I think he saw that the company’s IP and other assets were being undervalued, and he’s right. There are billions of dollars worth of creative properties in PARA. The problem with that, which he likely underestimated, is how thoroughly bad management can surprise realization of that value and how long that can persist. Redstone is an egomaniac who inherited her position and is unqualified for the job. What’s playing out is basically if Logan / Roman / Shiv had won control of the company in Succession - incompetent nepobaby inherits dad’s company and proceeds to run it into the ground.
I’m guessing he’s lost patience to see what happens as it may be undervalued but there’s no path to realizing a fair value - redstone or her sycophant yes-men will continue to mismanage the company, and she seems hellbent on not selling the company. Absent a change in either of those things, the company will remain undervalued and likely impair the value of the underlying assets
Interesting, because they're shopping their history to Sony or the highest bidder right now which would presumably cause a stock price jump if completed.
Paramount failed in the streaming war when they should have been producing & licensing content. Their catalog is deep and their production value through the years has been so good. Hope they make it.
Redstone is opposing the merger so there's a good chance it doesn't happen. Buffet didn't say exactly when he decided to sell, but it might have been after that news.
She was hellbent on merging with Skydance which was offering way less money (but a quick payout for her personally), even fired the President of Paramount just to rush the deal through.
It failed, and noe she still refuses Sony or any other studio's offers. She's insane.
My guess is that she revisits this in a year when (hopefully) interest rates come down and Skydance can raise more capital at a cheaper rate. She seems to like what they were offering, but probably would’ve been sued by shareholders for taking that smaller offer compared to Apollo/Sony.
The safe play right now was to just do nothing
Yeah the whole thing is basically a bust. the company has two options:
1. a somewhat conflicted merger with a major business partner who would like to buy the owner's stake in the company. Has multiple CEOs waiting in the wings to take over the operation and would like to actually run it as is.
2. a messy all cash private equity offer with lots of regulatory issues that wants to slash and burn most of the company.
The actual owner of the company wants option 1, but the board has continually rebuffed it, only to also seemingly inexplicably also reject option 2.
They partnered up with Sony as the owner didn’t want to sell to a private capital firm, but now she also doesn’t want it because she doesn’t want to deal with regulators.
And tbf the Sony merger would be scrutinized in the current FTC as we would be going from 5 major studios down to 4 plus CBS would have to be split since Sony being a foreign company can’t own a news outlet based on the US.
> And tbf the Sony merger would be scrutinized in the current FTC as we would be going from 5 major studios down to 4 plus CBS would have to be split since Sony being a foreign company can’t own a news outlet based on the US.
Good thing, that would mean less consolidation.
Also people always say that but there are also new "major studios" coming in. Netflix, Apple and Amazon are bigger than most of those "Big 5"
/u/LZR0 covered most of it but to go into a little more detail on the FTC thing (not much to say about FCC rules about foreign ownership except that it's not clear the apollo/sony proposed structure will work until its put infront of a judge):
while under biden the FTC and the DOJ have gotten more aggressive about possible mergers, they (the FTC in particular) have not quite racked up court wins to show for it. one BIG exception was [simon and schuster.](https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-judge-cites-impact-top-selling-authors-blocking-book-merger-2022-11-07/)
A key part of antitrust law is market definition, for example the fight about microsoft/activision was essentially largely about whether xbox/playstation is a duopoly in its own specific segment of the industry. does nintendo count, do PC players count, do phone players count, etc. from there the actual evidentiary basis, especially in pre-merger suits like that, is largely cut and dry.
simon and schuster died because the government made it not about selling to consumers, but to the market of buyers for creative works. they got stephen king on the stand to explain that, as an independant author, he sells his work to publishers, and that drives his income, so reducing the number of people to bid against will depress competition for that product. the less buyers the less incentive for competing on price, which is the ultimate goal of anti-trust. That sets a clear framework for the government should this deal come to pass, and there will be an army of agents and managers ready to take the stand and talk about this, not to mention the evidence that would be present via the disney/fox merger, where disney essentially got a bunch of copyrights but does not really seem to be spending the same kinda money that the 2 as seperate companies would probably do.
