Harry Ferguson

@BillAckman @pocketbrainn @X I apologize for asking, but do you have other companies in your stable where you are failing to regularly monitor even a single page quarterly report showing performance objectives vs costs? Not a good story or a good look for a business contemplating an IPO. You know better.

@pocketbrainn @X Brilliantly said and insightful.

I am reaching out to the @X community for advice with the likely risk of sharing TMI. I have been sufficiently upset about the whole matter that I have lost sleep thinking about it and I am hoping that this post will enable me to get this matter off my chest. By way of background, I started a family office called TABLE about 15 years ago and hired a friend who had previously managed a family office, and years earlier, had been my personal accountant. She is someone that I trusted implicitly and consider to be a good person. The office started small, but over the last decade, the number of personnel and the cost of the office grew massively. The growth was entirely on the operational side as the investment team has remained tiny. While my investment portfolio grew substantially, the investments I had made were almost entirely passive and TABLE simply needed to account for them and meet capital calls as they came in. While TABLE purchased additional software and other systems that were supposed to improve productivity, the team kept increasing in size at a rapid rate, and the expenses continued to grow even faster. While I would periodically question the growing expenses and high staff turnover, I stayed uninvolved with the office other than a once-a-year meeting when I briefly reviewed the operations and the financials and determined bonus compensation for the President and the CFO. I spent no time with any of the other employees or the operations. The whole idea behind TABLE was that it would handle everything other than my day job so that I would have more time for my job and my family. Over the last six years, expenses ballooned even further, employee turnover accelerated, and I became concerned that all was not well at TABLE. It was time for me to take a look at what was going on. Nearly four years ago, I recruited my nephew who had recently graduated from Harvard and put him to work at Bremont, a British watchmaker, one of my only active personal investments to figure out the issues at the company and ultimately assist in executing a turnaround. He did a superb job. When he returned from the UK late last year after a few years at Bremont, I asked him to help me figure out what was going on with TABLE. When I explained to TABLE’s president what he would be doing, she became incredibly defensive, which naturally made me more concerned. My nephew went to work by first meeting with each employee to understand their roles at the company and to learn from them what ideas they had on how things could be improved. He got an earful. Our first step in helping to turn around TABLE was a reduction in force including the president and about a third of the team, retaining excellent talent that had been desperate for new leadership. Now here is where I need your advice. All but one of the employees who were terminated acted professionally and were gracious on the way out (excluding the president who had a notice period in her contract, is currently still being paid, and with whom I have not yet had a discussion). The highest compensated terminated employee other than the president, an in-house lawyer (let’s call her Ronda), told us that three months of severance was not enough and demanded two years’ severance despite having worked at the company for only two and one half years. When I learned of Ronda's request for severance, I offered to speak with her to understand what she was thinking, but she refused to do so. A few days ago, we received a threatening letter from a Silicon Valley law firm. In the letter, Ronda’s counsel suggests that her termination is part of longstanding issues of ‘harassment and gender discrimination’ – an interesting claim in light of the fact that Ronda was in charge of workplace compliance – and that her termination was due to: “unlawful, retaliatory, and harmful conduct directed towards her. Both [Ronda] and I [Ronda’s lawyer] have spoken with you about [Ronda’s] view of what a reasonable resolution would include given the circumstances. Thus far, TABLE has refused to provide any substantive response. This letter provides the last opportunity to reach a satisfactory agreement. If we cannot do so, [Ronda] will seek all appropriate relief in a court of competent jurisdiction.” The letter goes on to explain the basis for the “unsafe work environment” claim at TABLE: “In early 2026, Pershing Square’s founder Bill Ackman installed his nephew in an unidentified