EPITATH to a Bad Investment
You would have to have gotten in at the pre-split low to make much of a profit on this buyout. Hard to do, catching a falling knife...
I wish I had noticed that a few insiders were buying before this week though. It was on the yahoo insider info on their quotes page, but I missed it. Strangely, Loyds Bank was selling. If I had noticed that action in time, I would have been in for sure, for a few thousand shares. (BTW, is this the first time Hasbro has been interested in this company?)
Anyway, that's that for this one. My 6000 share options package, at one time worth 130,000 dollars gross, 60,000 net to me, had the company been bought in 1995-1996, would now be worth just 3600 bucks, except for the fact I didn't get them at a base price of 0 :-) What I got, of course, was zip. Unfortunately I wasn't as smart or well informed as other employees, who mostly sold their shares in hand at 18 or 20, pre-split, just before another buyout offer was turned down.
That is the real quintissential Silicon Valley startup employee experience, of course. I didn't have any special case. Most programmers or whatever out here don't ever get the brass ring. You just get lost wages in exchange for lottery dreams.
Especially in the game business, which seems to exist for the time-honored purpose of separating the suckers from their money, in the course of helping to market plastic toys, comic books, rock bands, actors and movies for the folks who actually are going to make a profit. Woe the investors who think this is a real industry, capable of running six months without fresh investor dollars.
So it goes. Oh, and one Mea Culpa. I thought the company was so bad off nobody would want the assets if they had to take the liabilities, and so there would likely be no buyout, and I said so here. Wrong. Somehow they made this deal, little as it is, 60 cents pre-split.
At least I can stop following this depressing puppy now. That's a positive. :-)
Chaz |