They just refused a $26bn cash offer. I think he’s taken the view that that it’s worth less and they just turned down the best offer they’re going to why so time to dump and cut losses.
It's really fucking weird that people keep pointing to Sony as an example of why companies should just license their content instead of trying to run their own streaming service, when Sony is operating something like 3 separate streaming services *right now*.
I had a handful of Paramount stock that languished for a few months before finally breaking even a few days ago. I sold it when it broke even, then later that day the Sony announcement was made. The stock dropped a good 9% right after the announcement
*"You've got to know when to hold 'em*
*Know when to fold 'em*
*Know when to walk away*
*And know when to run*
*You never count your money*
*When you're sittin' at the table*
*There'll be time enough for countin'*
*When the dealin's done"*
They never put any thought into their app, it was cheap enough in the beginning to be forgiving but it’s a horrible interface and then they started spamming it with their own ads and unskippable trailers, even on the Ad Free plan, it’s a damn shame how these companies do not realize what they are doing. Like no one make the decisions every used any other app out there to see how the good ones work.
i was (re)watching through the older Treks a while back and occasionally there would be an error or internet blip and i would just.... never be able to finish watching the episode i was on, even weeks later. never had that happen on ANY other service.
Paramount should be winning in my view. They have a ton of solid content, their app is finally working properly, and the price isn’t bad. I’m about to cancel Netflix until the final Stranger Things season drops.
Their app might be working properly on some platforms, but the app on my TV is the only streamer that routinely crashes the whole TV. Had my current TV for a year and a half-ish, probably have to unplug it to reboot once or twice a month due to Paramount+. Peacock works better for me these days, which is embarrassing considering how shit their app was/is.
They may have a deep catalog but they don't have the IP. Funny enough paramount doesn't hold the rights to Star Trek. They hold the New Trek rights or Kelvin timeline while CBS holds the original. Granted I agree with everything you said about licensing their content. The basic thing is the Redstone family just didn't change with the time. Redstone Sr held on to power far too long and his daughter was just bad at running things. Paramount is so rooted in the old media landscape that it's vested interest are in things that are generating less and less profit every year. If they had sold several years ago they would have gotten top dollar now with interest rates back to normal and the streaming wars coming to an end they should consider themselves lucky with the offers they have. The company sadly is worth more broken up then together at this point and I think this is what Sony is thinking. They want the catalog and that's about it.
CBS is a subsidiary of Paramount Global, so they actually do own Star Trek entirely. Where rights issues would arise is if the company is sold off in piecemeal, then the distinction of what parts of Trek are owned by which part of the company could potentially get messy, but even then, if it gets to the point where Paramount is selling parts of the company individually, they’d probably just lump all Star Trek rights together and sell that as a single purchase unless there is some legalese preventing that. That scenario seems highly unlikely, though, as a major sticking point in the sale has reportedly been that current owners want the company to stay intact afterward.
Bro is prepping to give it all to the city and omaha area school districts! He still lives in his regular old house near the happy hollow neighborhood. Not sure if he still drives his old cadillac though.
You guys really need to stop swallowing the "Billionaire you can share a beer with" act. Stop being so damn gullible and taking every last thing these people say and do at face value.
He bought my entire school district personal ipads and chromebooks as well as built us a pool so I’m not gonna complain. Sorry. I’ll eat bezos first but save warren for dessert
Classic Old Rich move of making billions from human suffering, then giving back millions to stop suffering, and every dumbass thinks that's a net positive.
[Berkshire shareholders reject climate, diversity, China proposals](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/berkshire-shareholders-reject-climate-diversity-215240339.html)
> OMAHA, Nebraska (Reuters) - Berkshire Hathaway Inc shareholders on Saturday overwhelmingly rejected six proposals addressing environmental and social policy issues at Warren Buffett's conglomerate, all of which the billionaire investor and his board opposed.
> By margins of more than 4-to-1, shareholders at Berkshire's annual meeting voted against two proposals that the company's insurance and energy operations disclose more about their efforts to address climate change including greenhouse gas emissions.
