The views expressed on this podcast are those of the participants, not of Rogers News.

Welcome to the views room.

I'm Lauren Silva Loughlin, broadcasting from Connecticut, and I'm joined by Richard Beals in New York City.

And Rob Searon in Westchester, Thank you guys for joining me today.

Good to be here, Lauren.

What a day. One of those days where it's an exciting time to be a financial journalist, I think.

History was sort of made today when a group of very small activists upended the board of directors

at Fossil Fuel Giant ExxonMobil.

They gained at least two of their four directors that they nominated with the help of some institutional giants like Black Rock and the votes are still being counted.

Rob, we've been watching this for a long time. In fact, well over a year ago, we zeroed in on Exxon as being sort of the white

whale of activism. And it's pretty remarkable that this small group of activists ended up being

successful. What do you think was the most sort of remarkable thing about today's outcome?

It's a combination of the fact that Exxon, you know, they were the biggest company in America

for years and years and years.

And then you had this incredibly small activist well, well under 1% of the share of shares,

and they managed to get directors and nominee the board.

And the reason, you know, there are a couple of reasons.

The two big reasons are that Exxon's

returns have been miserable over the past decade. If you invested a hundred year, $100, 10 years ago,

you'd have $85 today. That's even after dividends, which is, you know, just miserable. And the other thing is

that one of the reasons why the returns have been poor is because Exxon

has continued to invest in exploring trying to find new oil, and the returns have just been

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