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Uncatchable Mouse Jigglers: TSLA, PARA, WFC WFH

Uncatchable Mouse Jigglers: TSLA, PARA, WFC WFH

Released Friday, 14th June 2024
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Uncatchable Mouse Jigglers: TSLA, PARA, WFC WFH

Uncatchable Mouse Jigglers: TSLA, PARA, WFC WFH

Uncatchable Mouse Jigglers: TSLA, PARA, WFC WFH

Uncatchable Mouse Jigglers: TSLA, PARA, WFC WFH

Friday, 14th June 2024
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Audio Studios. Podcasts,

1:01

radio, news. He's

1:05

a money stuff guy. Yeah,

1:07

you'll be great. Hello

1:11

and welcome to the Money Stuff Podcast, your

1:13

weekly podcast where we talk about stuff related

1:16

to money and Elon Musk. I'm Matt

1:18

Levine and I write the Money Stuff column for

1:20

Bloomberg Appent. And I'm Katie

1:22

Greifeld. I'm a reporter for Bloomberg News and

1:24

an anchor for Bloomberg Television. What

1:27

are we talking about today, Katie? Okay, we're

1:29

obviously talking about Elon Musk and the

1:31

results of the shareholder vote, the two

1:34

prong issues there. We're going to talk about

1:36

an extremely messy deal.

1:38

We're talking about the Paramount

1:40

Skydance deal. And then

1:42

we're going to talk about mouse jigglers and

1:45

Wells Fargo and getting fired. Sounds

1:47

great. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. You

1:49

get the money stuff guy. It's

1:55

Friday morning in America. Elon

1:57

Musk has gotten his money. He has. I

2:00

mean, sort of. He had the vote for his

2:02

money. Did he get his money? Complicated question. Yeah,

2:04

TBD on that point. So the shareholder

2:07

vote happened for Tesla and I think

2:09

it was... I think this

2:11

is the most boring outcome, actually. So

2:14

they had a vote on two things, right? One

2:16

is should Elon Musk get his money and the

2:18

other was should they reincorporate to Texas, right? If

2:20

they voted against him getting his money, that would

2:22

have been like some real fireworks. Like you have

2:24

quit in a huff last night, who knows? But

2:27

they voted in favor of him getting his money, so he's

2:29

going to stay. And then I sort

2:31

of thought they would vote against moving

2:33

to Texas because my impression was that

2:36

institutional shareholders like the predictability and protections

2:38

of Delaware law and that

2:40

Elon Musk being kind of a whimsical dude,

2:42

they thought it would be nice to have

2:44

a court that would rein him in. But

2:46

no, more shareholders voted to move to Texas

2:48

than voted for his pay. Yeah.

2:50

And I mean, and 72% voted for his

2:52

pay. So the support for the move to

2:55

Texas was... Broad. Yeah.

2:57

So this is all driven by the fact that

2:59

earlier this year, a Delaware court struck down that

3:02

2018 pay package that he got,

3:04

right? So in 2018, Tesla gave him a

3:06

bunch of options that

3:09

if he hit some very ambitious milestones, he'd get

3:11

$56 billion. He hit all the milestones, he

3:14

got all the options. The shareholder sued

3:17

saying that the process of paying him

3:19

was too conflicted. And early this

3:21

year, a Delaware court said, we agree, we're taking

3:23

back the options. And so Tesla is voting to

3:25

give him back the options and to get out

3:27

of Delaware because they don't like that. And

3:30

I remember when I wrote about the court

3:32

decision earlier this year, I was like, this

3:34

seems kind of wrong, right? Like, I'm not

3:36

like a devoted Elon Musk fan

3:38

here, but like the shareholders voted to

3:41

give him the money. The court decided that the vote

3:43

wasn't fully informed, but it was pretty informed. Like they

3:45

knew how much money they were giving him and like

3:47

what the targets were and he hit the targets and

3:49

they were happy. So it

3:51

struck me as kind of a weird decision.

