Mergers Acquisition, Distribution, Franchise Business is growing on a high-scale in India and people looking for great Business Opportunities are actually Investing their time and money in it.

Investors who are running a successful Franchise Business have experienced an upwards growth in their Business and in their overall capital.

We at Sell Mergers, are on a mission to find Great Business Buying and Selling Deals for the people who are looking for some Business Opportunities in India.

Why It’s Time to Buy This Uranium Miner’s Stock

Why It’s Time to Buy This Uranium Miner’s Stock

Heading into this past week, uranium miner Cameco was that rare stock in the market: It had posted a double-digit gain in 2022. One deal made those gains disappear—and created a buying opportunity. At first glance, there didn’t seem to be all that much that was controversial about the joint venture Cameco (ticker: CCJ) announced this past Tuesday. Along with Brookfield Renewable…

View On WordPress

Royal DSM to Combine With Firmenich in 1H 2023 -- Update

Royal DSM to Combine With Firmenich in 1H 2023 — Update

By Joe Hoppe

View On WordPress

Glencore Settles Corruption and Bribery Charges in US, UK, Brazil

Glencore Settles Corruption and Bribery Charges in US, UK, Brazil

Glencore GLNCY 2.25% PLC said Tuesday it would pay at least $1.2 billion and two business units would plead guilty to bribery in the UK and to conspiracy to violate US anticorruption laws, resolving criminal probes into its global mining and trading business that have hung over the company for years. Glencore International AG will pay about $700 million to resolve a US Justice Department…

View On WordPress

https://www.tmz.com/2023/02/13/garth-brooks-irving-azoff-james-dolan-ticketing-prices-conference/

Azoff moderating a discussion on high ticket prices?!?🙄🙄

The country music legend is scheduled to speak on a panel in Los Angeles next week joined by Madison Square Garden Entertainment's James Dolan, former Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ, Makan Delrahim and moderated by music biz mogul, Irving Azoff.

The event will be the 34th annual Pollstar Live! conference discussion panel, which will go down February 22 at 9:45 AM PT at the Beverly Hilton in L.A.

As for what will be discussed, we're told Azoff, Brooks and team will talk ticket scalpers, how to score tickets to events without getting ripped off, the resale market and how outside hands have really soured the market for fans.

This is a conference held by Pollstar, which is owned by Oak View Group (Irving Azoff’s company). Their focus will be propaganda on how dynamic pricing keeps money for artists (and Ticketmaster) rather than scalpers, which has always been Azoff’s point of view— that dynamic pricing is protection for artists AND consumers, because it sets the correct “market price” for tickets.

This is what Azoff said in 2009:

At a recent D: All Things Digital Conference, Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff proclaimed, “We haven’t done enough dynamic pricing for tickets, and we should, and that will help make people happy.” Mr. Azoff is right, dynamic pricing is the key to pricing for profits and growth in the rock concert industry.

As for “former Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ, Makan Delrahim,” who is arguing “on the regulatory side” on this panel, due to his time serving in the DOJ (for Donald Trump)— a little Google search shows that he is now a private lobbyist helping mega corporate mergers.

In October 2016, Delrahim commented on AT&T's proposed $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner while appearing on Canada's Business News Network, saying "I don't see this as a major antitrust problem."[9][10]

This screenshot from a 2009 article is incredibly revealing of how money can change someone… even Bruce Springsteen.

You can do a Google search of Azoff’s congressional testimony in favor of the Live Nation- Ticketmaster merger in 2009:

A Senate investigation in 2019 showed this:

The Justice Department, in what it described as its strongest enforcement of an antitrust agreement in 20 years, said Thursday that it and Live Nation Entertainment have agreed to amend and extend the regulatory decree that allowed the giant concert company to merge with Ticketmaster nearly a decade ago.

Justice officials said the settlement came after the department found that Live Nation had repeatedly violated the existing agreement. Its investigation focused on complaints from competitors that Live Nation had used its control over the concert touring business to pressure music venues into signing contracts with its Ticketmaster subsidiary.

The government did nothing but slap Live Nation on the wrist. They basically said, “We know you behaved in a monopolistic manner, and we’re gonna keep watching! No fines!”

Azoff then responded to the extension of the consent decree by 1. owning the biggest venues in the biggest cities, and 2. monopolizing existing venues.

Can you talk a little about Roman and Matsson scene in 3.08?

