Century City Speech, Wall Street Sheep

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Who hasn’t lived through a performance of someone from corporate bleating on with the latest message from on high. Gina Martin Adams did a good bit better when she stopped by Bloomberg’s offices in Century City last week – although she did fixate on sheep. Adams is the chief equity strategist for Bloomberg, and she delivered 45 minutes’ worth of insights to fellow employees and select guests, including some of the customers who rent the terminals that deliver the news and data that’s built the outfit into a titan of financial media. Reactions indicated that she impressed in no small part by freshening up the Wall Street lexicon, calling the current market neither a bull nor a bear but a “sheep” – moving at a slow pace and grazing on earnings … Congratulations to Cecilia Estolano, one-time Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles boss and current principal of environmental consultancy Estolano LeSar, who’s building quite the comprehensive portfolio of post-secondary education in California. Gov. Jerry Brown last week picked Estolano for the UC Board of Regents, a seat she’ll take after four years on the board of governors of the 114-campus California Community Colleges system, which she currently serves as president … Anyone else hear folks referring to the “Pepsi Building” downtown? Seems the 73-story Wilshire Grand Center – already called the “Korean Air Building” by many – is increasingly being identified with the famous soft-drink brand. No great surprise, given the similarity between the form and color scheme of Pepsi’s logo and the Korean Air symbol displayed at the top of the building. Our Shwanika Narayan passes along the trend toward the Pepsi reference, which seems to be stirring at street level, particularly with Uber and Lyft drivers … Stan Kroenke, who has some naming rights to sell at the $2.6 billion stadium he’s building in Inglewood for the Los Angeles Rams, is familiar with the real logo for Pepsi – the brand is the naming sponsor for the arena that’s home to the NBA’s Denver Nuggets and the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, both also part of his sports empire. Wonder if having the similarly styled Korean Air symbol on the downtown skyline would help or hurt Kroenke if he tries to interest Pepsi in the naming-rights for the football stadium? … Any doubts that time brings new perspectives on U.S. presidents were dispelled by recent performances of horsehead fiddle virtuoso Togtokh Jargal Buyankhishig at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. The Mongolian horsehead fiddle has only two strings but can nevertheless “carry any tune or melody,” according to the intro for Buyankhishig, who proved the point with a powerful and beautiful rendition of Ave Maria as part of the recent Genghis Khan exhibit. There was a time when no shortage of critics would have had a field day comparing Reagan and Genghis Khan, but time brings perspective, which casts a different light … Sullivan Says: Tennis ought to be an inner-city game, with relatively little space and equipment needed (see related Commentary, page 47).

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