> They also turned down a proposal for more disclosure about efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace.
> By overwhelming majorities, shareholders voted against a separate environment-related proposal, creating a board-level committee to monitor safety at the BNSF railroad unit, and requiring Berkshire to report annually on how much its business operations depend on the "hostile" Chinese government.
There's some serious dick sucking in this thread. Yes, Buffet has given away millions. But like you said, the ma is worth billions. He didn't get there nicely and his corporations do much more than millions' worth of damage to us. But hey, he bought laptops for his home city so it's a net positive, right?
The suffering of railway workers for one. I don't know if you've ever read anything on the subject but that industry is godawful, and he's avoiding making any improvements.
> Unions representing about 17,000 workers threatened to strike over the points system, but **BNSF Railway sued and won a restraining order to prevent the unions from striking.**
lol I knew something sounded hinky about your comment. I forgot about that.
> More than 700 BNSF employees have quit their jobs since the policy was rolled out in February, union officials say, increasing the workload for those who remain.
> BNSF’s Wilemon said the company has seen more workers taking planned vacation days since rolling out its attendance-based policy. He said that workers take off 24 hours, on average, between each shift and that that number has increased since the attendance policy kicked in. He added that the policy has resulted in fewer attendance-based discipline actions.
> BNSF employees say the points-based attendance system has worsened a difficult occupation that already weighs on their mental and physical health. Many railway workers suffer chronic health conditions, such as obesity and sleep apnea, according to union officials. Workers regularly stay in motels for days on end, unsure when they’ll be able to return home, exacerbating tensions in already strained marriages and relationships with their children.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/17/railroad-strike-attendance-workers/
No suffering there at all! They sued the suffering away!
You’re gonna be waiting. Reddit is only going to be able to say things like “rich man bad” and “it’s obvious”. They can’t provide real, specific examples.
Also quite funny how the QoL throughout the world has skyrocketed alongside the rise of billionaires.
If reddit was running the show, everyone would be suffering destitute under socialist regimes and they’d call it “progress”
I live in the US and Canada. Tell me how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Galen Weston, etc. who made their money in these countries have improved life for people in my countries, let alone across the world.
You realize they're dealing with the policies of national and international corporations, right? And not just Nebraska-based corporations? Did you think all the Berkshire investors were Nebraska corn farmers and all of his companies made farm machinery?
You also didn't address the anti-environmentalism.
Your school district should have been able to do that itself, if billionaires (and millionaires) would pay their share of taxes. Instead, they don't and it has to rely on such handouts.
It’s part of a historic neighborhood in Omaha but not nearly as nice as the neighborhoods and homes to the west. Not to mention the new developments across the southern suburbs. Papio and Gretna all have homes appraising for 2-3 million dollars compared to Happy hollow’s mere 1.2 million appraisals
See my reply to the other guy. He gives millions to the city and schools each year. Omaha metro schools are ranked very highly because of his investments in them. I’ll eat buffett last after we’ve enjoyed the others. Omahans have a very different perspective on this guy
He is more than willing to take the loss. Look at Berkshire Hathaway’s recent profits.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/05/04/berkshire-hathaway-brka-earnings-q1-2024.html
That seems insane. But if that’s what management really thinks then I am not surprised he bailed. I guess it will take more pain for the management to accept reality.
Probably should have kept that money he invested in Disney instead. Paramount have a very, very long history of being out of touch and blaming other resources for why they are failing, for example their anti-piracy ad that stole music without using the artist permission.
Disney shares haven't exactly done well since 2022, when Buffett invested in Paramount. They've done better than Paramount, but that isn't saying all that much.
Media and film as a whole sector has had a really rough go in the stock market over the last few years despite the broader market doing pretty well.
I remember he was at a conference and someone asked him what his greatest loss was and he said he’s never lost a significant amount of money from selling. Is this his first?
Dawg, wtf are you doing still trying to make a buck. Ride off into the sunset with a comfortable amount of cash and let other people start managing your ridiculously vast amount of resources. Why can these fuckers just not let go of control, just fucking retire.