Matsson says a lot of weird things there and I'm not sure what his goal was.

He is playing Roman for sure but how? he talks about failure, about getting way too into people, being dissapointed. and then he seems sort of emberrased that he shared all that?

so, first roman is there to find out why matsson seems to have doubts about the gojo acquisition and over the course of the scene matsson basically tells roman he wants a merger of equals.

the whole weakness/failure thing is a test. he wants to test that roman/logan are all in as equals with him, not as people who will pander to him. if roman had tried to comfort him when matsson said he was feeling weird, or roman admitted any failures to matsson, it probably would have signalled desperation/weakness. who wants to make a deal with a weak partner?

"i get way too into people and they disappoint me" <- that's a warning not to disappoint him but it's also a compliment that roman hasn't so far. matsson is not embarrassed. at most, he's feigning bashfulness to cover how smug he feels that roman passed the little test.

that then gives roman the leeway to interrogate him directly about the tweet and call matsson's bluff on these supposed doubts. then, like the majority of business deals in succession, matsson explains what he wants using innuendo "i like getting into bed with people, but sharing it equally" by way of explaining he wants a merger of equals.

so, yes, he is playing roman here, but roman to his credit meets every play with his own and i don't think matsson was expecting him to (hence the tests). but roman passes matsson's tests and matsson passes the vibe check for roman too i.e he wasn't really having doubts.

and all of this has a huge homoerotic subtext because of the location, the innuendo and coded language. this is all also happening on the eve of a wedding. there's that ICONIC shot where they linger on roman watching matsson pump his fists. ........

but of course, those are really just 2 dudes chatting by a pool in a romantic location about, you know, business!! they're definitely *not* in every way but physically measuring each other up to see how into each other- i mean, into the deal, they are. naur. they're just discussing FINANCE! that's why the conversation ends with matsson looking suggestively into roman's eyes saying. "i want the best of everything" because that's just how dudes talk about stonks.

i'm a US law student, and just wanted to add for anon that basically any major can get you into law school, especially if it's somehow related to the area you want to practice! i was a neuroscience major, and STEM majors are usually required to practice intellectual property law, but my internship is in antitrust work at a plaintiff's firm. many people are definitely english/poli sci/history majors. my friend was a sociology major and wants to focus on housing rights, another was an environmental studies major and wants to be a federal litigator, another was an art major and is aiming for mergers & acquisitions...it can be anything! they just want you to have a thoughtful reason for attending law school

!!!! anon from before look at this!!^^^

thank you for this anon!! the difference between getting into law in the uk and us is very interesting. is it not possible to get into law as an undergraduate degree in the us? how come you have to go into it postgraduate? maybe im too used to the uk system but it's always made more sense to me to get into law early on so you can branch out later in your education!

I love being banned by randos, (which, I checked, and it’s not this guy).

It’s not just porn.  Sony’s acquisition / merger of Funimation / CrunchyRoll / RightStuf has caused them to censor the word “harem” in the subtitles for an anime that literally has harem in it’s name.  Mushoku Tensei is not being released, but Funimation owns the rights, and refuses to do the disk, because the disk-release includes naughty material.  Funimation started buying the distribution rights to everywhere outside of Japan.

They also bought the rights to Interspecies Reviewers, only to pull the series after the first episode, thereby preventing anyone from distributing it.  Interspecies Reviewers is a horrifying series, but if you ae shy about defending it, you allow the precedence to stand.  These companies can buy the rights to something and never release it.

Hell, one of the biggest problems with porn is that when porn starts try to go straight, they get fired and/or unpersonned because they used to be in porn.  this then means that the only way they can make money is through porn, effectively bringing back the Roman caste system, where sex workers were basically considered sub human.

Weekend Top Ten #601

Top Ten CITV Shows

This is a list I’ve deliberately held off doing for years. Why? Because I worked for CITV, for, like, a decade; that can give you a slightly skewed relationship with its output. There are some really weird, obscure shows that I really enjoyed, because they kind of became part of the office discourse or we built jokes around them (for instance, the Parping Ponies from Planet Sketch). Then there’s the fact that I know some of the people who made some of these shows; maybe I’m friends with them! Maybe that makes me want to rank the show too high! Or maybe I’m trying to counter a perceived bias, and I end up ranking it too low! I don’t wanna offend anyone! Especially, ahem, people who I might want to work with.

