A long time ago I worked for Bell Northern Research (which eventually became Nortel, which eventually became insolvent). When I started there they had a retire

A long time ago I worked for Bell Northern Research (which eventually became Nortel, which eventually became insolvent). When I started there they had a retirement savings program where they would sell you BNR stock for half price (though you had to have it in your retirement savings). I said "No thank you" and a lot of people thought I was crazy. At the time the company was pulling in $18 billion a year and was making about a 5% profit (later it was found that the "5% profit" was actually accounting fraud but nobody knew that at the time). From my perspective, I looked at the business and realised that we were selling hardware at a 90% margin, but only eking out a 5% profit. Where was the rest of the money going? Well, obviously to a very inefficient rest of the company that included the software developers (me ;-) ). Later it was discovered that it was also being imbezzled, but we didn't know about it at that time... It occurred to me, though, that the only thing that was stopping a company from eating our lunch was that telecom hardware was a capital intensive industry. So you had BNR, AT&T and Seimens capturing practically the entire market, each being as incompetent as the other, but with very little distinction between them. All you needed was a few billion dollars to shake the industry to the core. And, of course, that happened. It took only a couple of years (less than 5 I think) for Nortel to go from 100K employees to zero (with the executives slurping up the retirement fund to pay for their own "retention bonuses", because what would have happened if the executives bolted as soon as bankruptcy proceedings started??? I mean apart from retirees actually getting their retirement money, obviously...) But it's a funny thing because if I were Barry, I would be selling mead. And I would open up a visitor centre in a "Ye Olde Merry England" vibe where you can sample the mead. And I would start an onsite bakery with Knights in Shining Armour theme where I would test out recipes on my customers. And I would make a joint venture with a factory producing confectionary to try to get into convenience stores. And because I would quickly run out of honey to sell, I would buy up all of Mark's honey and eventually just acquire him so that he's my employee. Then I'd fire him because he's mean to bees. But realistically, I think Barry will just be trying to figure out how to siphon a few extra dollars out of the business and into his pocket because starting up new ventures are risky and hard work.