Can't say I'm shocked. Everything I've been interested in buying from Gilt I could find cheaper elsewhere just by googling.
Gilt’s Unicorn Tale Comes to an End After Being Acquired for $250M
31–40 of 41 posts
Re: Gilt’s Unicorn Tale Comes to an End After Being Acquired for $250M
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am in a similar situation in another acquisition and would love to receive your feedback, mainly if we (the common stockholders) should make a "sanity check" with a lawyer or completely forget about the issue. The company was acquired recently and has some debt, so they returned money to the preferred stockholders, our common stock "was cancelled and extinguished" and one of the directors received 1 million.
You're always welcome to consult a lawyer, but odds are there won't be much you can do. It's not uncommon to wipe out common shareholders where the preferred stock and other debtholders take all the money out of the acquisition. It's also difficult to weigh in without knowing the specifics, and even then the specifics from your perspective might be very different from the perspective or facts the board is running wit…
Talk to a lawyer. If a director, not an investor, got money out and the shareholders didn't, that may be a breach of fiduciary duty. Directors have a responsibility to the shareholders.
Re: Gilt’s Unicorn Tale Comes to an End After Being Acquired for $250M
#33They were purchased by Hudson's Bay Company, which was founded in 1670. It almost seems anachronistic to see a historical institution from the 17th century buy up a hyped tech company. TechCrunch's front page headline for this is "Gilt Gets Acquired For $250M by Saks Fifth," which wouldn't be as interesting and isn't even accurate since Saks is just another HBC subsidiary. This is like if the East India Company bough…
Well, what really happened is that NRDC Equity Partners, formerly National Realty & Development Corp, a mall developer, did a sequence of deals. These resulted in them owning Saks, Macys, Lord and Taylor, and Hudsons Bay. After a few reverse mergers, Hudsons Bay became the parent company. NRDC's business is buying troubled retailers and turning them around. They're surprisingly good at it.[1]
[1] http://business.financialpost.com/executive/management-hr/ho...
Re: Gilt’s Unicorn Tale Comes to an End After Being Acquired for $250M
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
hence my point. this is only to lure people into stock-betting, a zero sum game where the earlier people to join have a great advantage.
There is value in a non-dividend paying stock beyond the stock market itself: ideally, the market cap estimates the value of the company if it were to be acquired, and someone buys your shares from you. So it's not simply stock market participants guessing about other stock market participants. There is an actual, valuable, buyable product being traded, namely the company itself; it just happens to be traded in the f…
Keyword here is "ideally". Stocks are just a very elaborate pyramid scheme in which you rely on a greater fool to buy your stock at a higher price. It has nothing to do with owning a share of a company unless you get paid dividends.
Plus what are the chances Google or Apple getting acquired? Once you go public that rarely happens.
Re: Gilt’s Unicorn Tale Comes to an End After Being Acquired for $250M
#35They were purchased by Hudson's Bay Company, which was founded in 1670. It almost seems anachronistic to see a historical institution from the 17th century buy up a hyped tech company. TechCrunch's front page headline for this is "Gilt Gets Acquired For $250M by Saks Fifth," which wouldn't be as interesting and isn't even accurate since Saks is just another HBC subsidiary. This is like if the East India Company bough…
Well, what really happened is that NRDC Equity Partners, formerly National Realty & Development Corp, a mall developer, did a sequence of deals. These resulted in them owning Saks, Macys, Lord and Taylor, and Hudsons Bay. After a few reverse mergers, Hudsons Bay became the parent company. NRDC's business is buying troubled retailers and turning them around. They're surprisingly good at it.[1] [1] http://business.fina…
[deleted]
Re: Gilt’s Unicorn Tale Comes to an End After Being Acquired for $250M
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does it stay on the front page with so few votes? This sounds trivially gameable by voting rings.
No, it'll melt and quickly fall off the front page if it doesn't get more votes in an appropriate amount of time. It's not trivial to game over time. HN has been very successfully handling attempts at gaming for years. If it didn't, the site wouldn't function at all given its traffic, it would be overwhelmed with crap 24/7.
Though being on front page dramatically heightens the possibility of getting further clicks (without any gaming).
Re: Gilt’s Unicorn Tale Comes to an End After Being Acquired for $250M
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is value in a non-dividend paying stock beyond the stock market itself: ideally, the market cap estimates the value of the company if it were to be acquired, and someone buys your shares from you. So it's not simply stock market participants guessing about other stock market participants. There is an actual, valuable, buyable product being traded, namely the company itself; it just happens to be traded in the f…
Keyword here is "ideally". Stocks are just a very elaborate pyramid scheme in which you rely on a greater fool to buy your stock at a higher price. It has nothing to do with owning a share of a company unless you get paid dividends. Plus what are the chances Google or Apple getting acquired? Once you go public that rarely happens.
Google and Apple are exceptional though - there are a lot of public companies and acquisitions of them happen all the time.
Re: Gilt’s Unicorn Tale Comes to an End After Being Acquired for $250M
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is value in a non-dividend paying stock beyond the stock market itself: ideally, the market cap estimates the value of the company if it were to be acquired, and someone buys your shares from you. So it's not simply stock market participants guessing about other stock market participants. There is an actual, valuable, buyable product being traded, namely the company itself; it just happens to be traded in the f…
Keyword here is "ideally". Stocks are just a very elaborate pyramid scheme in which you rely on a greater fool to buy your stock at a higher price. It has nothing to do with owning a share of a company unless you get paid dividends. Plus what are the chances Google or Apple getting acquired? Once you go public that rarely happens.
Buybacks are functionally equivalent to dividends, and more tax-efficient (which is a whole other discussion). If a company's doing buybacks you're benefiting appropriately from your ownership share.
Both Google and Apple have now started paying dividends (Google has done it via the funky reverse-spinout of Alphabet, but again that's economically identical).
Re: Gilt’s Unicorn Tale Comes to an End After Being Acquired for $250M
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is value in a non-dividend paying stock beyond the stock market itself: ideally, the market cap estimates the value of the company if it were to be acquired, and someone buys your shares from you. So it's not simply stock market participants guessing about other stock market participants. There is an actual, valuable, buyable product being traded, namely the company itself; it just happens to be traded in the f…
Keyword here is "ideally". Stocks are just a very elaborate pyramid scheme in which you rely on a greater fool to buy your stock at a higher price. It has nothing to do with owning a share of a company unless you get paid dividends. Plus what are the chances Google or Apple getting acquired? Once you go public that rarely happens.
Dell actually got acquired very recently. Google did the weird Alphabet thing. Apple had the entire NeXT saga.
It's not likely to happen soon, but unless you're a "fool" or someone who makes their money on foolishness arbitrage (which, again, you can do without being zero-sum), that's not the point of stocks, anyway. Buy a bunch and leave it alone until you retire.
Re: Gilt’s Unicorn Tale Comes to an End After Being Acquired for $250M
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're always welcome to consult a lawyer, but odds are there won't be much you can do. It's not uncommon to wipe out common shareholders where the preferred stock and other debtholders take all the money out of the acquisition. It's also difficult to weigh in without knowing the specifics, and even then the specifics from your perspective might be very different from the perspective or facts the board is running wit…
Talk to a lawyer. If a director, not an investor, got money out and the shareholders didn't, that may be a breach of fiduciary duty. Directors have a responsibility to the shareholders.
So, I think you probably meant to reply to the GP, and yes, directors have a fiduciary duty, but I suspect the director was also an investor or preferred shareholder.
Straight-up malfeasance is pretty rare in cases with professional investors, as there are lawyers involved and people who know what's going on.