But finally, to mark the sad, sorry, and somewhat inevitable death of CITV as a channel and a going concern – long after it ceased to be a major player in the world of kids’ TV – and partly inspired by this article (well, entirely prompted by it to tell the truth), I have finally decided to take the plunge. I don’t think the notion of a house being a “CBBC” or “CITV” encampment really held true for me and my friends; it is true that I know people whose parents didn’t like them watching CITV for fear that its shows (or maybe just its adverts) would addle and corrupt their fragile young minds, but now we have TikTok so such fears seem naïve and ridiculous. No; I was a nerd who looked up show listings in advance and knew when to switch from one channel to another in order to watch, I dunno, The Real Ghostbusters on one side and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles on the other (or Garfield and Friends versus Around the World in Eighty Days, or Mike and Angelo against The Really Wild Show). The point is, I was a flipper, and I don’t think I considered myself really in either camp. I was Channel Agnostic but a devout consumer of Stuff.

And I think, inevitably, this list is skewed heavily in favour of nostalgia. As much as I loved a good deal of what the CITV channel was putting out in my time there, when I think of genuine classics the bulk of them are from my own childhood. This is definitely perception talking, at least to some degree; there are shows that I think fell slightly between the cracks of my time watching and my time working. MPAA is almost that, only just skirting the first years of my employ (tragically cancelled after the Carlton-Granada merger and a dodgy football deal left ITV deeply, cripplingly in the red, and they ended up shutting Granada Kids, their dedicated kids’ TV production arm; this was basically within a year of me starting work there so maybe I’m a bad luck charm). Jungle Run is probably an all-timer that, because it didn’t hit me as a child (note: don’t actually hit children) my appreciation for it is perhaps a touch more academic than emotional. But to be honest, the really great shows – excepting one or two – that were on CITV when I worked there were, I’m sorry to say, imports and acquisitions; and as per the rules of The Article What I Linked To, these are all going to be home-grown productions. Original British CITV content, so not the likes of (the excellent) Almost Naked Animals or the seminal Pokémon, once so resolutely CITV-ish that it’s deeply weird to see it on CBBC nowadays (don’t they know it’s based on a game?!).

Also, because this list is specifically celebrating CITV, it does mean I can’t include some programmes that were made and broadcast on ITV but – for whatever reason – weren’t really CITV shows. Usually this is because they pre-date the birth of the formal Children’s ITV strand in January 1983, but sometimes because of some quirk or the other they were a “regular” ITV show rather than a CITV one. So if there’s a big, old, classic show (eg Rainbow or maybe The Wind in the Willows), that’s why it’s not on here.

Or I just forgot.

So anyway, let’s load up the digibeta one last time and spool through a bunch of terrific shows one last time, before downloading the ITVx app. And remember: if you want me to do some work for you but then you notice I’ve put your show disarmingly low on this list, it’s only because I love you and I don’t want people to think I’m giving you an unfair advantage. Plus I couldn’t even find room for Fun House, so if you’re here then you’ve definitely done alright.

Count Duckula (1988-1993): so I can’t include Danger Mouse here because it pre-dates CITV, but if I’m honest then as a kid I preferred Duckula anyway. This is one of those seminal, era-defining shows that is hilarious for kids and adults alike; a version of the traditional British type of humour that Cosgrove Hall used to infuse all their shows with, and which is – I guess – being carried aloft nowadays by the likes of Aardman. But the central conceit of a vegetarian vampire, the trad Britcom trope of a vainglorious buffoon thwarted by his own behaviour, plus a tremendous supporting cast, and – it cannot be understated – David Actual Jason doing giving a fantastic central performance. Everything about it rocked. I used to collect the comic.

My Parents are Aliens (1999-2006): part of a long tradition of weird sitcoms for kids, this seems both like the end of an era and also the beginning of something new (its DNA found in everything from My Spy Family to So Awkward). Treating its audience with respect and assuming they were both intelligent and funny, we’ve got some really great child performances surrounding two barnstorming central characters: Tony Gardner’s Brian and Carla Mendonça’s Sophie (no offence to OG Sophie Barbara Durkin). Stupid, vain, arrogant, childlike, and really weird, their various paranormal travails were the backbone of the series, leading to tremendously off-beat stuff like them getting crucified, kidnapping people, or, er, taking naked pictures (don’t ask). Its sad cancellation when it still had gas in its tank was a tragic end to the glory days of Old CITV.

