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The worst acquisition in history, again

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Re: The worst acquisition in history, again

#91

Post by financltravsty »

alephnerd wrote: post #36
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #20

> With his new toy having a leverage ratio north of 6x, David Ellison has promised $6 billion in “synergies” within three years. (Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos put the figure closer to $16 billion, after examining WBD’s books. What is it that these CEOs think they are seeing, that everyone else is missing? I can believe they have inflated egos, but they’re not totally crazy, right? My impression is that Netflix is fair…

Succession planning. This appears to be Larry Ellison trying to manage succession for his kids. We'll probably see a second major acquisition like this for Megan (who tends to be more progressive leaning) [edit: I was right. Megan Ellison is making moves as well now [0]] Larry would not be able to do something similar at Oracle today (definitely in the 2000s though), as by the 2010s operational control at Oracle incr…

You're consistently the only person that I see writing anything of sense on this platform -- are you on any others?

Re: The worst acquisition in history, again

#92

Post by ajb »

fud101 wrote: post #77
ajb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's probably talking about this: https://www.972mag.com/ellisons-paramount-tiktok-israel-medi...

Indeed. I have tried to say it more bluntly, Galloway is pro-Israel and vehemently so.

Did you mean to write Ellison, rather than Galloway?

Re: The worst acquisition in history, again

#93

Post by cyanydeez »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #88
cyanydeez wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what a poor person would say. Fox news managed to get Donald Trump elected, whose net worth has gone up by billions. Also, it's not real money, it's debt equity. Equity transfers are just rich people toys. They move the actual cost into the entity they purchase, and if it fails, whatever, it didn't cost them anything.

And all the other investors in the market just ignore this debt when deciding the price they are willing to pay for a share? Shares of businesses with excessive debt relative to income do not do well for their shareholders.

Ruining society is a long term objective. Normal 6month profteers need not apply.

Re: The worst acquisition in history, again

#94

Post by lotsofpulp »

cyanydeez wrote: post #93
lotsofpulp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And all the other investors in the market just ignore this debt when deciding the price they are willing to pay for a share? Shares of businesses with excessive debt relative to income do not do well for their shareholders.

Ruining society is a long term objective. Normal 6month profteers need not apply.

I don’t know what that means. You wrote something about debt equity not costing shareholders anything, but it’s trivial to see that all else being equal, a business with more debt will have a smaller market capitalization than a business with less debt.

The debt from the Time Warner and other purchases dragged ATT down from the top spot to 3rd, and boosted Tmobile to the top. The shareholders of ATT lost and the shareholders of Tmobile gained.

Re: The worst acquisition in history, again

#95

Post by JumpCrisscross »

coliveira wrote: post #80
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They do this because of the political clout they get with the control of these media properties Bezos bought the Post for clout. Ellison (and his investors) are buying Warner Brothers first and foremost to make money.

As the article shows, the most probable result of buying Warner Bros will be another loss. Which won't stop more people from buying it again later.

> the most probable result of buying Warner Bros will be another loss

Sure. The same goes for most bunker-buster LBOs. Doesn’t mean the sponsors are doing it with the expectation of losing money.

Re: The worst acquisition in history, again

#96

Post by dctoedt »

bandrami wrote: post #79
rayiner wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t you replace a lot of Hollywood with AI now? What am I missing?

Not if you want to copyright the output

> Not if you want to copyright the output

That gets tricky: To the extent that an AI is just a tool — along the lines of a trained pair of hands executing a human prompter's specific, detailed instructions — the human prompter might qualify as an "author."

From the U.S. Copyright Office in January 2025:

"The Office affirms that existing principles of copyright law are flexible enough to apply to this new technology, as they have applied to technological innovations in the past. It concludes that the outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements.

"This can include situations where a human-authored work is perceptible in an AI output, or a human makes creative arrangements or modifications of the output, but not the mere provision of prompts.

"The Office confirms that the use of AI to assist in the process of creation or the inclusion of AI-generated material in a larger human-generated work does not bar copyrightability.

"It also finds that the case has not been made for changes to existing law to provide additional protection for AI-generated outputs."

https://www.copyright.gov/newsnet/2025/1060.html (emphasis and extra paragraphing added).

Re: The worst acquisition in history, again

#97

Post by rayiner »

dctoedt wrote: post #96
bandrami wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you want to copyright the output

> Not if you want to copyright the output That gets tricky: To the extent that an AI is just a tool — along the lines of a trained pair of hands executing a human prompter's specific, detailed instructions — the human prompter might qualify as an "author." From the U.S. Copyright Office in January 2025: "The Office affirms that existing principles of copyright law are flexible enough to apply to this new technology,…

Interesting, thank you for sharing. That’s surprising to me though when you see the reasoning it makes sense.

Re: The worst acquisition in history, again

#98

Post by bandrami »

dctoedt wrote: post #96
bandrami wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you want to copyright the output

> Not if you want to copyright the output That gets tricky: To the extent that an AI is just a tool — along the lines of a trained pair of hands executing a human prompter's specific, detailed instructions — the human prompter might qualify as an "author." From the U.S. Copyright Office in January 2025: "The Office affirms that existing principles of copyright law are flexible enough to apply to this new technology,…

The closest analogy is to a music producer sampling public domain audio. The composition will be protected by copyright but each individual sample will not.

Every single CGI rendered frame of Shrek is protected by copyright because it was human authored. It they used a diffuser to make Shrek 7, the individual frames would not be protected by copyright but their arrangement into a movie could be. That's a hugely different legal situation (for instance, if I chopped it up and made my own remix of it that would be protected).

Re: The worst acquisition in history, again

#99

Post by bandrami »

bandrami wrote: post #98
dctoedt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not if you want to copyright the output That gets tricky: To the extent that an AI is just a tool — along the lines of a trained pair of hands executing a human prompter's specific, detailed instructions — the human prompter might qualify as an "author." From the U.S. Copyright Office in January 2025: "The Office affirms that existing principles of copyright law are flexible enough to apply to this new technology,…

The closest analogy is to a music producer sampling public domain audio. The composition will be protected by copyright but each individual sample will not. Every single CGI rendered frame of Shrek is protected by copyright because it was human authored. It they used a diffuser to make Shrek 7, the individual frames would not be protected by copyright but their arrangement into a movie could be. That's a hugely diffe…

Though this is complicated by the fact that the LLM initial training may have been massively illegal (or at least massively tortious). There's still a bunch of legal shoes to drop, one way or the other

Re: The worst acquisition in history, again

#100

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jaredklewis wrote: post #83
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that everyone else is missing? To be fair, sometimes they do. Musk saw genuine bloat at Twitter. I’m doubtful one can optimize that much out of WarnerBrothers. But Hollywood isn’t exactly known for being efficient.

Very hard for me to believe Musk didn’t overpay for Twitter. So whatever he saw, I don’t think was there. Hard to know completely for sure given it is private. But I strongly suspect that money definitely would be making him more in passive investments. If the argument is that it was a stupid business decision, but he had other motives (clout, etc…), sure whatever.

> hard for me to believe Musk didn’t overpay for Twitter

At the time? Probably. With the benefit of hindsight? Probably not. Twitter would have made a killing on its own licensing its data to AI companies.

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