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I felt mostly sadness when I read the police report from John Randal Tyson’s most recent alcohol-related arrest earlier this summer on suspicion of drunk driving.
Tyson Foods’ potential leader-in-waiting and the great-grandson of its founder had been arrested in an embarrassing, alcohol-fueled incident less than two years before.
These poor decisions came even as Tyson climbed the corporate ladder at the company his family has controlled for nearly a century.
It’s only a coincidence that I wrote about mental health in the workplace a week ago, but I find it hard to view this latest arrest as anything but a cry for help.
Substance abuse is an ugly disease, one that the Tyson family has fought for generations.
I hope the young Tyson figures it out. Multiple people have told me that he is a smart, capable leader who approaches the job thoughtfully. He’s said to be far more subdued than his father and grandfather.
As the company’s CFO from 2022 until his suspension this summer, he also deserves some credit for helping turn things around at Tyson after a particularly tough stretch that culminated in 2023, with an income loss of $648 million.
The company has posted much stronger results this year, reporting last week $443 million in net income through the first three quarters of 2024.
Tyson, prior to his suspension, talked at an investors’ conference about strategic moves the company had made last year to save money on operational costs. He is the most-involved member of the Tyson family after his dad, Chairman John Tyson. John Randal Tyson’s sister, Olivia, is also involved in the business, running the Tyson Family Foundation.
But it has been John Randal who most expected to rise to CEO and eventually take over the chairmanship currently held by his father. All of that is in flux now, and the company has declined to say if John Randal Tyson will ever return to the company as CFO.
I hope he does. Tyson Foods is a quintessential Arkansas company, and I think our state — from the poultry farmer to the shareholder — is better when it’s healthy.
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I started to write this week’s column about my frustrations with how analysts and media cover the stock market’s fluctuations.
On Monday last week, the mass panic and selloff dominated the front pages of newspapers and news sites that stoked fears of a recession. Few of them noted that most market indexes remained 10% up year-to-date.
By Tuesday, much of the previous day’s losses had been erased; this was not covered nearly as breathlessly as the negative movement a day before.
Here’s my gentle reminder to avoid the tunnel vision of looking at the market at one point in time and remember there are better economic indicators than solely relying on the Dow or Nasdaq.
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