role at TABLE, Ackman’s family office. [His nephew]—whose only work experience had been for TABLE where he was seconded abroad for the last four years to a UK watch company held by Ackman—began appearing at TABLE’s offices and conducting interviews of employees without a clear explanation of his role or the purposes of these interviews. During this period, he made a series of inappropriate and genderbased [sic] comments to multiple employees that created an unsafe work environment. Among other things, [his nephew] made remarks about female employees’ ages (“Tell me you are nowhere near 40”), physical appearance (“Your body does not look like you have kids”), as well as intrusive questions about family planning and sexual orientation (“Who carried your son? Who will carry your next child?”). These incidents were reported to senior leadership at TABLE and Pershing Square. Rather than being addressed appropriately, the response from senior management reflected, at best, willful blindness to the inappropriateness of [his nephew]’s remarks and, at worst, tacit endorsement.” The above allegations about my nephew had previously been brought to my attention by TABLE’s president when they occurred. When I learned of them, I told the president that I would speak to him directly and encouraged her to arrange for him to get workplace sensitivity training. The president assured me that she would do so. When I spoke to my nephew, he explained what he actually had said and how his actual remarks had been received, not at all as alleged in the legal letter from Ronda’s counsel. I have also spoken to others at the lunch table who confirmed his description of the facts. In any case, he meant no harm, was simply trying to build rapport with other employees, and no one, as far as I understand, was offended. Ironically, Ronda claims in her legal letter that TABLE didn’t take HR compliance seriously, yet Ronda was in charge of HR compliance at TABLE and the person who gave my nephew his workplace sensitivity training after the alleged incidents. In any case, Ronda, as head of compliance, should have kept a record or raised an alarm if indeed there was pervasive harassment or other such problems at the company, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true. So why does Ronda believe she can get me to pay her nearly $2 million, i.e., two years of severance, nearly one year of severance for each of her years at the company? Well, here is where some more background would be helpful. Over the last two months, I have been consumed with a major family medical issue – one of my older daughters had a massive brain hemorrhage on February 5th and has since been making progress on her recovery – and I am in the midst of a major transaction for my company which I am executing from a hospital room office next to her . While the latter business matter is publicly known, the details of my daughter’s situation are only known to Ronda because of her role at our family office. Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand. Unfortunately, while New York and many other states have employment-at-will, there has emerged an industry of lawyers who make a living from bringing fake gender, race, LGBTQ and other discrimination employment claims in order to extract larger severance payments for terminated employees, and it needs to stop. The fake claim system succeeds because it costs little to have a lawyer send a threatening letter and nearly all of the lawyers in this field work on contingency so there is no or minimal cash cost to bring a claim. And inevitably, nearly 100% of these claims are settled because the public relations and legal costs of defending them exceed the dollar cost of the settlement. The claims are nearly always settled with a confidentiality agreement where the employee who asserts the fake claims remains anonymous and as a result, there is no reputational cost to bringing false claims. The consequences of this sleazy system (let’s call it ‘the System’) are the increased costs of doing business which is a tax on the economy and society. There are other more serious problems due to the System. Unfortunately, the existence of an industry of plaintiff firms and terminated employees willing to make these claims makes it riskier for companies to hire employees from a protected class, i.e., LGBTQ, seniors, women, people of color etc. because it is that much more reputationally damaging and expensive to be accused of racism, sexism, and/or intolerance for sexual diversity than for firing a white male as juries generally have less sympathy for white males. The System therefore increases the risk of discrimination rather than reducing it, and the people bringing these fake claims are thereby causing enormous harm to the other members of these