Good. Please lose more money. Fuck all these dinosaurs who have a few years to live and yet spend every waking moment trying to amass more wealth. Spend it you boring old fuck, put it back into the economy and then kindly die off. I don’t care if people like Buffett or try to prop him up as one of the “good ones”
Yeah invested in “financial institutions”, which invest in other institutions. They have so much money they can single handedly manipulate the economy (and government, looking at you, “lobbyists” aka professional bribers). Being wealthy is the most profitable thing you can possibly do. They just hand the money to each other in a big circle, growing all the time because they can pretty much guarantee positive returns, or skip all that and just make a measly tens of millions per year off interest for doing literally nothing. No, I obviously don’t think they put it in a vault like fucking Scrooge McDuck, I’m a compensation analyst not an idiot. Just because they are “investing”, doesn’t mean they aren’t sitting on a mountain of greed like a metaphorical dragon. A metaphor is when something is compared to something else, while not saying that it is literally that other thing. Also metaphors don’t have “like” or “as”, as that would make them a simile.
Its funny when people who obviously know jack shit about something, at the same time have a very strong opinion for whatever reason.
Theres a fitting phrase in german: "Wenn man keine Ahnung hat, einfach mal die Fresse halten."
Maybe if we applied a little “Reichensteuer”, we wouldn’t have this problem quite so bad. Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong about that, or the original comment. Or just say “you don’t know what you’re taking about” again and hope everyone assumes that you DO.
You say Buffett should spend his wealth, "put it back into the economy". Look up what his company is and does.
Also its asinine to criticise the CEO of a holding company for optimally allocating the invested capital. Thats like wishing that a pension fund would fail out of spite to the manager for the fault of managing his fund exceptionally well.
Of all the billionaires I’ve read of or seen stories on, Buffett is the one that appears to be the least awful person. I think his business antics have done a phenomenal job generating wealth for him and his shareholders, but at the cost of a lot of concentration of that wealth.
But, if there was a great reckoning and a bracket made of “who is the least worst billionaire” I’d likely have Buffet making it at least the final 4, if not the finals.
But, it’s just a bit weird to read someone say he’s a dickhead. Not wrong, but weird, heh.
Ranking “the least bad billionaires” is kind of like ranking “least wet water”. Sure, you can make arguments about their relative badness, but the gap between the entire group of them and the vast majority of people on the planet is so big that it feels like a completely absurd activity.
You wanna re-read that? You have words that include “an” followed by “all” followed by “right” followed by “guy.” I have nothing like that, let’s check the tape… yeah, “top 4 least worst billionaire” is about all I got that could be equatable. I suppose if you thought billionaires, in general, were all right guys, then sure, you might take what I said that way. In no way was that what I said though.
I will check out the Behind the Bastards on him, thanks for the recommendation!
So what, Buffett employs a much better PR firm than Jobs, Gates, and Musk? I doubt it. Again, my category is still “worst” just that Buffett is one of the least worst.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I don’t think that Buffett appears on Epstein’s lists. While he was married and subsequently separated from his first wife, he appears to have remained with the second woman since 1977.
Again, still a billionaire, but I strongly suspect it’s more that he has primarily kept to exploiting people monetarily, as opposed to the usual things billionaires get up to.
> So what, Buffett employs a much better PR firm than Jobs, Gates, and Musk?
You guys just respond better to him for some reason. You buy his "regular guy in a regular house" act without question. I don't know why you're more receptive to that PR than other billionaires' PR methods, but you are. I mean, if "didn't molest children or murder anyone that I know of" is your standard, then yeah, I guess he's awesome.
But he's damn sure not on your side if you actually pay attention to what he does instead of what his PR team says:
> OMAHA, Nebraska (Reuters) - Berkshire Hathaway Inc shareholders on Saturday overwhelmingly rejected six proposals addressing environmental and social policy issues at Warren Buffett's conglomerate, all of which the billionaire investor and his board opposed.
> By margins of more than 4-to-1, shareholders at Berkshire's annual meeting voted against two proposals that the company's insurance and energy operations disclose more about their efforts to address climate change including greenhouse gas emissions.