3:53

It might've been right in the law, but

3:56

it was protective of shareholders in a way

3:58

that like the shareholders clearly didn't want. want,

4:00

right? Like the shareholders got the benefit of their

4:02

bargain, which was Elon Musk took the company to

4:05

$650 billion. And this court

4:08

decision seemed to kind of interfere in

4:10

the relationship between the company and its

4:12

shareholders. And I think

4:14

that's what the vote last night says, right? Like

4:16

not only did the shareholders vote to bring back

4:19

the pay package, but they also said, yeah, we

4:21

think that like this Delaware decision was wrong

4:23

and we now reject Delaware

4:25

law, which I think is kind of

4:27

an interesting outcome. Right? Like, yeah. This

4:30

is a weird company. It's got a weird CEO

4:32

and a weird relationship with him. And it's got

4:34

a lot of retail shareholders who are maybe more

4:37

inclined to vote for

4:39

like a populist move to Texas than

4:41

like the average institutional shareholders. But a

4:43

lot of institutional shareholders voted

4:45

to move to Texas. And like ISS, the

4:47

proxy advisor said, yeah, you should vote to

4:49

move to Texas. So I'm

4:52

interested to see going forward, will other companies copy

4:54

this? Because like I would have thought that a

4:56

lot of companies would say, I would like to

4:58

have a little bit less shareholder protection and a

5:00

little bit more freehand for the board and the

5:02

CEO. But if I actually try

5:04

to do that, my shareholders will say, no,

5:07

no, we want the protections. We see you

5:09

trying to get away from a sort of strict

5:11

corporate law and we're going to vote

5:13

against it. But now the shareholders voted for it

5:15

at Tesla. And I don't know, are other companies

5:17

going to follow along? I mean, it'll

5:20

be interesting to see what this means

5:22

for Texas. Obviously, the business courts to

5:24

Delaware are extremely well established. Comparatively, Texas

5:26

is not exactly there. So I don't

5:28

know, maybe we'll get some precedent sent

5:30

there. But I mean, you made the

5:32

point in your sort of walk up

5:35

column that if you think about the

5:37

reasons why the 2018 pay

5:39

package was voided by that

5:41

Delaware judge, there was this idea

5:43

that the conflicts of interest in

5:46

the board and other details weren't

5:48

properly disclosed and well known. And I

5:50

feel like with this vote, obviously, everything's

5:52

out in the open. So I think that I wrote

5:54

yesterday is that like so the judge found that in

5:56

2018, the board was sort of in the pocket

5:58

of Elon Musk. and the proxy

6:00

didn't fully disclose all of that, right?

6:02

And so this year, this vote, the

6:05

proxy just discloses the judge's entire opinion,

6:07

like it's attached to the back. So

6:09

if you're interested to know what conflicts

6:12

were involved in the 2018 decision to pay Elon Musk,

6:14

you can go read the opinion and get like all

6:16

of the, like the worst case for the conflicts. But

6:19

I made the point yesterday that there

6:21

are new conflicts, right? There's all this

6:23

stuff about Elon doing AI at other

6:26

companies, his other companies, if he doesn't

6:28

get his money at Tesla. Earlier

6:30

this year, Elon Musk asking for another pay package.

6:33

This was back when he still had these options

6:35

before the judge took them away. He asked for

6:37

another big pay package to get his stock ownership

6:39

up at Tesla. And he said, if I don't

6:41

get another big pay package, I won't be able

6:43

to build AI at Tesla. There's that reporting about

6:45

how there were like some Nvidia chips that were

6:47

earmarked for Tesla that he called up Nvidia and

6:49

said, no, let's send them to X instead of

6:51

Twitter. So there's all

6:53

this stuff about his conflicts of interest,

6:55

his threats, his like demands for new

6:57

compensation. All this stuff is not really

6:59

addressed in the current Tesla proxy.

