A plan to disrupt on Wall Street
Our instructions were clear: disrupt Jim Cramer’s early morning Squawk Box broadcast with a loud and sustained cheer.
Let me back up. I was invited to the New York Stock Exchange in downtown Manhattan to attend the bell-ringing ceremony for QXO, a tech-oriented company that sees the potential to become a $50 billion player in the building products distribution industry. The company was moving from Nasdaq to the Big Board. At the time of the Jan. 17 ringing, QXO had just made public its efforts to acquire Beacon Roofing Supply, an effort that would continue to develop against Beacon’s resistance in the following days. (See more here.)
Note to Beacon investor relations department: Of course, I attended the event as an impartial observer, not as an active participant.)
Brad Jacobs, founder of QXO, and I engaged in a fist bump near the NYSE coat check—as if we were partners in a golf match, and I just made a putt for birdie (OK, for par.) “He must read From the Editor,’” I thought. In a few minutes, I realized that the fist-bump was merely his preferred greeting method. Everybody got a fist bump.
But no matter. I was in the mix. Ready to observe impartially.
Moments before the market opened, supporters and press gathered in a gilded room deep in the building. The president of the New York Stock Exchange described Jacobs as “one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time.” She was basing that on the number of times he had rung the bell — nine. She brought up the headlines from the previous day about QXO’s bid for Beacon Roofing Supply. “Big week for you guys.”
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Brad Jacobs, before the market opened on Jan. 17.
Jacobs took the podium and explained his mantra: “Teamwork makes the dream work.”
That’s when we received our instructions. The room practiced its cheer, “Go go, QXO. Go go, QXO.”
(Note to Beacon investor relations: Again, I was an impartial observer.)
We were ushered onto the stock exchange floor. There was Cramer in his glass studio, perched just a few feet from the iconic balcony and the famous bell.
Bell rings. Cheers erupt. Cramer interrupts his broadcast to say: “Brad Jacobs as we know is the CEO, this is his ninth ringing of the bell. He gets a real kick out of it. Obviously his people do, too.”
Then Cramer weighed in on the Beacon bid: “Beacon is a company I like, very much. Wants to stay independent. So all I can say: It’s going to be a real battle.”
The disruption battle continues.
