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No points for second place
Top Gun: Maverick has taken off at theatres, raking in $156m in the US over the extended Memorial Day weekend. That haul not only breaks the previous record for the holiday from 2007, but it also marks Tom Cruise's own personal record for a box office weekend debut — which is good going for an actor that is sixth on the all-time list of highest grossing actors.
With sky-high ratings — 8.7 / 10 on IMDB and 96% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes — the coming weeks are likely to see Top Gun: Maverick go on to become one of the biggest box office hits of the year. That's important because Top Gun is pretty much the first non-superhero movie to be a really big hit since the pandemic.
As we highlighted two weeks ago, the superhero genre (in particular Marvel), has kept the box office in business over the last two years, leaving many to wonder whether non-superhero movies could thrive at the box office post-pandemic. Last weekend proves they can — even if Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which is hardly a flagship character of the MCU, brought in some 73% more than Top Gun: Maverick managed on its first day.
The nostalgia factor
What's particularly exciting is that the equally quotable sequel to Top Gun proved to be a draw for the generation who were teenagers when the first movie came out. Indeed more than half of the attendees (55%) were over 35. Back in 1986, the original movie reportedly led to a 500% increase in applications to become naval aviators — maybe the same people can apply again.
For the best part of the last two decades the "big 4" — made up of EY, Deloitte, PwC and KPMG — have dominated the world of professional services. Do business, or even just look at the accounts of, any major multinational company and you're likely to cross paths with the work of one of the audit, advisory, consulting, corporate finance, legal or tax divisions of the big 4.
Indeed, in just over a decade the collective global revenue of the big 4 has risen from $95bn to $167bn. Deloitte, which is the biggest of the four, has also been the fastest growing — topping $50bn in revenue last year for the first time (that's more than Netflix, Twitter and Airbnb combined).
Breaking up the big 4?
Regulators have worried that the big 4 have gotten too big in the last 20 years. Together they audit pretty much every single major public company in America, and much of the western world, and conflicts of interest between the different services offered have been common.
So it was big news when EY announced recently that it was looking at splitting up its advisory and audit operations, which would be the biggest shake-up since the big 5 became the big 4 back during the collapse of Enron in 2002.
The thinking is that the EY consulting, and other non-audit teams, would be free to go after more clients, without having to worry about things looking fishy if EY also happens to be auditing the books. In recent years, all the extra services (non-audit) have been the source of growth, while audit has been a relative source of pain amidst recent major accounting scandals at Wirecard and Luckin Coffee. So far, EY's rivals have suggested they won't be looking at doing the same.
Inflation is hitting almost everything (except chicken wings, interestingly), but the one item that many track most closely is gasoline.
The bad news is that average gasoline prices in the US have hit a record high in May, at $4.59 per gallon, which is up 52% on this time last year. If you live in California you're probably wishing you were paying $4.59 a gallon — average prices there are close to $6 a gallon.
When does this end?
Crude oil itself makes up around 60% of the cost of a gallon of gas, with the rest made up of refining, distribution / marketing costs and taxes according to the EIA. Unfortunately crude oil prices are still up at $115 / barrel, way up on $60-80 range they traded at for much of last year. So gas prices aren't likely to budge lower until oil does — and even if oil was suddenly $70 / barrel gas prices would likely take their time to come down thanks to a phenomenon known as "rockets and feathers".
Rockets and feathers
The "rockets and feathers" analogy refers to the phenomenon that when oil prices rise, gas prices jump like a rocket... but when oil prices subsequently fall, they fall like a feather. Some suggest the downward delay is opportunistic, others argue that gas stations are further along in the supply chain and that there's a delay... either way it could mean high gas prices stick around a little longer.
1) Age distributions in the US Congress relative to the US population.
2) Forbes has released its annual list of the The World’s Most Valuable Soccer Teams, with Real Madrid taking the top spot again, valued at $5.1bn.
3) Home prices in the US were up 20.6% in March compared to the same time last year, according to the latest data out this week.
4) The US once again has the title of world's fastest supercomputer, with the Frontier system capable of doing 1.1 quintillion operations per second.
5) Gong learned a lot after analyzing over 176,891 sales calls. Luckily they compiled what they learned into a convenient cheat sheet, so you can reference it anytime during a call or while writing an email. It’s called Words That Close — and you can get it right here.**
6) Italy's cheese consortium, responsible for delivering more than $2.6bn worth of Parmigiano Reggiano every year, are looking at inserting tiny tracking devices in 100,000 wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano in an effort to curb cheese fraud.
7) Apple's Safari Browser now reportedly has a billion users... which is good for second place in the browser market, but is still way behind the 3.4bn of Google Chrome.
**This is sponsored content.