7:02

And like, I don't know, if I were a

7:04

disgruntled shareholder, I'd be writing another lawsuit being like,

7:06

well, there's more stuff you didn't disclose. But

7:08

that said, like, you know, as I said, like I

7:11

think that the meaning of last night's vote is that

7:14

Delaware's interference here is wrong and not what

7:16

shareholders want and not what is good for

7:19

shareholders. I do wonder what was on

7:21

the mind of the large retail shareholder base, not

7:23

to speak of them all as a monolith, but

7:25

I mean, in many ways, this was just seen

7:27

as a referendum on Musk

7:29

and his leadership of the company. And

7:32

the point has been made, it's very

7:34

well known that the retail shareholders of

7:36

Tesla love Elon Musk. They're there because

7:38

they love Elon Musk. Tesla has a

7:41

much more retail shareholder based on a lot of

7:43

companies, but like almost half institutional. And those

7:45

people voted pretty strongly in favor of moving to

7:47

Texas and also in favor of the pay. More

7:50

for Texas than for the pay. It's an impressive

7:52

outcome for him. A month ago, like he was

7:54

clearly focused on his AI stuff about other companies

7:56

and five months ago, he was asking for more

7:58

money from Tesla. this traumatic experience has

8:00

brought them closer together so that now he will

8:03

spend more time on Tesla and not demand more

8:05

money. Or if it's like after

8:07

winning the vote this week, he will go back

8:09

to messing around with XAI and ignoring Tesla. I

8:11

don't know, I don't know. I kinda lean

8:14

towards the latter, but what do I know? But I

8:16

will say. Me too. Like he's a

8:18

short attention span, right? Like he's gonna go do something

8:20

else next week. Yeah, that's a very

8:22

strong bear case. Like that doesn't, even though

8:24

we're past the vote, 72% voted for the

8:26

pay package. It

8:30

doesn't fix the problem of Musk

8:32

is distracted. It seems like he has more

8:34

fun things going on than Tesla struggles right

8:36

now. And you've seen all of these big

8:39

Tesla bulls come out. I'm thinking about Dan

8:41

Ives at Wedbush saying, this removes a huge

8:43

overhang for the stock, Tesla market cap to

8:45

a trillion dollars. I don't necessarily

8:48

know if that's the case. I don't think Elon

8:50

being distracted is necessarily a bear case. I

8:52

think the counter argument is SpaceX,

8:54

where he doesn't seem to have a ton

8:56

of day-to-day involvement, there's a professional team running

8:59

it, and it's very

9:01

successful. But also it's got the Elon Musk Halo,

9:03

which helps it like raise money and sort of

9:05

be high profile. You can tell a similar story

9:07

about a Tesla where like some team of managers

9:10

run it as a competent car company without doing

9:12

weird stuff. And Elon

9:14

Musk remains the CEO and biggest shareholder

9:16

and sort of figurehead such that it

9:18

has a high stock market valuation and

9:20

can raise money from retail investors. And

9:22

it's just like always in the news.

9:24

That's not the worst outcome for Tesla,

9:26

I don't think. I don't know that

9:28

having him in the day-to-day design process

9:31

for the cars is super additive. Like,

9:33

I don't know, everyone seems to think

9:35

the Cybertruck is really ugly and that's

9:37

clearly his baby. So maybe like a

9:39

distracted but happy Elon is the kind

9:41

of best outcome for Tesla. Maybe,

9:43

I'm just thinking about again, like the

9:45

fundamentals of the EV industry right now.

9:47

It feels like every single automaker has,

9:49

I'm exaggerating, but has scaled back EV

9:52

production. There's this big leading into hybrids

9:54

where it seems like the

9:56

American driver is also going. Tesla's never gonna

9:59

make a hybrid. Maybe I'll be proven

10:01

wrong, but. Yeah, but it's not with, Elon

10:04

paying more attention to it is not gonna make you make

10:06

a hybrid. True, true. I don't

10:08

know. I mean, SpaceX is a good

10:10

example, a good counterweight, because it

10:13

seems like cracking the private

10:15

space industry would be harder

10:17

than cracking the EV industry.

10:19

So, and SpaceX did

10:21

that. So maybe things will

10:24

be fine at Tesla. I guess the point that

10:26

I'm making is that I've interviewed

10:28

all of these automaker chief executives.

10:30

I'm talking to the Kia COO

10:32

in like two hours. Like the

10:34

EV market is in a storm

10:37

right now. Yeah, like

10:39

the governance is sort of like unrelated to that.

10:41

Elon Musk is not going to fix the EV market.

10:44

And I don't know. I mean, like you can tell

10:46

the story that like the EV market is in America

10:48

is partly politicized and like

10:50

that slows down adoption and Elon

10:52

Musk could help, you know,

10:54

depoliticize EV adoption or politicize it the other

10:56

way. But I don't know. I don't really

10:58

see that. Like I just, I think that

11:00

at this point, Tesla, the company faces the

11:02

same headwinds as every other, you know, EV

11:04

manufacturer, except that it is only

11:06

an EV manufacturer. And Tesla,

11:09

the stock has just the sort of vague halo

11:11

effect of like, it's the one public way to

11:13

invest in Elon Musk. And so it trades at

11:16

a premium, because if you like Elon Musk's whole

11:18

shtick and you don't care much about EVs, but

11:20

you're just like, how do I buy like the

11:22

Elon Musk thing? The only way to

11:24

do it as a public investor is to buy Tesla stock.

