"Father, forgive me. I had acquired wealth."
Finally, sizes up Bloomberg, the Apollo Fund is moving out of the shadow of scandal. Investors are re-committed.
The specifics of the previous Apollo brand tarnishing included media-grabbing tidbits like association with Jeffrey Epstein.
Okay, Epstein was a bad guy.
But the intensity of the hit to the Apollo brand and its one-time head Leon Black is not really about that, is it? The root of the self-righteous hysteria seems to be this: America's ambivalence about wealth. Both institutional and personal.
On the one hand, the Puritan ethos had the acquisition of wealth as a the play-out of the right moral values. The lack of it was interpreted as a lack of those. That's not gone away. Shame on you. You're not on the list of billionaires under-40.
On the other hand, there is the embedded meme: Money is the root of all evil. Had Black not possessed such personal wealth he wouldn't have been able to have become involved in a romantic dalliance resulting in a lawsuit against him and a countersuit by him, right. We're certain of that. We praise MacKenzie Scott for giving away so much of her wealth.
The problem is that the ambivance (along with the certitude) is growing. That means so much confusion.
On an individual level, the Hamptons had become a symbol of decadence. The media does photos of disgraced "Today" executive Matt Lauer you know where: the Hamptons.
As for institutional wealth. Where to begin. Yes, folks want the returns on their investments in public companies to be amazing. Simultaneously they want the corporations producing them not to showcase wealth in terms of power and influence.
No, they shouldn't be dictating where the employees are working from.
No, they cannot choose whom they want to hire.
No they can't just operate the business when there is so much suffering in the world. And, the brass is getting paid too damn much. Wall Street? You don't want your kid training there as a junior analyst. And as a lawyer do you want to work at a BigLaw firm representing Wall Street?
A proven out public relations firm like Edelman might have to be parachuted in to design a campaign for rebranding wealth as an economic-growth necessity. It's like the car industry is the 1950s. What was good for GM was good for the creation of the middle class. Only the creation of more wealth now will restore that middle class. Tighten that up as a message.
In addition, corporate leadership has to get smarter about identifying where the landmines are on this one and how to not step on them. That's the rub. What was a standard value a month ago is verboten yesterday and today who the hell knows. Check your values before you start announcing policies this morning.
That's why law firms' ESG (environmental, social, goverance) practices may be evolving into the most critical service to current clients and to prospective ones. That could be inventing a new category of what law firms do, in addition to the traditional transactional and litigation segments. Actually, that could be more important than the latter two. Will law firms come to declare that the real business that they are in is saving American capitalism? Part of that is figuring out social justice for the clients.
Paul Weiss, chaired by Brad Karp, has captured that new core function of a law firm in how it has positioned and packaged its own ESG practice mission.
Essentially the language is code for how to succeed despite what's happening externally and internally (employee activism). The current cultural upheaval doesn't get corporations off the hook for producing over-the-top financial performance. But they better do that and communicate about that in ways that walk the line on the perception of wealth.
Here is the Paul Weiss mission:
"Business leaders face greater pressure to increase their organizations’ resilience while simultaneously addressing social issues of importance to stakeholders. Our advisory practice helps companies navigate the legal, business and political ramifications of developing and implementing ESG initiatives. We advise on matters such as stakeholder engagement, corporate governance, crisis management, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, diversity and inclusion, ethics and compliance."
Meanwhile, the Delta variant has introduced more uncertainty. Folks don't like that. Individuals and organizations with wealth will likely be taking it on the chin. There could be greater expectations of help from them as well as vilification of what they are assumed to be about. Give us your money and get out of our sight.
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