protected classes. So what happened here? Ronda was vastly overpaid and overqualified for the job that she did at TABLE. She was paid $1.05 million plus benefits last year for her work which was largely comprised of filling out subscription agreements and overseeing an outside law firm on closing passive investments in funds and in private and venture stage companies, some compliance work, and managing the office move from one office to another. She had a very good gig as she was highly paid, only had to go into the office three days a week, and could work from anywhere during the summer. Once my nephew showed up and started to investigate what was going on, she likely concluded that there was a reasonable possibility she would be terminated, as her job was in the too-easy-and-to-good-to-be-true category. The problem was that she was not in a protected class due to her race, age or sexual identity so she had to construct the basis for a claim. While she is female and could in theory bring a gender-based discrimination claim, she reported to the president who is female and to whom she is very close, which makes it difficult for her to bring a harassment claim against her former boss. When my nephew complimented a TABLE employee at lunch about how young she looked – in response to saying she was going to her 40-year-old sister’s birthday party, he said ‘she must be your older sister’ – Ronda immediately reported it to our external HR lawyer. She thereby began building her case. The other problem for Ronda bringing a claim is that she was terminated alongside 30% of other TABLE employees as part of a restructuring so it is very difficult for her to say that she was targeted in her termination or was retaliated against. TABLE is now hiring an external fractional general counsel as that is all the company needs to process the relatively limited amount of legal work we do internally. In short, Ronda was eminently qualified and capable and did her job. She was just too much horsepower for what is largely an administrative legal role so she had to come up with something else to bring a claim. Now Ronda knew I was a good target and it was a good time to bring a claim against me. She also knew that I was under a lot of pressure because on March 4th when Ronda was terminated, my daughter had not yet emerged from consciousness, she was not yet breathing on her own, and my daughter and we were fighting for her life. I was and remain deeply engaged in her recovery while at the same time I was working on finishing the closing for the private placement round for my upcoming IPO. Ronda also knew that publicity about supposed gender discrimination and a “hostile and unsafe work environment” are not things that a CEO of a company about to go public wants to have released into the media. And she may have thought that the nearly $2 million she was asking for would be considered small in the context of the reputational damage a lawsuit could cause, regardless of the fact that two years of severance was an absurd amount for an employee who had only worked at TABLE for 30 months. She also likely considered that I wouldn’t want to embarrass my nephew by dragging him into the klieg lights when her claims emerged publicly. So, in summary, game theory would say that I would certainly settle this case, for why would I risk negative publicity at a time when I was preparing our company to go public and also risk embarrassing my nephew. Notably, she hired a Silicon Valley law firm, rather than a typical NY employment firm. This struck me as interesting as her husband works for one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture firms whose CEO, I am sure, has no tolerance for these kinds of fake claims that sadly many venture-backed companies also have to deal with. I mention this as I suspect her husband likely has been working with her on the strategy for squeezing me as, in addition to being a computer scientist, he is a game theorist. My only advice for him is to understand more about your opponent before you launch your first move. All of the above said, gender, race, LGBTQ and other such discrimination is a real thing. Many people have been harmed and deserve compensation for this discrimination, and these companies and individuals should be punished for engaging in such behavior. Which brings me to the advice I am seeking from the X community. I am not planning to follow the typical path and settle this ‘claim.’ Rather, I am going to fight this nonsense to the end of the earth in the hope that it inspires other CEOs to do the same so we shut down this despicable behavior that is a large tax on society, employment, and the economy and contributes to workplace discrimination rather than reducing it. Do you agree or disagree that this is the right approach?