11:26

And so it trades on that. And, you

11:30

know, what particular parts of the Elon

11:32

Musk empire are conducted in Tesla as

11:34

opposed to at his private companies? Like

11:36

doesn't necessarily matter that much for

11:39

the price of the stock. I'm more thinking of like

11:41

not him making good decisions for Tesla, but him

11:43

stopping good decisions that could be made at Tesla.

11:46

Like you think about him, what,

11:48

firing the supercharger team and then rehiring a bunch

11:50

of them. That wasn't great.

11:52

Like wavering on plans for

11:54

a much cheaper EV model.

11:56

That wasn't great. That did shake a

11:58

lot of, even. the biggest Tesla

12:01

bulls conviction in the stock. And then I

12:03

don't know, the robot taxi dreams seem

12:05

to be, and the Cybertruck too, seemed

12:07

to be like an expensive waste of

12:09

money. We could have done this on yesterday

12:12

as the thing. Yeah, we

12:14

probably should have. We thought that there would

12:16

be like late breaking news, but in fact there was

12:18

early breaking news and then it turned out to be

12:20

true. By the way, I would have been so excited.

12:22

Like the outcome I was really rooting for once he

12:24

tweeted yesterday, Thursday, once

12:27

he tweeted on Thursday that he

12:29

had won the vote. Obviously the outcome I was rooting for

12:31

is that he'd lost the vote and was gonna get sued,

12:33

but didn't come to pass. The tweet

12:35

was true. That would have been delicious. This

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now we're back from the ad break. We heard

14:16

from our future selves. I think I

14:18

said last week that we're really learning that time is

14:20

a concept and we're doing that again because now it's

14:22

you and I talking on a Thursday afternoon. We've

14:25

traveled back in time to Thursday afternoon.

14:28

It was nice. Thursday afternoon. Here we are on Thursday

14:30

again. Here we are and we

14:32

traveled back in time. Yeah. Why live

14:34

in a Friday when you can live

14:36

in a perpetual Thursday? So it's the

14:38

motto of this podcast. Absolutely. Let's

14:40

talk about skydance and paramount and

14:43

the deal that will never

14:45

be question mark. It's pretty

14:47

wild. Yeah. We have talked about

14:50

it once on this. I

14:53

forget what we said, but now we're

14:55

sort of talking about, we're

14:57

talking about it's obituary because. It's not paramount

15:00

obituary. No, not yet. At least

15:02

this deal's obituary because national

15:04

amusement read Sherry Redstone stopped

15:07

the deal. It's not going to

15:09

happen with skydance at least. Yeah. I

15:11

love it. I love it. It's such a complicated

15:13

deal because of a very

15:16

simple thing, which is that Sherry Redstone

15:18

owns national amusement. National amusement owns some

15:21

movie theaters and also a block of

15:23

paramount stock. Paramount is like an $8

15:25

billion public company. It has a lot

15:28

of interesting, you know, TV and movie

15:30

assets and people want to

15:32

buy it. And Sherry Redstone, who inherited it

15:34

from her father, seems to want

15:36

to sell it, although no one's really sure. And

15:39

the thing about national amusement is that

15:41

it owns around 5% of

15:44

Paramount's stock, but it owns

15:46

most of the voting stock. Most of Paramount's

15:48

stock doesn't vote. So Sherry Redstone, although she has

15:50

like a fairly small economic interest in Paramount,

15:53

has voting control over Paramount. So that

15:55

means anyone who wants to buy Paramount

15:58

has to get her approval. because

16:00

she controls the vote, even though

16:02

she doesn't have that much stock. But it

16:04

also means that like anyone who wants to deal

16:06

with her, you know, has to pay her off

16:08

at a premium. And then the

16:10

rest of the Paramount shareholders, if

16:13

they don't get the same deal, are going to complain. And

16:15

that's the problem with doing a deal here. And

16:17

it sort of looked like someone would find a

16:20

way to overcome that problem. And nobody did. And

16:22

the deal just fell apart. It fell

16:24

apart really quickly, too. And it

16:26

is an incredible end because,

16:28

first of all, this is something

16:30

that Sherry Redstone originally was campaigning

16:32

for for months. And Ellison

16:35

and Skydance did switch it around a

16:37

lot and tried to make this work

16:39

and revise their offer a bunch of

16:41

times. And then just this week, it

16:43

fell apart. And there's been a lot of different

16:46

reporting as to why. A lot of

16:48

people familiar with the matter have commented

16:51

on this to, you know, different outlets.