Knightmare (1987-1994): fun fact: all the time I worked there, there was a Knightmare winners’ trophy in the CITV office, and I didn’t know what it was until we moved offices after about eight years. Anyway, this revolutionary gameshow was both fantasy throwback – doing its own spin on D&D before D&D was cool – and also high-tech futuristic proof-of-concept, its computer-generated backgrounds leaning in to both nascent videogaming and the promise of virtual reality. Both a terrific gameshow (everyone wanted to be on it) and a thrilling narrative due to the presence of characters such as host Treguard (Hugo Myatt).

Pocoyo (2005-2007): I’m pretty sure this counts as home-grown because Granada had a stake in it; indeed, early in my CITV tenure we were all asked to brainstorm ideas for ways they could exploit the IP. But that’s by the by; this is a beautiful, adorable show, the kind of thing that everyone would bang on about if it had appeared on CBeebies. Gorgeously simplistic characters adorn a stark minimalist background, telling sweet stories about learning and growing, all watched over by gentle and funny narrator Stephen Fry. It can still be found on Disney+. Go check out the episode where Pocoyo and Pato play at being kaiju.

Round the Bend! (1989-1991): not sure if this is as widely remembered as some of the other entries, but it was one of my favourite shows when I was in single digits. Basically some kind of magazine show set in a sewer and hosted by a furious crocodile, it’s very hard to describe; but it had quite hard-edged, satirical, scabrous humour, poking fun not just at child-focused things (I remember they did a Transformers parody), but also at politics and TV and more “adult” fare. It was really odd, kinda dirty, and definitely felt like the sort of thing the BBC would never broadcast. See also: sketch show Your Mother Wouldn’t Like It which spawned the incredibly strange politicians-at-school series Palace Hill.

Bad Influence! (1992-1996): back in the very early days of games-on-TV, there was either GamesMaster – a kinda-risque gameshow that went out at 6pm on Channel 4 – or this, a fact-focused Tomorrow’s World of gaming directed at kids. Presented by Andy Crane and gaming legend Violet Berlin (who knows who I am), it succeeded in never, ever talking down to its target audience, or pretending like its subject matter was anything less than interesting and relevant. Its tone was really similar to the Amiga magazines I was reading at the time, and I still honestly think it’s probably the best all-round gaming show ever on TV. Bonus points for this fantastic “Twelve Days of Christmas” song.

The Trap Door (1986-1990): absolutely one of my favourite shows as a child, I adored this. It was grimly macabre and deliciously funny, with a really strong style, all primary-coloured characters and dark backgrounds. The main character was called Berk (!) and every episode he’d end up releasing something hilariously awful from a trapdoor in the floor of the castle where he worked; comedy hijinks would inevitably ensue. Also had one of the greatest theme tunes of all time, even if it is basically two lines long.

Horrid Henry (2006-2015): it can't be overstated the impact Henry had on CITV. He became the channel’s icon and mascot; well deserved, considering his brand of ultimately sweet but also intensely cheeky and funny behaviour fit the brand to a T. From its rocking theme music to its vast collection of characters, Henry was something different; a knockabout comedy cartoon for kids of about eight-to-ten, yes, but also a really well-nurtured and cultivated world that kids could relate to. Almost Simpsons-like in the depth of its bench, later series were able to tell episodes almost entirely away from Henry himself, so recognisable and beloved had the supporting cast become. The only CITV show from my era at the channel that spawned a movie starring actual Hollywood talent; definitely the best original production to debut whilst I worked there; and probably the last truly great show the brand ever put out. Quite how they let Horrid Henry slip through their fingers I’ll never know.

How 2 (1990-2006): there were a number of very good factual shows on CITV; The Big Bang, for instance, was much better than the similarly-named sitcom. How 2 (sequel series to an older pre-CITV show that I’ve never seen) was great both due to its presenters – mostly, in my experience, the classic trio of Carol Vorderman, Gareth Jones (who I’ve met!) and the great Fred Dinenage – and its overall cheery tone (and minimalist set). They’d ask “How” you could do something, and then proceed to show you the answer; it was a tremendously fun and accessible way not just into science, nature, and all sorts of clever school-y stuff, but also more random bits of trivia. For instance: how do you eat a mango? In retrospect, I’m not sure if the whole “How!” thing has aged terribly well, but the rest of the show is great.