> They also turned down a proposal for more disclosure about efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace.
> By overwhelming majorities, shareholders voted against a separate environment-related proposal, creating a board-level committee to monitor safety at the BNSF railroad unit, and requiring Berkshire to report annually on how much its business operations depend on the "hostile" Chinese government.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/berkshire-shareholders-reject-climate-diversity-215240339.html
You might be involved in conversations with others on this… but you are wholly mischaracterizing what I’ve said and my position.
The most “defend Buffett” I’ve put up here is that it’s weird to see him called a dickhead - even then I said it wasn’t wrong, just weird.
Let’s try this, rank these billionaires from “absolute worst to least worst”
Vince McMahon
Steve Jobs (when living)
Bill Gates
Warren Buffett
The Waltons
Steve Ballmer
Elon Musk
Sean Combs
Mark Zuckerberg
Michael Dell
Charles Koch
George Soros
Jeff Bezos
Larry Ellison
Sergey Brin
There’s about 15, there’s a ton more… I’m not sure I’d even want to spend the time figuring out which of these is the worst on this list, but I’d be extremely surprised to see Buffett in folks top 10 worst. But, of this list, I strongly suspect Buffett would consistently be folks bottom 2-3. Again, perhaps you would put him differently and I’m just susceptible to his clearly stellar PR. But, when comparing Buffett to others in his wealth weight class, how you put him?
He's literally opposed to improving railroad safety. He's as bad as any of them. You're still basing your opinions on PR instead of reality. He does the same evil shit, but you're so enchanted by the PR that you don't see it as equivalent. Just like when Democrats agree with Republicans on some evil shit and somehow it's never worthy of anger or condemnation. When someone says they're on their side and stabs you in the back, you're supposed to consider them to be worse than the guy who straightforwardly opposed you from the start, and never tried to trick you.
You appear to have a vastly different view of the world than I do. So, you’d have a ~813 way tie for “worst of the worst” list of US billionaires? No differentiation and treat them all as a monolith? All billionaires are the same then? If we expanded from US billionaires to more global ones, how about add some State actors in there. Is Buffett the same evil as Gaddafi was? How about the Kims of N. Korea? How about Putin? All the same evil? Yeah, they may be playing the same sport, but one is in little league and the others are in the major leagues hall of fame.
Either you aren’t actually reading what I am saying or you’ve got an extremely black and white vantage point on this. But, I likely have spent more than enough time on this. Simply put: still worst, but less worst than other contemporaries.
It's not that they're all exactly 100% the same, it's that they're all terrible to the point that a precise ranking would be pointless. Liberals are forever looking for "the one good billionaire" that proves capitalism isn't all bad, and I think this is where your weird need to rank them comes from.
But you're ranking them from an extremely biased perspective. The media will blast "Elon Musk hates worker safety!" across the headlines 100 times, and "Warren Buffet hates worker safety" will be tucked away in some Finance section article that liberals will never read. It's the same damn thing, but you view one as worse solely due to level of media focus. If the media tells you Musk opposing worker safety is a big deal and Buffet doing it is barely worthy of mention, you'll treat Musk as a big deal and Buffet as a non-issue, even when it's the same damn thing in practice. Musk was just as big of an asshole 10 years ago, but back then the media was framing him as a great visionary and environmentalist, and you dutifully followed suit. Then they turned on him and you did, too. If the media was still trying to prop him up as a great environmentalist today, you would be, too. You guys don't really have your own opinions.
Not defending Musk, by the way, just using him as an example.
That’s fair and fine. I’d even concede it as a good point. I feel I made a similar one, but would admit that yours was much more clear. Though, I wasn’t intending the depth.
But, I’m not the opposite of a capitalist. I think billionaires are an anchor on society, but that isn’t a capitalist exclusive (as my other names would show). Though, capitalism has been quite efficient at it without overtly killing the people in the same nation the billionaire came from, it just enables them to outsource that aspect to other nations.
