a certain energy and grit that they believe could carry it through.”
While some startup founders are opting to bootstrap, Stewart noted that’s rarely an option in A.I. Given the steep costs of hiring top talent, securing GPUs and scaling infrastructure, most cutting-edge A.I. ventures require outside funding despite the technology’s potential to reduce operating expenses.
That competitive environment pushes Stewart to ask founders tough questions: “How are you showing that you’re changing customers’ behaviors? How are you getting them to bring in A.I. at a deeper level of their own company strategy?” With so much A.I. use still experimental, he said, proving real recurring revenue beyond pilot projects is a key differentiator.
Like many A.I. investors, M12 is also eyeing infrastructure. “We’re in this energy-constrained world where we want to scale solutions at a global level,” Stewart said. “If unaddressed, these things become destiny-limiting, so it’s chips, it’s networking, it’s memory, it’s the kinds of endpoints where you deliver A.I.”
Still, challenges lie ahead. As Stewart noted, funding rounds keep getting bigger at earlier stages, creating pressure for those investments to mature. “Mathematically, it is possible to go even larger, but you’re going to need to let those bets we in the VC industry just made mature into those leaders,” he said.
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Rachel Curry
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