Fraggle Rock (1983-1987): this is only at the bottom for two reasons: one, I’m still not a hundred percent sure it counts as a proper, original CITV show rather than an acquisition (I think it debuted on the then-brand-new CITV strand, and every episode was specifically tailored for the UK market with original wraparound material and stories featuring UK actors and brand-new sets, etc); and two, I really haven’t seen it at all for decades, so maybe it doesn’t hold up as well as I think. But look, it’s got Muppets. The strange story of a variety of different co-existing races underground (and, er, overground I guess), my memory is it was a varied, intelligent, and incredibly fun piece of puppetry and animation, as good as the best Jim Henson stuff ever was. And, again, it had a banging theme tune.

Thinking about it, the fact that I’ve finally done a CITV Top Ten – and given the importance of CITV to my life and career – as a 601st list, so near the landmark 600, also feels like a major milestone. Celebrations all round!

Silly Headcanons: The NWR Numbering System

If the NWR supposedly has like 80 engines why does its numbering system only go up to 11 steam engines, and like 3 diesels, by the late sixties? They've had enough traffic that the engines we see can't have been enough, and surely it wasn't all loaners / on trial engines / LMS visitors, right?

So, silly idea: the reason for this is that the NWR's numbering system, for steam engines at least, is a clusterfuck. It was developed as it formed from the merger of three precursor railways: the Sodor and Mainland Railway, the Wellsworth and Suddery Railway, and the Tidmouth, Knapford, and Elsbridge Light Railway. These railways all had their own motive power depots (well, the W&S and the TK&E did anyway, since the S&M was dead by then), and to keep the renumbering of engines being too confusing, the newborn NWR decided to allocate numbers to its engines with the first digit depending on the region, or subdivision, or whatever, that each engine was assigned to at the time of acquisition.

Numbers 1-99: Originally to be used for the NWR's own acquisitions, based at the new Vicarstown Motive Power Depot. After the primary depot was moved to Tidmouth in 1925 this series was subsequently used for the Tidmouth Motive Power Depot. The Knapford, Ffarquhar, and Arlesburgh sheds also use these numbers, because they're considered subsidiary to the Tidmouth depot (and by the time engines other than the Coffeepots were based there it was clear that there was no danger of running out of 1-99 numbers).

Numbers 101-199: Tidmouth Sheds pre-1925, i.e. Former TK&E engines. Not used post-1925... so basically just the coffeepots, since the only other engines based in and around Tidmouth prior to this were privately owned dockside shunters. The only surviving engines with these numbers are Coffeepots 2 and 3 (NWR 102 and 103). However, the surviving coffeepots were retired from NWR service in the 1950s and are preserved by the Wellsworth Railway Museum.

Numbers 201-299: Wellsworth Sheds. Any surviving ex-Wellsworth And Suddery engines would use these numbers, as would any engines who were purchased by the NWR and immediately assigned to the Brendam Branch. Following the tradition set by electric engines on the Peel Godred Branch, diesels on the NWR do not use the clusterfuck legacy numbering system, so Boco joined as D2 instead of D201.

Numbers 301-399: Killdane Motive Power Depot. I.e. the Peel Godred Branch, in theory. In reality this branch is run primarily by electric engines (which were numbered E1, E2, and so forth as they only have one branch they run of), but during its construction and first few years of operation there were steam engines on the line. Most were leased or sold to private owners, so there's maybe 1 or 2 surviving Killdane engines that were actually purchased and moved somewhere else.

Numbers 401-499: Crovan's Gate Motive Power Depot (1927-1937, Vicarstown Motive Power Depot (1937-Present). After the original 1925 agreement with the LMS the Vicarstown sheds were closed in 1927. Services from eastern Sodor included a mixture of trains coming from Barrow (either LMS trains under running rights, or NWR mainline trains returning from Barrow), and from Crovan's Gate, with Crovan's Gate Sheds serving as the NWR's base for its services on the Kirk Ronan and Norramby Branches. As the railway grew, Crovan's Gate's role as the NWR's primary repair shops grew and subsumed its role as a depot.

