The Week in Cheek: business news that's bullish on bull

Welcome to the first edition of The Week in Cheek where the goal is to divest the week's business news of some of its pomposity and have some fun. Let's get right into it.

If you think you had a bad week at work you can feel much better by considering the plight of Jonathan Mathew, charged with crimes against LIBOR. Nobody gives two basis points about the LIBOR trial because it doesn't involve movies about fallen celebrity billionaires starring Jennifer Lawrence or flying cars or parties featuring topless dancers performing risk calculations on their bodies with neon paint, but it is a serious matter, it really is, when banks collude to manipulate benchmark rates.

Earlier in the LIBOR trial, we learned that Mathew's boss routinely humiliated him by hitting him on the back of the head with a 12-inch bat, shouting at him and making him stand on a chair in the trading floor to answer a quiz on world capitals. In his closing arguments, Mathew's lawyer said:

Truth be told, Jonathan Mathew is no mathematical genius, he’s not a brilliant man, nor was he cherry picked by Barclays. The danger is you just lump him in with the others.

I couldn't possibly have been guilty of the crime for which I am accused because, unlike the others charged with the same crime, I'm too f*cking stupid. (I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a jail cell where I can serve my LIBORious time pretending to be a mastermind.) 

This week it was revealed that Uber CEO Travis Kalanick does not have a valid driver's license. It was also revealed that Elon Musk drives a Tesla, Larry Page googles himself and Elizabeth Holmes has blood.

#quote of the week

"This question is for the Lady CFO." An Alphabet shareholder unleashes a torrent of 140-letter mockery in the Twittersphere.

As noted in The Weekly Cheek's cover photo, the Playboy Mansion (along with nonagenarian squatter Hugh Hefner) has been SOLD. 

Meet the new owner of the Playboy mansion, Daren Metropoulos (the guy on the right), billionaire beer and Twinkie guy, who from the looks of it, will restore the mansion to its former Animal House glory. Just be sure to clean the whirlpool Daren. The bacteria cocktail in the grotto was super grotty and resulted in 69 people getting sick on the same day. No, I did not make that number up. 

Burger King says no to women. If the world were fair, ladies and gentlemen of LinkedIn, saying no to female board participation would have dire consequences. The Burger Queens of the world would unite and refuse to welcome the Burger King's Whopper until he welcomed gender parity. 

But on the positive side, research indicates that corporate boards don't matter because they're basically a collection of human mushrooms that are fed sh*t and kept in the dark.

From “Are Boards Designed to Fail? The Implausibility of Effective Board Monitoring":

Even the most motivated directors will be unable to effectively monitor executives because of the many barriers that limit the acquisition, processing and sharing of adequate information.

As Valeant's free fall continues (Friday VRX closed at $30.38, down over 90% from its August 2015 peak) one can't help but wonder: wtf was/is Pershing Square's Bill Ackman thinking? How could a man as clever and well put together as Bill Ackman be seduced by Valeant CEO Michael J Pearson, the frumpy pharmaceutical Fred Flintstone? Pershing Square's investment in Valeant is down 70% in 2016 alone. The Street used to think that Ackman was a genius contrarian, hiring his fly-fishing teacher, tennis pro and a guy he met in a cab to help him run his hedge fund, but maybe he's just Barney Rubble. 

Weekend reading list: Be sure to check out the brilliant lowdown on Valeant's meltdown by Vanity Fair's Bethany McLean. And Theranos as vampire fiction. And Martin Shkreli The Musical featuring the toe-tapper "I'm f*cking Martin Shkreli (and you can all go f*ck yourself).

On that note, have a nice weekend.