@DrJStrategy And when this plan works, and Trump then turns his thoughts to the next big problem, he will no doubt decide that an incredibly weak northern neighbor with immense resources and no ability to defend them is not in the best interest of the US, and the 51st state becomes reality.

Food for thought. Trump, Hormuz and the End of the Free Ride For half a century, Western strategists have known that the Strait of Hormuz is the acute point where energy, sea power and political will intersect. That knowledge is not in dispute. What is new in this war with Iran is that the United States, under Donald Trump, has chosen not to rush to “solve” the problem. In Hegelian terms, he is refusing an easy synthesis in order to force the underlying contradiction to the surface. The old thesis was simple: the US guarantees open sea lanes in the Gulf, and everyone else structures their economies and politics around that free insurance. Europe and the UK embraced ambitious green policies, ran down hard‑power capabilities and lectured Washington on multilateral virtue, secure in the assumption that American carriers would always appear off Hormuz. The political class behaved as if the American security guarantee were a law of nature, not a contingent choice. Their conduct today is closer to Chamberlain than Churchill: temporising, issuing statements, hoping the storm will pass without a fundamental reordering of their responsibilities. Trump’s antithesis is to withhold the automatic guarantee at the moment of maximum stress. Militarily, the US can break Iran’s residual ability to contest the Strait; that is not the binding constraint. The point is to delay that act. By allowing a closure or semi‑closure to bite, Trump ensures that the immediate pain is concentrated in exactly the jurisdictions that have most conspicuously free‑ridden on US power: the EU and the UK. Their industries, consumers and energy‑transition assumptions are exposed. In that context, his reported blunt message to European and British leaders, you need the oil out of the Strait more than we do; why don’t you go and take it? Is not a throwaway line. It is the verbalisation of the antithesis. It openly reverses the traditional presumption that America will carry the burden while its allies emote from the sidelines. In this dialectic, the prize is not simply the reopening of a chokepoint. The prize is a reordered system in which the United States effectively arbitrages and controls the global flow of oil. A world in which US‑aligned production in the Americas plus a discretionary capability to secure,or not secure, Hormuz places Washington at the centre of the hydrocarbon chessboard. For that strategic end, a rapid restoration of the old status quo would be counterproductive. A quick, surgical “fix” of Hormuz would short‑circuit the dialectic. If Trump rapidly crushed Iran’s remaining coastal capabilities, swept the mines and escorted tankers back through the Strait, Europe and the UK would heave a sigh of relief and return to business as usual: underfunded militaries, maximalist green posturing and performative disdain for US power, all underwritten by that same power. The contradiction between their dependence and their posture would remain latent. By declining to supply the synthesis on demand, and by explicitly telling London and Brussels to “go and take it” themselves, Trump forces a reckoning. European and British leaders must confront the fact that their energy systems, their industrial bases and their geopolitical sermons all rest on an American hard‑power foundation they neither finance nor politically respect. The longer the contradiction is allowed to unfold, the stronger the eventual synthesis can be: a new order in which access to secure flows, Hormuz, Venezuela and beyond, is explicitly conditional on real contributions, not assumed as a right. In that sense, the delay in “taking” the Strait, and the challenge issued to US allies to do it themselves, is not indecision. It is the negative moment Hegel insisted was necessary for history to move. Only by withholding the old guarantee, and by saying so out loud to those who depended on it, can Trump hope to end the free ride.

@elonmusk Well just because New York spent that amount doesn't mean the homeless received it of course. Lots of friends and family to take care of along the way. The more you send out, the more you get back in this game.

Wow

@DrEliDavid America's NATO allies might have been more reliable before Trump insulted them, told them they weren't needed, beat them up with tarriffs, and threatened to break them up and annex them. Just sayin.

NATO is worthless. America just learned that its only reliable ally is a non-NATO country 🇮🇱

@theDChuddle @danturrentine Ah Dan. Reporting "stories" now are we?

.@DanTurrentine Is there regret in the WH over Iran: “You had stories over the weekend of regret… You’re getting stories of divide… You get stories of backside covering… And then you’re getting stories of blame.”

@EndWokeness That unlike Republicans, they know what they're doing, and voting in their own interest.

99.5% of Democrats voted against voter ID, a proposal that has 83% support. What does that tell you?

@douglaskarr @NYCMayor It's not like Mamdani wasn't totally upfront about who he was, but New Yorkers voted for him regardless.

In a sane world, the Mayor of NYC would be sitting with this American hero - Chief Aaron Edwards, Assistant Chief at Patrol Borough Manhattan North - who ran into danger, tackling a jihadist who tossed an IED. 🫡🇺🇸Instead @NYCMayor celebrated dinner with an antisemite jihadist who is quoted as wanting to “destroy Western Civilization”. NYC forgot.

@MattWalshBlog Yah, sh!t happens sometimes.