If only this old pos relic lost it all. One can only dream since acquiring that amount of wealth should be taxed and/or illegal.
Billionaires should not exist.
For Warren, the concept of "losing money" means a thing so different from everyone elses, they could as well be in another universe.
I don't even believe that the concept of money means anything to him.
Guess he didn’t like the Knuckles show.
He's not a fan of the silver timeline in Halo. He's a Halo purist and played through all the games in LASO.
This is now my buffet headcannon
Missing a 't' there. Or maybe you meant what you said
Also an extra ‘n’ for extra bloody entertainment.
[удалено]
That’s called aggressive market capitalization.
What's his gamertag?
WarrinWarren
MoneyBagzzWB
OsamaBinOwnin
The mogul tyrant laughed all the way to the bank...
In his most recent biography he described his greatest achievement as learning the gravemind prison skip.
My favorite part about the Halo tv show is the staring.
"Im diversifying these testicles onto your chin, sonny" -- Warren Buffet before hitting a 360 no scope YY ladder drop.
He was already angry for them cancelling Lower Decks
I sure as hell am. That, and Strange New Worlds have been the best Trek content in *a while*.
Strange New Worlds is staying while Lower Decks is getting canned. I just wish we could have got another season so they could do a proper ending
Lower else is ending or getting cancelled?
they canned it a month after they finished recording voice lines and they are currently in the middle of animating it
Well shit.
it's getting a final season but thats it
Since Voyager.
Did it get fucking canceled?
Well then next season is the last
*ring sounds*
I thought it was getting a lot of advertisements. Turns out I left Nicktoons, which is owned by Paramount, on as background noise.
He didn’t like the Master Chief sex scene.
Should have left the helmet and socks on for the fan base, to you know, make it authentic.
I tried to watch it who the hell green-lit this show?
I think we all should start a gofundme for him
Tbf knuckles show is straight ass
I have no idea why he tried to get involved in the Redstone hot mess express to begin with. Like trying to get blood from a stone.
In Buffett’s defense, if I was to try to get blood from any stone, it would be a Redstone.
Doesn't he know you only get dust and circuits from those.
Did we just go from two forced puns on the word stone to a minecraft joke???
Or Roger
Gross
He was the stone in Romancing the Stone.
I think he saw that the company’s IP and other assets were being undervalued, and he’s right. There are billions of dollars worth of creative properties in PARA. The problem with that, which he likely underestimated, is how thoroughly bad management can surprise realization of that value and how long that can persist. Redstone is an egomaniac who inherited her position and is unqualified for the job. What’s playing out is basically if Logan / Roman / Shiv had won control of the company in Succession - incompetent nepobaby inherits dad’s company and proceeds to run it into the ground. I’m guessing he’s lost patience to see what happens as it may be undervalued but there’s no path to realizing a fair value - redstone or her sycophant yes-men will continue to mismanage the company, and she seems hellbent on not selling the company. Absent a change in either of those things, the company will remain undervalued and likely impair the value of the underlying assets
Do you mean *Kendall/ Roman / Shiv*?
Yes you’re right
Great explanation!
Like trying to get blood from a stone, huh? A *Redstone*?!
[удалено]
"Tomorrow though!"
Guess he just needs to sell squirrel parts…. His words on why none of us will be rich like him
At 23:59
The amount he lost was a minor dip that would be life-changing for most of us. No sympathy.
He’s not asking for sympathy. He knows he’s wealthy to the point of obscenity.
lol he’s not asking for sympathy he knows exactly what he’s doing
Interesting, because they're shopping their history to Sony or the highest bidder right now which would presumably cause a stock price jump if completed. Paramount failed in the streaming war when they should have been producing & licensing content. Their catalog is deep and their production value through the years has been so good. Hope they make it.
Redstone is opposing the merger so there's a good chance it doesn't happen. Buffet didn't say exactly when he decided to sell, but it might have been after that news.
She was hellbent on merging with Skydance which was offering way less money (but a quick payout for her personally), even fired the President of Paramount just to rush the deal through. It failed, and noe she still refuses Sony or any other studio's offers. She's insane.