16:53

The Wall Street Journal, I found

16:56

this explanation satisfying that basically they

16:58

reported that she feared potential shareholder

17:00

litigation over a deal that her

17:02

critics said would disadvantage ordinary investors

17:05

in Paramount and the seems

17:07

key legal fees that might eat into her

17:09

family's fortune. That would make sense. When

17:11

you say she was advocating for this deal, and

17:13

then it fell apart really rapidly, I think that

17:15

what happened is that originally

17:18

Skydance came to Sherry Redstone

17:20

and said, we want to do a deal

17:22

with you where we give you money for

17:24

national amusements. And then we

17:26

simultaneously negotiated a deal with Paramount so that like, when

17:28

we acquire national amusements, we end up in control of

17:30

Paramount and we can sort of do the

17:33

merger that we want with Paramount. And Sherry Redstone was

17:35

like, yeah, it sounds good. And they

17:37

offered to pay her a lot of money

17:39

for her national amusement stake. But then over

17:41

time, as they negotiated with the board, the

17:43

board of Paramount wanted more stuff for the

17:46

regular public shareholders. Like they said, if you

17:48

just give Sherry Redstone all this money and

17:50

don't give anything to the regular shareholders, one

17:53

that's going to look bad, it's going to be

17:55

bad for our fiduciary duties as a board to

17:57

protect the public shareholders. But then also, we'll get

17:59

soon. you'll get sued, everyone gets sued. So

18:01

what we need to do is strike a better deal

18:03

for the public shareholders and Skydance was

18:05

like, sure, yeah, we can do that. We can take

18:07

some of the money we're going to get to Shari

18:10

Redstone and give it to the public shareholders instead. And

18:12

then everyone will be happier. Except that then Shari Redstone

18:14

wasn't happier because they're taking money from her and giving

18:16

it to the shareholders. So I think part of why

18:18

the deal fell apart is it's

18:21

almost impossible to just accomplish this, to do a

18:23

deal that is good for Shari Redstone and also

18:25

doesn't get you sued by shareholders. And I think

18:27

she eventually concluded that she's going to get sued

18:29

by shareholders and it wasn't worth it. But also,

18:31

they did try to accomplish it, but that meant

18:33

taking money away from her part of the deal.

18:35

And that made her less inclined to do it,

18:37

right? If she was getting all the money, she

18:40

could pay the legal fees. But if she's getting

18:42

less of the money, then like, she's still has

18:44

to pay the legal fees, she doesn't want to

18:46

do the deal. It almost feels

18:48

like a golden shares situation, which

18:50

doesn't really exist in America, but

18:52

it exists more formally in the

18:54

UK and increasingly in China. And

18:56

it just seems impossible to have

18:59

good governance in this type of situation.

19:01

This company has always sort of had famously bad

19:03

governance. I mean, like the situation is just bad governance,

19:05

right? I mean, someone who inherited

19:07

the company and has a fairly

19:09

small minority economic interest in it,

19:11

but who has complete voting control

19:13

and can sort of block any deals

19:16

she doesn't like, is an unusual situation.

19:18

And because it is a big public media company,

19:21

it has like a fairly independent board of directors,

19:23

or it has had a fairly dependent board of

19:25

directors over at sometimes who have gotten in fights

19:27

with Sherry Redstone and have tried to like take

19:29

away her voting control. And even

19:31

now, you know, like I think the impression is

19:33

that some members of the board were

19:36

the one sort of saying to Sherry, like, this deal

19:38

is not going to work, you're going to get sued.

19:41

It's not sufficiently, you know, protective of minority

19:43

shareholders. The other thing is like, if Sherry

19:45

Redstone is worried about getting sued, one thing

19:47

that could potentially help is like asking the

19:51

other shareholders to vote to approve the deal.

19:53

So most of Paramount's stock doesn't

19:55

have any voting rights. And so

19:57

it's just like whatever the board agrees

19:59

to. Sherry Redstone can just ratify.

20:02

But she was thinking about conditioning

20:04

the merger on a majority of

20:06

the non-voting shareholders, holding

20:09

a vote and having them vote to approve it.

20:11

Because then if they approved it, she'd be less

20:13

likely to get sued. But my understanding

20:15

is that Skydense didn't like that idea because they were

20:17

like, you know, we're giving you this money, we wanna

20:20

actually have a deal. We don't wanna have to worry

20:22

about the non-voting shareholders turning it down. Well,

20:24

they have to do something. This is a

20:26

company in a struggling industry with enormous amounts

20:28

of debt, but Matt, I have good news.

