‘Don't be sad. I've had a great life': John Shakespeare on the art of living
Fitz: I have been told, wonderfully, that since that outpouring of love for you last Friday, there has been a small uptick in your prognosis?
JS: Haha, I think I just had a big adrenaline rush from that one! Hard not to feel better with 209 people you love, in turn, lining up to hug you!
Fitz: Are you receiving treatment for the ailment specifically, or have you moved into palliative care?
JS: It's palliative care now. There's a wonderful team at St Vincent's [Hospital] who visit me once a week, or when needed. They've given me a bed, but I can still climb stairs and sleep with my darling wife, Anna-Lisa.
Fitz: Johnny, I once read a famous book, Tuesdays with Morrie, which was about a former student of a professor with a terminal illness going to see him every Tuesday for a year to give comfort, certainly, but also to try and capture what it is like for someone to face their imminent death ... thoughts?
JS: What's it like? For starters, it's so busy! Endless appointments, reading and answering messages, drugs to be taken, exercise, home visits from friends etc, etc. I barely have a minute for a cat nap. I am constantly tired too. As time draws closer? I guess it will be more time in bed, I'm a bit concerned about the last few weeks. I may go to the care hospice – I'm not sure I want to have the family witness that from home.
Fitz: May I, gently, ask: do you feel despair?
JS: No mate, very rarely. Despair does come of course, mostly when I'm in physical pain, but once the painkillers kick in I banish those negative thoughts that have no solution. I'd much rather feel happy than depressed in my final days! It's pointless to get depressed about dying. That is a given. I don't believe in hell, so I assume Kerry Packer was right – there's nothing there. Yeah, family and friends are sad for you, and you're sad to be leaving them, but it has to happen one day. I've had a great life, maybe two great lives!
Fitz: Is your waking thought every day, 'Christ, this is really happening?'
JS: No that, too, would just make me depressed! I don't give much air time to that one.
Fitz: What you are going through will soon enough confront all of us, as we come face to face with our mortality. What advice do you have for us?
JS: My motto is 'accept, adjust, adapt'. The key is to be able to accept something that can't be changed. Only then will you find some peace. Otherwise, it will be a battle with the unmovable. Sort out your financials so that your family will be as secure as possible, and that will give yourself a sense of relief to carry into your final days. Have as much fun as your energy levels allow!
Fitz: You came from a very religious household and turned away from that. In this extremity, do you turn back to it now?
Loading
JS: Each to their own, but I can't see myself getting back on board with someone who did all this to me just as I've freshly retired! No, thanks. Plus I still don't believe a word of it, ever since that day many years ago when I found myself as a student kneeling on the floor praying for God to help me find my lost rubber!
Fitz: Tell us about your art. You and I have worked together off and on for nigh on four decades – and on for a solid 15 years – and I have loved seeing your art evolve. When did you first realise you were good at it?
JS: I think to be good at anything you need to be a bit obsessive (or passionate about something). I'm obsessive, so I had that ability to do repetitive practising without getting bored. The more you practise, the better you get, and soon people were noticing, and that fuelled my confidence.
Fitz: Who or what were your major influences?
JS: Early childhood days, Mad magazine of course, and all the superhero comics. Later years: Alan Moir, John Spooner, Patrick Cook, Leunig.
Fitz: Have you drawn your last painting, or still doing a bit now?
JS: No, no paint brushes for a while, but I did draw a small emoji collection while in hospital!
Fitz: The prime minister and Cathy Wilcox both noted your capacity to do satirical cartoons on public figures – and this is a rarity in your game – somehow, without ever being mean to your subjects. How on earth did you manage it, when the very nature of satire is to poke fun?
JS: Yes, I never see the point of making politicians ugly. I don't see the reason to insult them like that. I prefer making them look silly, as in with a 'whoops, I've done it again' expression – making fun of them. I prefer presenting political folly, rather than doing personal attacks.
Fitz: You have, however, sometimes drawn me as being very overweight, with a pug nose, and a face like a dropped pie. Any chance you'll take this opportunity to say sorry now? I'm giving you one last chance, you bastard!
JS: Yeah, sorry mate! I was obviously a bit crueller back then! I think I draw you as a toned Adonis now, right?
Fitz: Exactly. You have a singularly fine family, a wonderful wife and a great son. I imagine they have eased your path?
