> "Nobody was right. But a lot of folks were wrong, some more than others. It's a black eye for direct-democratic shareholder rights: the board made the better

> "Nobody was right. But a lot of folks were wrong, some more than others. It's a black eye for direct-democratic shareholder rights: the board made the better call." Is there actually enough information to conclude that for sure? Maybe there is, but based solely on the info you mention it could be the case that both options were equally likely to get blocked by the FTC, in which case choosing the option which offered a higher price was the better choice even though it didn't work out. Or maybe it was only 0.1% more likely to be blocked, while being significantly more than 0.1% higher price meaning a better EV even though both options had a chance of failing and a chance of succeeding. I feel like you may well be right, but equally may well be doing the equivalent of looking at someone who put a roulette bet on black and lost and concluding based on that single spin that the person who bet on red was more intelligent.