A decade ago, a hedge fund had an improbable viral comedy hit: a 294-page slide deck explaining why Olive Garden was going out of business, blaming the failure on too many breadsticks and insufficiently salted pasta-water:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/940944/000092189514002031/ex991dfan14a06297125_091114.pdf
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https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/940944/000092189514002031/ex991dfan14a06297125_091114.pdf
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/2
https://www.salon.com/2014/09/17/the_real_olive_garden_scandal_why_greedy_hedge_funders_suddenly_care_so_much_about_breadsticks/
But - as Dayen wrote at the time, the hedge fund that produced that slide deck, Starboard Value, was not motivated by dissatisfaction with bread-sticks.
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The real Olive Garden scandal: Why greedy hedge funders suddenly care so much about breadsticks
Salon.comCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/3
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_Out
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/5
Starboard was bent on eviscerating Darden like a couple of entrail-maddened dogs in an elk carcass:
https://web.archive.org/web/20051220005944/http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~solan/dogsinelk/
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*assholes
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/6
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/7
> Olive Garden and Red Lobster may not be destinations for hipster Internet journalists, and they have seen revenue declines amid stagnant middle-class wages and increased competition. But they are still profitable businesses. Thousands of Americans work there. Why should they be bled dry by predatory investors in the name of “shareholder value”? What of the value of worker productivity instead of the financial engineers?
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/8
https://prospect.org/economy/2024-05-22-raiding-red-lobster/
It's not pretty. Ten years of being bled out on rents and flipped from one hedge fund to another has killed Red Lobster. It just shuttered 50 restaurants and declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
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The Raiding of Red Lobster
Luke Goldstein (The American Prospect)Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/9
Instead of dunking on free bread-sticks, Red Lobster's grave-dancers are jeering at "Endless Shrimp," a promotional deal that works exactly how it sounds like it would work. Endless Shrimp cost the chain $11m.
Which raises a question: why did Red Lobster make this money-losing offer?
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/10
Or, you know, was it another hedge-fund, bust-out scam?
Here's a hint. The supplier who provided Red Lobster with all that shrimp is Thai Union. Thai Union also owns Red Lobster. They bought the chain from Golden Gate Capital, last seen in 2014, holding a flash-sale on all of Red Lobster's buildings, pocketing billions, and cutting Red Lobster's earnings in half.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/11
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Cory Doctorow
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/13
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/14
https://www.classaction.org/news/pacific-seafood-under-fire-for-allegedly-fixing-prices-paid-to-dungeness-crabbers-in-pacific-northwest
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Pacific Seafood Under Fire for Allegedly Fixing Prices Paid to Dungeness Crabbers in Pacific Northwest
Kelsey McCroskey (ClassAction.org)Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/15
https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/16/sociopathic-monsters/#all-the-news-thats-fit-to-print
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/16
Thai Union continued to bleed Red Lobster, imposing more cuts and loading it up with more debts financed by yet another private equity giant, Fortress Investment Group.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/17
Dayen's 2020 must-read book *Monopolized* describes the way that monopolies proliferate, using the US health care industry as a case-study:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/29/fractal-bullshit/#dayenu
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/18
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/19
Today, Americans pay more for worse healthcare, which is delivered by health workers who get paid less and work under worse conditions.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/20
That's a pretty good model for understanding what's happened to Red Lobster: monopoly power and monopsony power begat more monopolies and monoposonies in the supply chain.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/21
Decent, no-frills family restaurant are good. Great, even. I'm not the world's greatest fan of chain restaurants, but I'm also comfortably middle-class and not struggling to afford to give my family a nice night out at a place with good food, friendly staff and reasonable prices.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/22
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/eof
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-lost-cause-4
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VulcanTourist [MOVED]
•If we want to correct corporate and finance misdeeds, we need to focus first on reforming the legal structure that allegedly keeps them grounded to society but doesn't.
#SociopathProvingGround
Rita
•Durrandon
•Kind of feeling seen here.
Cory Doctorowudostępnił to.