• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Farewell, Twinkies

WildCat said:
So you have examples of a bankrupt company being saved by someone they hired for cheap?
Click to expand...

There are countless examples of companies asking workers/unions to accept pay cuts whose CEO reduce, or even freeze, their own pay ffor the duration of the restructure. American Airlines is one listed in the article I linked but there are many more.

Also according to the article, Hostess tripled their CEO's salary immediately prior to asking the unions for concessions and 9 top executives also got large pay raises. No wonder the unions are pissed.

These are not the actions of a company trying to save itself. These are the actions of a company trying to prolong the inevitable so they can personally pilfer as much money out of the company as possible brefore it goes under.

Maybe though, if Hostess had picked up the highest paid CEO in America, he would have turned it around. Of course, they would have had to pay him $131 million dollars a year... but hey, things might have been different. :rolleyes:
 
WildCat said:
So you have examples of a bankrupt company being saved by someone they hired for cheap?
Click to expand...
I don't know about "hired for cheap" (which isn't what I think most people in this thread would advocate) but it's not hard to find examples of CEOs paid for performance. It would be perfectly reasonable to cut their pay and then give them some form of incentive payments for performance.

Some examples in this article for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary
 
qayak said:
These people are not idealistic school kids, they are experienced in what they do and are used to getting things the way they want. Basically, the Hostess story is the age old story of a company crying bankruptcy and demanding concessions from workers while the top executives bleed off all the cash they can, while they can.
Click to expand...

How does this business model work from the lender's perspective? Why do they keep lending money to private equity firms to acquire companies, add debt to the acquired company, pay off the acquired company's executives, loot the acquired company, then put the acquired company in bankruptcy? How does the lender benefit from this? I have no love for corporations, private equity, venture/vulture capitalism or CEOs and am probably a little baised toward unions but I don't understand how this greedy, evil CEO/PE narrative makes any sense. It didn't make sense when it was about Bain Capital and it doesn't make sense now. I'm sure its possible that things like this can and do happen but I don't see how it could be reliable or profitable as a goal of purchasing and restructuring failing businesses.
 
qayak said:
There are countless examples of companies asking workers/unions to accept pay cuts whose CEO reduce, or even freeze, their own pay ffor the duration of the restructure. American Airlines is one listed in the article I linked but there are many more.
Click to expand...
How many of them switched CEOs and had to hire new ones? Remember, they had 6 CEOs since 2004 according to you.

qayak said:
Also according to the article, Hostess tripled their CEO's salary immediately prior to asking the unions for concessions and 9 top executives also got large pay raises. No wonder the unions are pissed.
Click to expand...
So? Apparently they didn't want that CEO to leave.

qayak said:
These are not the actions of a company trying to save itself. These are the actions of a company trying to prolong the inevitable so they can personally pilfer as much money out of the company as possible before it goes under.
Click to expand...
Explain again how the owners of the company (the eeeeevil equity firms) made more money prolonging their losses as long as possible? I must have missed it.

qayak said:
Maybe though, if Hostess had picked up the highest paid CEO in America, he would have turned it around. Of course, they would have had to pay him $131 million dollars a year... but hey, things might have been different. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Except their CEO made about 1-2% of that.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
I don't know about "hired for cheap" (which isn't what I think most people in this thread would advocate) but it's not hard to find examples of CEOs paid for performance. It would be perfectly reasonable to cut their pay and then give them some form of incentive payments for performance.

Some examples in this article for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary
Click to expand...
How do you cut the pay of a CEO who has left the company?
 
WildCat said:
How many of them switched CEOs and had to hire new ones? Remember, they had 6 CEOs since 2004 according to you.

You are just making this up. You do not know the history.


So? Apparently they didn't want that CEO to leave.


Explain again how the owners of the company (the eeeeevil equity firms) made more money prolonging their losses as long as possible? I must have missed it.


Except their CEO made about 1-2% of that.
Click to expand...

Your entire argument is an appeal to ignorance. You do not know the first thing about the Hostess bankruptcy, you are just making crap up off the top of your head.

Read the articles that financial experts have been writing about this. The only ones reporting the unions as the cause are the mainstream media with little financial experience who are just regurgitating sound bites from Hostess. All the experts agree this company is going belly up because of poor management and an unwillingness to adapt to a changing market.

They are all questioning the sincerity of Hostess in restructuring the company after seeing the financials which are now public because of the bankruptcy motion.

Lobbing red herrings into your posts to further your union hating agenda simply makes you appear to be a petulant child, not an adult interested in the reality of the situation.
 
Scopedog said:
How does this business model work from the lender's perspective? Why do they keep lending money to private equity firms to acquire companies, add debt to the acquired company, pay off the acquired company's executives, loot the acquired company, then put the acquired company in bankruptcy? How does the lender benefit from this? I have no love for corporations, private equity, venture/vulture capitalism or CEOs and am probably a little baised toward unions but I don't understand how this greedy, evil CEO/PE narrative makes any sense. It didn't make sense when it was about Bain Capital and it doesn't make sense now. I'm sure its possible that things like this can and do happen but I don't see how it could be reliable or profitable as a goal of purchasing and restructuring failing businesses.
Click to expand...

Here's an article from Fortune magazine explaining it all.

http://www.examiner.com/article/the-real-reasons-hostess-went-bankrupt

As many of these financial experts are saying, there are no white or black knights in the story but there are some very strange things that happened for a company trying to restructure.

They also report that Hostess hasn't done anything as a company since 2009. All their new product attempts, which were basically repackaging of the old products, failed. The economy dropped, people are eating healthier and Hostess sales have been dropping for years but hostess has no idea on how to address these issues. They couldn't in 2009 when they came out of bankruptcy and were almost viable, and they certainly can't now with their debt ballooning and interest on loans bleeding them.

The experts feel that the best thing for everyone is to let the company go under and have their products sold to other, more viable, companies. Even the workers at the plants agree with this. They would rather make concessions to a better run company than to one with the history and management practices of Hostess.
 
qayak said:
Here's an article from Fortune magazine explaining it all.

http://www.examiner.com/article/the-real-reasons-hostess-went-bankrupt
Click to expand...
Holy crap! :boggled:

That is not an article from Fortune magazine. It' an article by Ryan Witt in examiner.com

qayak said:
The experts feel that the best thing for everyone is to let the company go under and have their products sold to other, more viable, companies. Even the workers at the plants agree with this. They would rather make concessions to a better run company than to one with the history and management practices of Hostess.
Click to expand...
So what year should the company have been allowed to fail? 2004?

Because you are against all the actions taken since 2004 that made it last this long, correct?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom