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When you’ve got supermajority shares, you can basically put a gun to your own head. Great summary of the situation from the article: “Neumann created a company
by freefal 7y ago
When you’ve got supermajority shares, you can basically put a gun to your own head.
Great summary of the situation from the article: “Neumann created a company that destroyed value at a blistering pace and nonetheless extracted a billion dollars for himself. He lit $10 billion of SoftBank’s money on fire and then went back to them and demanded a 10% commission. What an absolute legend.”
- wpietri 7y agoIt amazes me that they didn't call his bluff. They could have said, "We'll let you keep some of your shares, so if this ever works out, you'll make some good money." Because if somebody didn't put up a lot of money, Neumann would get bupkis. His negotiating position was extraordinarily weak. But clearly this is about preserving Masayoshi Son's ego. And reputation, of course. Why would he care if he burns another 5 billion if it helps him keep getting future $100bn investments from his LPs?
- g2ah5z 7y ago> It amazes me that they didn't call his bluff. They could have said, "We'll let you keep some of your shares, so if this ever works out, you'll make some good money." If they had said that, Neumann would have just continued to nuke the company until SoftBank's remaining $8 billion of equity in the company went to $0. SoftBank paid him off to prevent him from further destroying the company.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y agoDon't minority shareholders have some rights? If they could prove he was running the company into the ground, something could be done... right?
- fiter 7y agoIsn't there some legal fiduciary duty that would prevent the executives of the company from doing this explicitly? Just because 51% of the shareholders want to lose their money doesn't mean the executives can act without regard for the 49%?
- wpietri 7y agoWhy exactly would have he done that? His shares would go to zero as well, and he'd have been more clearly associated with the failure.
- thomascgalvin 7y agoI expect the folks on the WallStreetBets subreddit to canonize him.
- devmunchies 7y agoredditors talk about reddit as if its the center of the internet or something. imagine saying "I expect the folks on the /biz/ 4chan board to canonize him". its shows how much someone uses reddit.