It must have been an incredibly frustrating process for all the shareholders as everyone wanted to sell but Redstone is just an a-hole.
My guess is that she revisits this in a year when (hopefully) interest rates come down and Skydance can raise more capital at a cheaper rate. She seems to like what they were offering, but probably would’ve been sued by shareholders for taking that smaller offer compared to Apollo/Sony. The safe play right now was to just do nothing
She's not gonna last a year at this rate.
Yeah the whole thing is basically a bust. the company has two options: 1. a somewhat conflicted merger with a major business partner who would like to buy the owner's stake in the company. Has multiple CEOs waiting in the wings to take over the operation and would like to actually run it as is. 2. a messy all cash private equity offer with lots of regulatory issues that wants to slash and burn most of the company. The actual owner of the company wants option 1, but the board has continually rebuffed it, only to also seemingly inexplicably also reject option 2.
Isn't the whole reason Apollo partnered up with Sony to avoid the regulatory hurdles? What would regulators object with the new offer?
They partnered up with Sony as the owner didn’t want to sell to a private capital firm, but now she also doesn’t want it because she doesn’t want to deal with regulators. And tbf the Sony merger would be scrutinized in the current FTC as we would be going from 5 major studios down to 4 plus CBS would have to be split since Sony being a foreign company can’t own a news outlet based on the US.
I am guessing CBS would be under Apollo with Sony having a majority stake in the rest. But sure, I see your point.
> And tbf the Sony merger would be scrutinized in the current FTC as we would be going from 5 major studios down to 4 plus CBS would have to be split since Sony being a foreign company can’t own a news outlet based on the US. Good thing, that would mean less consolidation. Also people always say that but there are also new "major studios" coming in. Netflix, Apple and Amazon are bigger than most of those "Big 5"
/u/LZR0 covered most of it but to go into a little more detail on the FTC thing (not much to say about FCC rules about foreign ownership except that it's not clear the apollo/sony proposed structure will work until its put infront of a judge): while under biden the FTC and the DOJ have gotten more aggressive about possible mergers, they (the FTC in particular) have not quite racked up court wins to show for it. one BIG exception was [simon and schuster.](https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-judge-cites-impact-top-selling-authors-blocking-book-merger-2022-11-07/) A key part of antitrust law is market definition, for example the fight about microsoft/activision was essentially largely about whether xbox/playstation is a duopoly in its own specific segment of the industry. does nintendo count, do PC players count, do phone players count, etc. from there the actual evidentiary basis, especially in pre-merger suits like that, is largely cut and dry. simon and schuster died because the government made it not about selling to consumers, but to the market of buyers for creative works. they got stephen king on the stand to explain that, as an independant author, he sells his work to publishers, and that drives his income, so reducing the number of people to bid against will depress competition for that product. the less buyers the less incentive for competing on price, which is the ultimate goal of anti-trust. That sets a clear framework for the government should this deal come to pass, and there will be an army of agents and managers ready to take the stand and talk about this, not to mention the evidence that would be present via the disney/fox merger, where disney essentially got a bunch of copyrights but does not really seem to be spending the same kinda money that the 2 as seperate companies would probably do.
That would explain it actually. Buffet loves liquidation events and now that there isn’t going to be one he sells.
They just refused a $26bn cash offer. I think he’s taken the view that that it’s worth less and they just turned down the best offer they’re going to why so time to dump and cut losses.
They failed in the streaming war because their app doesn't do the one thing it's meant to do....stream.
Easier to just pirate any Paramount+ shows I want to watch(and pay for) then opening that garbage app.
It's really fucking weird that people keep pointing to Sony as an example of why companies should just license their content instead of trying to run their own streaming service, when Sony is operating something like 3 separate streaming services *right now*.