JS: Yes they've been amazing throughout this, but it carries the weight of worrying about them and how they'll be after I'm gone. That is the majorly sad part of this experience. Beyond that, other family and friends are sad for you, and you're sad to be leaving them, but it has to happen one day.
Fitz: Anything you want to say to devoted followers of your work, as you sign off?
JS: Keep smiling and have fun!! But don't be sad for me. I've had a great life, maybe two great lives!
Fitz: Onya, Johnny. We love you well. Of all the people I've known in this position, I think you are one who – in a profoundly moving way – will 'go gently into that good night', but on behalf of us all, thank you for the light you have brought us in your life and work.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Coinbase stock hit with analyst downgrade citing 'limited support' for current valuation
Coinbase (COIN) got downgraded by analysts at Compass Point who questioned whether its valuation was sustainable. The analysts changed Coinbase's rating to Sell from Neutral and lowered its price target to $248 from $330 per share. The new price target represents a 21% decline from Friday's close. "While we remain constructive on the current crypto cycle, we expect a choppy 3Q alongside weak August/September seasonality and waning retail interest in crypto treasury stocks," Compass Point analyst Ed Engel wrote on Sunday night. "As such, we see limited support for COIN's valuation if crypto markets sell off further," he noted. The development comes after the crypto platform's stock plunged 14% on Friday, its biggest intraday drop since April, after the company's quarterly earnings report showed that revenue last quarter took a hit from lower trading volume. Compass Point pointed to Coinbase's Subscription & Services (S&S) revenue, which came in at $655.8 million versus Wall Street estimates for $715.2 million. S&S includes plans such as Coinbase One, a monthly subscription product that offers no trading fees and other perks "Investors place a higher premium on these recurring fees, thus disappointing S&S fees have a more pronounced impact on COIN's valuation," Engel wrote. The analyst also pointed out that increasing stablecoin competition will likely put downward pressure on the valuation for Coinbase and its partner, Circle (CRCL). Read more: Can you buy crypto with a credit card? See the pros and cons. The issuer of digital tokens backed by the US dollar shares part of its interest income revenue with Coinbase. Engel and his team also said they believe interest in crypto treasury stocks such as Strategy (MSTR), the largest public holder of bitcoin, is declining, limiting the ability for companies to raise money for more token purchases, essentially crypto's upside in the near term. The analyst noted Strategy has recently slowed purchases of bitcoin. "With Strategy buying $18bn BTC YTD, MSTR's pivot removes another layer of BTC buying pressure," Engel said. Not all analysts are so bearish. The stock has 19 analyst Buy recommendations, 16 Hold, and 5 Sell, according to Bloomberg data. Bernstein analysts recently dubbed Coinbase a "one-stop Amazon" of crypto services. In a note last week, the analysts reaffirmed an Outperform rating on the stock with a $510 price target. Instead, the analysts said investors should focus on crypto derivatives and the company's "everything exchange" vision for the platform. On the company's earnings call, CEO Brian Armstrong highlighted Coinbase's focus on tokenized equities, or digital tokens representing real-world stocks. "We believe tokenized equities are more efficient with global coverage, 24/7 trading, instant settlement, and the ability to offer perpetual futures," Armstrong told analysts. Year to date, Coinbase shares are up roughly 24%.Ines Ferre is a senior business reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X at @ines_ferre. Click here for in-depth analysis of the latest stock market news and events moving stock prices
Yahoo
2 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The jobs data revisions that cost a US government statistician her job
(Reuters) -The revisions to previous estimates of the size of U.S. payrolls gains for May and June that prompted President Donald Trump to fire Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Friday were by any measure extraordinarily large. Indeed, the combined downward revision for the two months of 258,000 was the largest - outside of those during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic - since at least 1979. Here's a quick graphical breakdown: FIRST REVISION The monthly nonfarm payrolls report, released typically on the first Friday of each month, includes an initial estimate of employment changes for the immediately preceding month and revisions to the earlier estimates for the prior two months. BLS makes the revisions because more survey responses come in over the ensuing weeks and because it updates the seasonal factors affecting each month's estimates. The BLS on Friday said 133,000 fewer jobs had been created in June than first estimated. Over the last several years, the first estimate of the net change in payrolls each month has been revised lower more often than not. It has been revised down in eight of the last 12 BLS reports over the last year. The downward revision on Friday was the largest since the first estimate of payrolls gains for March 2021, published in April 2021, was revised down by 146,000 a month later. Over the last three years through June, the median estimate revision was -10,000. That contrasts with a median increase of 8,000 during the decade before the pandemic and a median increase of 2,000 over the series history since 1979. SECOND REVISION The total for May's payroll gains was revised lower by 125,000 in Friday's report, when the third estimate for payrolls for that month was published. That figure was the largest downward reduction of payrolls gains for a second revision - outside of the pandemic era - since the estimate for March 1983 was revised down by 127,000 in the report published in June 1983. COMBINED REVISION The combined downward revision for the two previous months - May and June - was larger than anything reported outside of the pandemic era. Indeed, the estimates for the two prior months combined have more often than not been revised higher. Since 1979, the median two-month combined estimate change was an upward revision of 10,000. Measured in absolute terms - revisions in either direction - Friday's revision also stands out. There have only been four larger revisions: +709,000 for November and December 2021; -642,000 for March and April 2020; +285,000 for August and September 1983; and +414,000 for April and May 1981. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
2 minutes ago
- Yahoo
C-suite access is the new divide in the hedge fund world
Corporate access has become the latest institutional shift for the largest hedge funds in the industry. The biggest firms have teams of people handling their relationships with companies and get the most access. Citadel, for example, does more than 30,000 meetings with executives a year. You can't buy time, but hedge funds are trying. Some of the most valuable time in the world is that of a CEO of a large public company like Jamie Dimon or Mark Zuckerberg, whose days are planned to the millisecond. They carve out time to speak to their companies' investors about strategy, expectations, and more, and it's those seconds that the biggest hedge funds in the world are increasingly monopolizing. Multistrategy giants like Izzy Englander's Millennium, Ken Griffin's Citadel, Steve Cohen's Point72, and Dmitry Balyasny's eponymous firm operate with dozens — sometimes hundreds — of investment teams under one roof, each running their own strategy. These firms' stock-picking teams compete with each other and rivals for face time with leaders at the world's biggest companies. In conversations with 15 portfolio managers, hedge fund executives, bankers, corporate access professionals, and investor relations heads, Business Insider found that access to C-suites — once a more level playing field — has become another area where the biggest firms dominate. The process is now a source of growing tension as smaller investment firms get edged out, companies are flooded with requests, and even top firms grapple with internal strains over who gets into the boardroom. A decade ago, the connection between these firms and corporations was run solely through brokers working at investment banks, also known as the sell-side. Now, while the sell-side has not been cut out of the equation, the biggest hedge funds employ large teams of corporate access pros themselves, with personnel based in the US, Europe, and Asia helping mega funds get their ever-growing investing team members face time with CEOs. Citadel boasts on its website that it does more than 30,000 meetings with corporate executives each year. Millennium's increasing allocation to externally run funds means more wallets to pay the sell-side, ensuring better access and preferential treatment from brokers. Balyasny has done educational events for corporate investor relations teams in Asia, India, and the US in the last 12 months to explain the firm's structure and introduce its broker relations leaders. Funds mentioned in this story declined to comment. "A big part of the job is keeping everyone happy," said one hedge fund executive who has managed stock-picking teams for more than a decade. 'Kids' table' Twenty-seven-year-olds in T-shirts. Cameras off during pandemic-era Zooms. Typing on laptops or phones while CEOs spoke. Twenty people on a call, all vying to ask a hyperspecific question, often related to next quarter's earnings. Companies, especially the largest ones with the busiest executives, were getting frustrated as the headcounts of the industry's elite swelled, according to two corporate investor relations executives. At bank-held conferences, alongside tenured portfolio managers from long-only funds and asset management giants like Fidelity and Wellington, "we were always the kids' table," one multistrategy executive admitted. It was "pretty common" between 2018 and 2021 for executives to say no to meeting with some of these firms, or sharply curtailing the number of seats allotted to these funds, said Christopher Melito, a former corporate access pro at Cowen, Citi, and Credit Suisse. Even with how much these firms paid the sell-side, "at the end of the day, a C-suite could say 'don't confirm that request, we aren't meeting with them,'" said Melito, who is now the head of investor access at consulting firm ICR. Though the industry started building corporate access teams as early as 2015, it took years for teams to get to their current efficiency. One early hire industry experts pointed to was when Citadel promoted Johnna Shields to the role of corporate relations manager within its Global Equities stockpicking unit. Now, these staffers play a critical role in smoothing the path for hedge funds, which aren't always trusted by CEOs who worry about potential short-sellers