So just to recap: a prison guard who lied to the authorities about checking on Epstein also coincidentally made a series of deposits in the weeks leading up to his death that were so suspicious that the bank independently reported them to the police. That same prison guard was searching for news about Epstein in the moments before his death. And that same guard was independently named by inmates who claimed that she was involved in covering up the killing. Also, two cameras in front of Epstein's cell malfunctioned while all of this was happening. That's a whole lot of coincidences stacking up on top of each other. I don't know. Seems strange to me. But I'm no detective.

@TheBabylonBee Canada's PM Carney turned seed oil into Chinese electric cars, so there's that.

Locals In Galilee Rejoice As Jesus Turns Seed Oil Into Beef Tallow buff.ly/WNGWM0M

@LaceyPresley Perhaps instead of being used to create useless videos of futuristic alien landscapes and scantily clad women, Grok could be put to use solving important real world issues involving health, energy and food production efficiencies etc. Stop wasting this resource.

OMG the new Grok Imagine web update is EVERYTHING 😍✨ The UI changes look absolutely AMAZING super clean, modern, and buttery smooth! Everything just flows better now, making image & video creation feel next-level intuitive and fun 🔥 xAI absolutely cooked with this redesign. The web experience hits different! Go check it out yourself 👉 grok.com/imagine Who else is obsessed with the new look?? 👀

@danturrentine Dan, you're a great thought leader for the Dems, but this "yes but"-ism just doesn't look good on you. For a few moments just be an American and take the win.

This is the big question. How do we and Israel make sure what comes next is not equal to or worse than the old regime. I have to think the CIA and Mossad have a well thought out plan. After all, hope is not a strategy.

@KatiePavlich Lately the Democrats seem to have developed an unerring knack for coming down on the wrong side of absolutely every issue. Without grift and corruption, and the ability to steal elections, they'd have nothing.

Thank God this cowardly, feckless, pro-terrorism and pro-criminal woman lost

@MostlyPeaceful Don't completely discount incompetence.

What’s clear from the Maduro raid and today’s strikes is that forever wars were a choice.

@TheBabylonBee Too soon.

Mamdani Orders Flags At One World Trade Center Flown Half-Staff To Mourn Ayatollah buff.ly/EkIaTQF

@TaraServatius As an observer, it's interesting (and a little depressing) to watch New Yorkers get exactly what they voted for.

Zohran Mamdani last week: We're broke and we're gonna need to raise your property taxes 10% Zohran Mamdani & AOC this week: We're offering free daycare for illegals. Here's how you sign up.

@RonDeSantis How bout a new federal law giving the US Govt right of first refusal on all land immediately adjacent to military bases or other federal facilities?

I’m glad we barred China from buying land in Florida many years ago. The CCP shouldn’t own American farmland, land near military bases or any other sensitive property.

@elonmusk Where is Prezident Sheinbaum? Seriously. Is she safe?

😑

@zagrebbi You guys keep talking like this and some people are gonna come to understand the purpose and power of unions.

The dumbest part of Mamdani's new budget: 40% of it goes to education — the single largest line item — and there is literally zero correlation between how much a school district spends and how well its students perform.

@danturrentine @GavinNewsom @AOC @gretchenwhitmer @RahmEmanuel Dan, if these three are your best guess for the top Democrat leaders, your party has much bigger problems than establishing a cogent foreign policy.

Take note ⁦@GavinNewsom⁩, ⁦@AOC⁩, ⁦@gretchenwhitmer⁩, this is what a big league’s foreign policy critique looks like: strong, clear, focused. Extremely well done, ⁦⁦@RahmEmanuel⁩ ! The Donroe Doctrine’s Year of Failure wsj.com/opinion/the-do…

@keith_dorschner @finance_compare Hell no. Send help!

@finance_compare It’s funny that Canada is so hot for the Ukraine war and then Carney makes trade deals with China who actually support Russia in that war. WTF is going on up there in Canada? You guys ok?