another shareholders perspective ~ I have always maintained that Billy went into the courtroom with a premeditated and agreed upon plan - with a tentative deal in place - but a deal that was 2 tiered.
He would accept a cash settlement that would be low enough so as to deter shareholders (like maybe $125 mil), a number that would probably not have prompted the rich shareholders to amass a legal fund to sue.
Think about it - the announcement says $125 mil. We already knew that Billy had side deals in place, etc., so maybe we were looking at dividing 1.6 billion shares into a diluted $100 mil .... 6 cents a share.
And Billy figured that if he ran off with this money, nobody would go after him since it would cost a lot of money and time and effort to do so.
In other words, 6 cents a share is it. No hope for the big score.
Most of us would have folded the tent.
Obviously, if the settlement were $1.6 billion, everything would change.
So he orchestrated the courtroom drama, knowing he would have his plan in place beforehand.
The deal was resolved at $125 mil and someone or someones bought the patents or some other "assets" of the company for (oh maybe) and additional $950 million.
Let's backtrack:
You are selling your car and you don't want your divorcing wife to know you will be getting money for it. Your car is worth $40,000..... so we make a deal and I buy your car for $15,000, then I give you side cash of $21,000 for the spare tire. Both of us get something and your wife only gets half of the $15,000.
So somebody was willing to buy something from Billy KNOWING that the thing they were buying really had no value (like assets of the corp), but instead they were paying for the settlement of the lawsuit... although not in that form.
If I (Cisco, e.g.) could settle a lawsuit for $10 million instead of $12 million by agreeing to a written settlement of $6 million and then buying something of yours on the side for $4 million, why wouldn't I.
I save $2 million.
I don't even care why you asked me to handle it that way.
I save $2 million.
My only problem would be hiding that $4 million from my books. But hey, if I'm doing $5 billion in gross revenues annually (Cisco/Cox?etc) hiding $4 million (or in OUR CASE $950 million) wouldn't be difficult.
So unless someone finds a trail from one or some of the 13 original culprits and follows that trail to the end, we won't know what went down.
But then why would Billy try to hide the $125 million from shareholders right off the bat?
Maybe a ploy to buy time and run us through hurdles and over obstacles while the second part of the deal is winding itself through the corporate books of the 13. Maybe Cisco said "I'll make the deal but I need a year to filter the $950 million through our books". Plausible???
Maybe this isn't the whole/big/true picture, but this is definitely the spirit of what took place.
Maybe that's why Billy isn't too worried about getting whatever settlement funds are being withheld from him via escrow (if that is even true)..... he already has the big bucks in his wallet!!
