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Archive for the 'The family business' Category

Aaron Rents revs up the motor…

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

Three years ago, we footnoted about Aaron Rent’s (RNT) sponsorship of two race car drivers who happened to be sons of a senior executive, Bill Butler, Jr. That year, the company spent about $260K on the program, which prompted me to award Aaron’s footnote of the year for 2006.
Fast forward three years to the proxy [...]

Dear Martha Stewart…

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

We don’t normally write posts in letter format. But we were inspired to do so by the two letters that Martha Stewart Omnimedia (MSO) added to its recent proxy statement. The letters — one from Executive Chairman Charles Koppelman, Co-CEOs Wenda Harris Millard and Robin Marino and a second from Martha Stewart — were so [...]

One last Christmas gift…

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

Yesterday, Movado (MOV) announced that its longtime Chairman and CEO, Gedalio Grinberg, had died on Sunday, which reminded me of this agreement that we spotted in an 8K filed just before the Christmas break when all sorts of stuff was buried.
While it’s fairly common to include survivor benefits, especially for a founder of a company, [...]

What are they shopping for at Dillard’s?

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

Earlier this week, Barrington Capital and Newcastle Partners sent this letter to Dillard’s (DDS) asking to inspect the company’s records and books, including board minutes, corporate jet records and records related to transactions with various members of the Dillard family. The letter was virtually identical to this one sent back in March.
While the story was [...]

Too much BBQ for Pilgrim’s Pride…

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

There’s something about this song that I first heard in Florida called  “Too Much BBQ” by (mute the sound on your computer first) Big Twist and the Mellow Fellows that made me think of the bankruptcy filing by Pilgrim’s Pride (PPC) yesterday.
How so? Because we’ve footnoted Pilgrim’s Pride twice over the past few years (see [...]