• Vale Charlie Munger. The legendary investor, right-hand of Warren Buffett and vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway died at 99 years old.

• Australia’s latest inflation numbers came in: 4.9% in the 12 months to October 2023. This is down from 5.6% in the 12 months to September and is the first time in 20 months annual inflation is below 5%.

• More signs that the Australian consumer is holding up okay - Solomon Lew’s Premier Investments (which includes retail brands Peter Alexander and Smiggle) reported record Black Friday sales.

• Australia’s highest paid CEOs for 2023 have been revealed. No prizes for guessing #1 - Macquarie Group’s Shemara Wikramanayake. A bit more surprising to see #2 - Victor Herrero, CEO of discount jewellery chain Lovisa.

The Inside Story of Microsoft’s Partnership with OpenAI

There has been plenty written about the wash up of OpenAI’s corporate drama last week. In the space of a few days: co-founder and CEO Sam Altman was fired, a number of senior executives followed him out the door, investors demanded answers, 95% of OpenAI’s staff signed a petition calling for Altman to return, the board members that fired him resigned, Altman returns as CEO. And just like, everything was back to normal.

Or was it? As the dust settles, there are still some big questions that remained unanswered. 

This article from the New Yorker is one of the better long-form articles we’ve read about the wild weekend and the events that led to it. It takes us through Microsoft’s experience of the OpenAI drama as CEO Satya Nadella and CTO Kevin Scott struggled to get information like the rest of us. 

Microsoft owns 49% of OpenAI’s for-profit operating company after having reportedly invested $13 billion. If any shareholder deserved to be told it was them. Moreover, the two companies had just collaborated on Microsoft’s biggest product launch in a decade - the AI copilot that is currently being rolled out to all Microsoft Office products. For Microsoft, this puts them on the forefront of the AI revolution. For OpenAI, this puts their AI at the fingertips of Microsoft’s billion-plus users. The fact Microsoft’s CEO wasn’t given a heads up of Altman’s firing is mind-blowing. 

But this article goes beyond the chaos of OpenAI and examines Microsoft’s own efforts to build AI. It is centred on Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer, Kevin Scott, and his view that AI is the tool that will allow resourceful, digitally-illiterate people the world over to engage with technology. He sees it as the great equaliser that will allow billions of people to fully realise the benefits of the computer revolution. 

Under Kevin Scott, Microsoft forged their partnership with OpenAI and pulled out ahead of their Big Tech peers in the AI arms race. Now, under Kevin Scott, they need to navigate this moment of chaos within OpenAI and deliver their first mass-market consumer AI product. Because it is only if the world’s computer users can get accustomed to AI in everyday, boring settings like word processors that Kevin James will realise his vision of AI being the great equaliser for everyday, computer-illiterate people the world over. 

How the world’s largest hedge fund lost two top hires — and was paralyzed by puddles of pee.

This article on the chaos at the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, starts with an all-staff email from the founder Ray Dalio. 

Not the kind of email you’d expect from a billionaire founder of fund managing more than $200 billion US dollars. But it didn’t stop with his first email. From there, the matter exploded within Bridgewater. 

None of this is what you’d expect from Ray Dalio. Especially if you’ve read his book, Principles. But, as it turns out, at Bridgewater recently there’s been plenty of things you wouldn’t expect. 

This is an organisation where staff are given iPads and directed to rate their colleagues from one-to-ten multiple times a day. In meetings, they often take real-time polls on whether a speaker is right or wrong. And they also often vote on who should be fired.

Dalio thinks of this as a culture of radical transparency. To us, it just seems like a recipe for a paranoid workforce. But hey, we’re not the ones managing $200 billion. 

This article takes a collection of weird moments from within the walls of Bridgewater. And it focuses on Dalio’s attempt to turn his book Principles: Life and Work into software that could be used to manage employees throughout the Bridgewater offices. As you can imagine, it doesn’t turn out as you’d expect.

Help your family and friends start 2024 on the right financial foot

Chinese Super League: From bidding for Bale to selling the team bus

It seems everywhere we look we’re surrounded by stories of the business of sport. And, it seems, that business is booming. From the Saudi’s rival golf league LIV Golf, to record sales prices for NBA and NFL franchises, to the first F1 race in Las Vegas breaking all kinds of records, there are signs everywhere that the business of sport is healthy.

It’s important to remind ourselves that even sports investments carry risks. And there is no better example than China’s attempt to take on world football (soccer).

As with so many things in China, this was a directive from the top down. In 2011, Xi Jinping announced his ambition for China to be a world football power, to qualify for a World Cup and to eventually host the tournament. 

With that pronouncement, billions of dollars were invested into the game. 

A lot of that investment went to making China’s domestic football league a global powerhouse. The domestic teams started throwing money at the best players in the world. In 2016, Brazilian superstar Hulk signed with Shanghai for a reported £320,000 a week. Not bad work if you can get it. Over the next few years he was joined by other big names Oscar, Carlos Tevez and more. 

As a result of this money coming out of China, European teams were worried. Arsene Wenger, Arsenal’s manager at the time, said, “China looks to have the financial power to move a whole European league to China.”

By 2019, the league had become so big that Real Madrid's Gareth Bale - at one point the most expensive player in the world - was tipped for a move to Jiangsu Suning on a three-year, £1m-a-week contract.

But then it all came crumbling down. 

Less than two years later after they were bidding for Gareth Bale, Jiangsu Suning ceased operating. Their financial situation got so bad that they even had to auction off the team bus.

This article looks at the wash up of China’s attempt to buy their way into football dominance. And it is timely as we watch Saudi Arabia attempt to do something very similar. Where China pursued Gareth Bale and Hulk, Saudi Arabia has signed Neymar and Christiano Ronaldo. The question is, what comes next? Can Saudi Arabia succeed where China failed?