Meanwhile in the 1930s, with the growing size of the NWR, and the LMS becoming disgruntled that the NWR had pushed for independence but never seemed to have its own engines to run necessary trains, new sheds were constructed in Vicarstown. At first this was only home to loaner engines and ones moved from Crovan's Gate after its engine sheds were closed and incorporated into an expansion of the Works there, but with even heavier demands being placed on the railway during WWII, the NWR began to purchase engines of its own. Because in the late 30s onward the railway started to actually have money to purchase engines. In the like 35 years between Percy and Oliver, the NWR didn't only manage to buy five steam engines. It's just that the five we read about are the ones that were sent directly to Tidmouth. There were other acquisitions in those years - mainly between 1940-1960, because 1940's around when the NWR started actually having money to buy engines, and 1960's around when, uhh... things got tense between TFC2 and BR upper management, brought to a head with the "complicated transaction" of Douglas's acquisition. tl;dr management were not happy that they could not legally force Sir Charles to stop ignoring the Modernization Plan, nor could they actually ban him from buying more steam engines, but they could refuse to transfer any of theirs, and they at least tried to bully scrapyards into not selling him any. This policy lasted until around when the Mainline Steam Ban was lifted.

In total, out of the 80-ish engines the NWR had in the early 1990s (per Island of Sodor), I'd estimate maybe fifteen are electric locomotives and railcars on the Peel Godred branch, another dozen are diesels (more diesels acquired shortly after the publication of IOS as Privatization happened), maybe six or seven have either 2XX (probably not originally W&S engines) or 3XX numbers, around fifteen are Tidmouth Depot steam engines, and the remaining thirty have 4XX or 5XX numbers.

GALAXY MERGER - PART 1

In my imagination, galaxy mergers are basically star wars. Not Star Wars, but literal wars between stars. Galaxies are like star nations, and sometimes a bigger galaxy tries to forcibly assimilate a smaller galaxy. They insist on calling it "annexation" though, not galactic cannibalism like astronomers do...cannibalism is such a dirty word.

This particular comic is about a galaxy merger between Stella's home galaxy Antiocheka and a neighboring galaxy in the galaxy cluster, Oglinant. Antiocheka is basically a galaxy that will eventually become the giant elliptical galaxy at the center of its galaxy cluster. This comic is set roughly 10 billion years ago, and even back then, it had already lost a lot of the cold gas necessary to form stars (it is the yellower galaxy in the first panel). This is why the Antiochekan government launches wars of acquisition against bluer galaxies that still have this cold gas. Though of course it's never called that. Like our own civilization, the galaxy always tries to cloak its self-interested behavior in benevolent terms.

I was trying to combine two hypotheses for elliptical galaxies' formation here. Some papers say that the precursors to ellipticals are similar to these galaxies called "red nuggets" which are bulge-dominated. However, other research indicates the ellipticals quenched (i.e. stopped forming new stars) while they were still disks. So Antiocheka has both prominent disk and bulge components. It sort of resembles Centaurus A. And like Centaurus A, Antiocheka is known for a powerful radio-loud AGN...but that comes in the next parts of this comic!

In other news, I recently became a postdoctoral student. I've branched out a bit and started studying neutron stars too, so there might be more comics about them in the future.

Opinion: Broadcom will let VMware shop for another buyer, but is any other software company interested?

Opinion: Broadcom will let VMware shop for another buyer, but is any other software company interested?

Virtualization-software maker VMware Inc. agreed to be acquired by Broadcom Inc. on Thursday in an roughly $61 billion deal that will triple the chip maker’s software business, and has an usual provision that lets VMware look for another buyer. The unusual go-shop provision of the deal raises the question of whether any software makers that might be a better fit with VMware would want to top…

View On WordPress

Royal DSM to Merge With Firmenich

Royal DSM to Merge With Firmenich

By Joe Hoppe

View On WordPress

Aren't hostile takeovers illegal?

A hostile takeover in of itself is perfectly legal. The tactics employed to make it succeed on the other hand...

The basic definition of a hostile takeover is that an outside party has taken over a target company without the consent or approval of the target company's board of directors. The natural opposite of a hostile takeover is a friendly takeover where the board of directors approves the acquisition.

There's three main ways to perform a hostile takeover - with some variances depending on a company's by-laws and provisions.

The first is a tender offer where you offer to buy shareholder stock at a premium (more than it's worth) until you become the majority shareholder (>51% of the shares) and can approve of the takeover directly or just oust the board of directors yourself and install your own ( the second option, while cleaner, is more difficult than you'd think for reasons I'll explain later).

The second is a proxy vote where you collude with other shareholders that have voting rights to gain a sorta pseudo-majority stakeholder status to directly approve of a merger or vote to oust members of the board of directors that oppose a merger and install members that will approve it.