and capital that'll leave at the first sign of trouble. Similar to the growing importance of the business development role, those in corporate access have become a key cog within multistrategy firms, despite the fact that they don't manage capital themselves. Jain Global, for example, brought on Katie Vogt, a former Balyasny and Goldman Sachs staffer, to head its corporate access efforts, deeming the function important enough to hire someone pre-launch. There's now a much healthier two-way street between funds and corporates. For example, "a lot of top four funds stopped putting junior members in these meetings," Melito said, and started training younger investment team members on protocol. One former PM said that at Point72, blazers are required when meeting with an executive. At other large firms, Melito said, young analysts start by meeting with smaller-cap companies before shadowing more senior investors in meetings with large-cap corporations. Corporate access teams have shifted from booking agents to matchmakers, one person close to a big four fund said, pairing different teams and investors with the right executives. "The large four funds have been a lot more strategic about their asks," Melito said. Everything's political Although the relationships between funds and companies may be solid, there is still plenty of bickering internally at the asset managers. One portfolio manager at a large firm said the biggest fights he ever saw were between two teams wanting access to the same executive — and there would only be room for one. Firms often give more tenured teams the right of first refusal for a meeting, but sometimes big-name new hires will jump the line, causing a rift, another PM said. All jobs have an element of internal politics to them, but in the cutthroat hedge-fund world, where a right call could mean a life-changing annual bonus and a wrong call could mean a pink slip, the stakes are magnified. The growing staff at the biggest managers means that a potential meeting with a Fortune 500 CEO will have plenty of interested parties. At Citadel alone, there are roughly 300 stockpickers, Griffin said at a talk at his former high school in Florida earlier this year. While the biggest funds can offer eye-popping sign-on bonuses and larger books of capital to manage, smaller funds that haven't been able to keep up with the big boys on corporate access resources are leveraging the internal tiffs to help their recruiting. "We can say 'You're our tech guy,' and while we can't compete on upfront guarantees, we can give them better long-term incentives," said one individual who runs a smaller multistrategy firm. These incentives include automatic IPO distributions, he said, which can be hard to come by if you're lower down the totem pole in one of the bigger firms. In the ongoing war for talent that has top moneymakers getting offers of tens of millions of dollars in total potential compensation, an important question for candidates is how many other teams trade their specialty or sector, one recruiter said. "It's a make-or-break kind of question," he said. No one wants to be one of 20 investing in technology companies "unless the money's just stupid," he added. Is it 'something AI could do' or a differentiator? The reason these firms have been able to build up these teams and pay out such large commissions to the Street is because of the pass-through fee agreements that put their backers on the hook for business costs. The question limited partners need to ask: Is it worth it? Several PMs at firms with large corporate access teams told Business Insider they could do without. One European equity investor said CEOs have become more scripted than ever, so meetings are basically a rerun of what they've previously said on earnings calls or at conferences. Another, based in the US, said the biggest value from these meetings used to be a sentiment check on how other teams were thinking about the stock — but now questions are often too specific and narrow to give any kind of indication into their thinking. For one founder of a smaller activism fund, the meetings are a prime example of something that firms could eventually save money on by automating away. "All these young analysts are asking questions off a sheet of paper their PM gave them and then typing into their models right there," the activist said. "It's something AI could do." It's hard to quantify how much a 30-minute conversation with a CFO is worth to a fund's bottom line. One industry consultant believes the push for funds to adopt cash hurdles — which would require their net returns to be over that of a Treasury bond to earn performance fees — might lead to some firms cutting costs in different places, including payments to the sell-side. Still, longtime stockpickers appreciate time with executives, and the old guard believes there's value in it. Tiger Global's billionaire founder, Chase Coleman, sees merit in these meetings and still attends them, a person close to the firm said, and funds have brought in former CIA interrogators to help investors dissect body language and read between the lines of a prepared statement. Even beyond the informational advantages mega funds can glean from these meetings, corporate access is also a zero-sum game. The more meeting slots and conference registrations the industry's largest firms take up, the fewer everyone else can get. "It's a finite resource," said one sell-side broker. "They don't want to share." Read the original article on Business Insider Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