20:31

The good news is that in a

20:33

moment like this, when you're searching eyes,

20:35

are looking for the CEO, the good

20:37

news is that there's not one CEO,

20:39

there's three CEOs in this situation. I

20:42

think when we last talked about this situation, I

20:44

said something like, having three CEOs is really a

20:46

sign that you're gonna do a deal really soon

20:49

because you can't just run the company with three

20:51

CEOs. But now, here they are, they've got three

20:53

CEOs and no deal. I know, I love it.

20:55

There are some rumors they're gonna replace those three

20:57

CEOs with their fourth different CEO, but it isn't.

20:59

Yeah, there's sort of this monolith just called

21:02

the Office of the CEO, which is incredible.

21:04

And definitely at the time, it was like,

21:06

okay, this is just a band-aid weird situation

21:08

holding pattern until a deal is done, and

21:11

maybe it'll go back to being a more

21:13

typical structure. But for right now, they have

21:15

three CEOs and apparently it

21:17

has a plan for going forward.

21:19

The Office of the CEO, CNBC,

21:21

obtained a memo that they released

21:23

on Wednesday saying that

21:26

they're going to remain open to exploring strategic

21:28

alternatives that create value for shareholders. They

21:30

also said that they're going to continue

21:32

to focus on executing the strategic plan

21:34

that they unveiled in the last couple

21:37

weeks. So we'll see.

21:39

I love them, they're fighting for their jobs. They're

21:42

really fighting, but again, they need to

21:44

do something. In one of the reports,

21:47

there's just been so much on this,

21:49

but apparently a special committee of directors

21:51

recommended that Paramount could not continue as

21:54

a stand-alone business. So something

21:56

needs to get done here. And then Moody's was out

21:58

this week, warning, and this was prior to the- the

22:00

collapse that unless there's some

22:02

sort of strategic transaction that comes

22:05

along with cost cutting opportunities, basically they're going

22:07

to get downgraded as well. Yeah, it's

22:09

not a good situation. The impression I get is

22:11

that this deal is pretty dead. There was another

22:13

suitor, right? Sony and Apollo were looking at the

22:15

company and that deal seems to have faded away

22:18

because in part, I think because they were never

22:20

really in with Sherry Redstone

22:22

and she, you know, as the company comes

22:24

along with cost cutting opportunities, basically they're going

22:26

to get downgraded as well. Yeah, it's

22:28

not a good situation. The impression I get is

22:30

that this deal is pretty dead. There was another

22:32

suitor, right? Sony and Apollo were looking at the

22:35

company and that deal seems to have faded away

22:37

because in part, I think because they were never

22:39

really in with Sherry Redstone

22:41

and she, you know, as the controlling vote.

22:43

So it's a little unclear what happens next.

22:46

And also in deal talk, there's Edgar

22:48

Bronfman. Edgar Bronfman. Who's

22:52

like talking about buying national amusements,

22:54

I think. Yeah. The impression that

22:56

I get is that as this

22:58

deal collapses, the next plan, besides

23:00

like finding out who the CEO is,

23:03

the next plan is for Sherry Redstone to

23:05

think about selling national amusements as just like

23:07

a single thing. So she would just sell

23:09

national amusements and then whoever buys it, it

23:11

would be their problem to deal with like

23:13

the weird governance structure at Paramount and to

23:15

try to find a way to

23:17

impose their will on Paramount and like, you know,

23:20

appointing a CEO to control the Paramount and deal

23:22

with the minority shareholders and everything else. That just

23:24

wouldn't be her problem. She would just sell national

23:26

amusements and then the new person would step into

23:29

her shoes and figure it all out. One reader,

23:31

you know, if you could suggest a really

23:33

good trade, which is that she should sell

23:35

national amusements to AMC, which one owns

23:38

a movie theater chain and two

23:41

keeps raising money for moo mestock investment.

23:43

Yeah. And then AMC could sell the

23:45

Paramount shares to Skydance and everyone

23:47

could be better off. I don't know if that's a

23:50

viable alternative. That's a pretty good idea. It's pretty good.

23:52

We've had an antitrust with AMC. I don't know. There

23:54

was one sell side note that suggested

23:57

this was from Loop Capital that Warner

23:59

Brothers Discovery.

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