The third is to just buy shares of the publicly-traded company in the open market. This is often cheaper than a tender offer since you won't be buying at premium. But at the same time, the SEC requires an acquiring company to report if they own 10% of a target company's shares, so you usually lose the element of surprise if you did things normally.

I more or less made my move during a time where the Jerome Management Company was in that awkward period between becoming a small-scale company and a large-scale company. Essentially, the board of directors opened up their company to public trade which diluted out their personal voting power (as a significant number of shares are added to the share pool) at the benefit of getting an enormous amount of public investment from the public buying those shares.

I employed the third option for hostile takeover through the usage of companies not quite affiliated with the Nameless company. Frank's Sec-Corp which provides security to my places is one example. I also indirectly invested in a hotel chain through preferential transport and supplying of goods in another. These companies were willing to help me so long as I repaid them back naturally. Others were just shell companies, which I ended up not really needing in the first place. Always kept to buying shares within the 9% with all these shell companies. I had around 42% when I made my tender offer, the first option - and offered to buy shares at 25% more.

Naturally, the shell company and allied companies' shares were "bought" by me. And many other shareholders took my offer, mostly because they didn't trust the board of directors and management overall. I mean, who demolishes an orphanage and tries to build in a mall in the proverbial Crime Alley out of all places? My charge could probably tell that would fail badly.

And there were other questionable management decisions including raising rents so high in the apartments they did own that no one wants to stay in them - Jerome Apartments have an exceptionally poor retention rate for poor management, over pricing, and a whole slew of maintenance issues.

Anyway when I struck with the tender offer, I managed to get over 65% of the shares, which is good. And with help from my legal and accounting teams, we started making sure the company by-laws couldn't be modified during my takeover.

---

There are certain ways to make a hostile takeover much harder to do. They either involve decreasing the value of the company itself or increasing the cost to acquire the company.

Crown jewel defense, where a company sells its most prized asset to a friendly company only to rebuy it when the threat of a hostile takeover ends, is one way to dissuade a hostile takeover. According to my research, during the hostile takeover of the back-then Wayne Industries over a decade ago, the company threatened to sell WayneTech to stall out a hostile takeover.

Poison-pill strategy is a defense where through a provision if a shareholder gains a certain percentage of stock, the company will issue shares at a discounted price or even for free to any shareholder except the one who triggered the provision. This was actually the threat Twitter made when Elon Musk announced he had 9% of Twitter's stock.

The advantage of a poison-pill strategy is as follows: if I own 51 shares and the total shares in the company are 100, I am majority shareholder. However, if you poison-pilled out 100 more shares to other shareholders, I no longer have majority shareholder status because it's now 51/200. But the poison part comes in because by increasing the number of shares, you've effectively reduced your stock's worth - and in my example, that would be by half - which also counts as decreasing the company's market value in the short term. That would've been Twitter's strategy had Musk hit 15% of shares owned, had they not agreed in the end to a buyout. In this case, the Jerome Management Company did not have such a provision in place though, probably because they didn't expect to be targeted like this - but no mistake, had I given them time to realize what I'm doing, this definitely would've been employed.

Currently, I'm dealing with their golden parachute defense, where if key management is dismissed after a merger, they are entitled to a very large benefits package into order of tens of millions dollars (increasing the cost of the unwanted merger). I'm dealing with this by borrowing the heavy stick of the law; none of these people are clean as you'd expect from people willing to overprice rent or demolish orphanages for the sake of profits. Many of these people are utilizing the property management company as a means to write off personal/home expenses as business tax deductions - ones that aren't legal to do such as a personal chef, flights to their vacation home, etc. So I intend to get them to resign on their own, because the alternative is that I get the IRS after them with hard evidence in my possession - since no one in their thick as thieves group expected my hostile takeover. Ha.

I probably should watch my back for the next couple of weeks - like I said, they aren't clean. Luckily for me, everyone still thinks I'm somewhere in NJ at the Retirement Mansion instead of the Inn.

So why, then, did The CW clean house this season? The blame isn’t squarely on network CEO Mark Pedowitz. Broadcast’s longest-tenured network topper reports to a board comprised of execs from Warners and CBS Studios, who for years have played a vital role in programming decisions. For example: While Dynasty has had the distinction of being broadcast’s lowest-rated scripted series for years, revenue from the reboot’s international sales and the Netflix deal kept it on the air for far longer than its linear numbers deserved. So after five seasons of living life on the bubble that included a wild history of casting changes, why did time run out on Dynasty and so many other CW favorites?

Blame streaming. And mergers. And The CW’s impending sale.

Warners and CBS Studios — now overseen by newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global — ended the Netflix output deal in 2019 to help boost their respective streaming platforms, HBO Max and Paramount+. Foreign sales, too, have dried up as those rights need to stay in-house as both platforms continue their global expansion in a bid to compete with Netflix and company in the streaming wars. That’s a loss of billions of dollars in revenue, making shows like Dynasty, for example, no longer profitable.

Without those two revenue streams, and amid new corporate ownership, the free lunches are officially over as both of The CW’s corporate parents are in active sale talks with station group Nexstar and other potential buyers.

(snip)

While The CW is expected to look considerably different next season — expect more low-cost foreign acquisitions and unscripted programming — the network’s most-watched originals are all returning. The CW gave early renewals to seven of its eight returning shows, all of them among its highest rated. Sources say Pedowitz wanted to bring back the Greg Berlanti-produced DC Comics dramas Batwoman and Legends of Tomorrow but Warners no longer wanted to pay the leases on the studio space, which expired May 1, and prompted April 29 cancellations. Plec’s Legacies was also said to be a financial decision made by the studio.

Legends and Legacies, along with Charmed, In the Dark and Roswell, New Mexico all were part of the Netflix output deal.

(snip)

And before anyone can start a petition for the unfortunate shows that met their early demise this week, keep in mind that HBO Max and Paramount+ can’t save those lucky shows that were able to stay on the air as long as they did because they were part of the Netflix deal. Sorry, Legacies, Legends, Dynasty, Charmed, In the Dark and Roswell, as Plec said, “Today we mourn.”

Corporate greed destroyed CW. Paramount Global and Warner Bros wanted to compete with Netflix so badly that they made CW (a network they owned) unwind their Netflix deal.

I had wondered for the longest time why Batwoman was on HBO Max instead of Netflix and found out it was because CW ended their output deal with Netflix. I knew then CW was in trouble -- true enough a year after I learned about it, CW announced it's being put on sale.

Another thing I learned about HBO Max's/Warner Bros Day and Date release in 2020 and the outrage it caused among filmmakers is that Warner Bros putting their 2020-2021 movies on HBO Max meant the filmmakers/studios couldn't shop around their movies to other streaming platforms and would actually make less money. Because going straight to HBO Max meant WB would just be paying itself and at a lower cost too.

This is basically what happened with CW, CW used to have a sweet output deal where they just churn out shows regardless of ratings because Netflix and foreign markets would pay handsomely for the shows. The moment Paramount Global and Warner Bros decided to compete with Netflix and turned their eye on CW, was the moment CW was toast.

Because Paramount Global and Warner Bros were never going to pay CW the kind of numbers Netflix was willing to pay.

(Mind you, this was before the market corrected itself and Netflix's stocks fell to more reasonable figures-- which unfortunately triggered Netflix going around like a headless chicken because they've just been focusing on acquiring customers and not retaining them. Again, corporate greed).

This also means, unfortunately, as much as my heart wants it, there are no saving Legacies because Paramount Plus and HBO Max are the reason why Legacies was canceled in the first place. Netflix is also having its own problems, so there's a very slim chance for a save from there.

It's also a bitter pill to swallow knowing the reason why Legends of Tomorrow and Batwoman were canceled was that Warners couldn't be bothered paying the lease on studio space. That's it. The whole reason.

Warners. Didn't. Want. To. Pay. Studio. Space.

Just a counterpoint to the "WWE is making more money than ever" point in that one ask, but WCW was at its height of both popularity and marketability between the NWO and Goldberg, and then two and a half years later they were dead and bought out. Bad choices can tank a company, and fast, no matter what shape it's in beforehand.

Sure, they did make a lot of bad choices, but the bigger piece of that puzzle is probably the AOL/TimeWarner acquisition/merger/whatever. When you end up going along for the ride in an acquisition where the new controlling company has little interest in your little corner of the corporation and basically makes it extremely difficult if not impossible for you to get what you need to keep doing your job at a high level... you're pretty much finished. Sure, they can drag you along and you can keep on eating shit for awhile, but, like, at some point that's going to just break.