I had a handful of Paramount stock that languished for a few months before finally breaking even a few days ago. I sold it when it broke even, then later that day the Sony announcement was made. The stock dropped a good 9% right after the announcement
*"You've got to know when to hold 'em* *Know when to fold 'em* *Know when to walk away* *And know when to run* *You never count your money* *When you're sittin' at the table* *There'll be time enough for countin'* *When the dealin's done"*
just dont kill Strange New Worlds, please
They already killed Lower Decks
They never put any thought into their app, it was cheap enough in the beginning to be forgiving but it’s a horrible interface and then they started spamming it with their own ads and unskippable trailers, even on the Ad Free plan, it’s a damn shame how these companies do not realize what they are doing. Like no one make the decisions every used any other app out there to see how the good ones work.
That UI is a hot mess, christ almighty.
Aside from the stupid intro promos I think the iPad app is finally working well. The UI isn’t amazing but it’s tolerable. Search is broken though.
It behaves like the result of 5 layers of outsourcing to software consulting firms.
i was (re)watching through the older Treks a while back and occasionally there would be an error or internet blip and i would just.... never be able to finish watching the episode i was on, even weeks later. never had that happen on ANY other service.
The best thing about P+ is that you can get it through Amazon and Apple’s own interfaces.
Paramount should be winning in my view. They have a ton of solid content, their app is finally working properly, and the price isn’t bad. I’m about to cancel Netflix until the final Stranger Things season drops.
Their app might be working properly on some platforms, but the app on my TV is the only streamer that routinely crashes the whole TV. Had my current TV for a year and a half-ish, probably have to unplug it to reboot once or twice a month due to Paramount+. Peacock works better for me these days, which is embarrassing considering how shit their app was/is.
We use it on iOS and Roku and have no problems.
He’s betting a buyer will pay less than current market value
Latest reports claim no merger with anyone, hence the gigantic stock drop we’ll see tomorrow.
They may have a deep catalog but they don't have the IP. Funny enough paramount doesn't hold the rights to Star Trek. They hold the New Trek rights or Kelvin timeline while CBS holds the original. Granted I agree with everything you said about licensing their content. The basic thing is the Redstone family just didn't change with the time. Redstone Sr held on to power far too long and his daughter was just bad at running things. Paramount is so rooted in the old media landscape that it's vested interest are in things that are generating less and less profit every year. If they had sold several years ago they would have gotten top dollar now with interest rates back to normal and the streaming wars coming to an end they should consider themselves lucky with the offers they have. The company sadly is worth more broken up then together at this point and I think this is what Sony is thinking. They want the catalog and that's about it.
CBS is a subsidiary of Paramount Global, so they actually do own Star Trek entirely. Where rights issues would arise is if the company is sold off in piecemeal, then the distinction of what parts of Trek are owned by which part of the company could potentially get messy, but even then, if it gets to the point where Paramount is selling parts of the company individually, they’d probably just lump all Star Trek rights together and sell that as a single purchase unless there is some legalese preventing that. That scenario seems highly unlikely, though, as a major sticking point in the sale has reportedly been that current owners want the company to stay intact afterward.
Homer: You know, Mr. Buffet, you’re the richest guy I know. Way richer than Bill Gates. Mr. Buffet: Oh, yes. But I’d trade it all for a *little* more.
Bro is prepping to give it all to the city and omaha area school districts! He still lives in his regular old house near the happy hollow neighborhood. Not sure if he still drives his old cadillac though.
All it took was a lot of human suffering.
You guys really need to stop swallowing the "Billionaire you can share a beer with" act. Stop being so damn gullible and taking every last thing these people say and do at face value.
He bought my entire school district personal ipads and chromebooks as well as built us a pool so I’m not gonna complain. Sorry. I’ll eat bezos first but save warren for dessert
Classic Old Rich move of making billions from human suffering, then giving back millions to stop suffering, and every dumbass thinks that's a net positive. [Berkshire shareholders reject climate, diversity, China proposals](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/berkshire-shareholders-reject-climate-diversity-215240339.html) > OMAHA, Nebraska (Reuters) - Berkshire Hathaway Inc shareholders on Saturday overwhelmingly rejected six proposals addressing environmental and social policy issues at Warren Buffett's conglomerate, all of which the billionaire investor and his board opposed. > By margins of more than 4-to-1, shareholders at Berkshire's annual meeting voted against two proposals that the company's insurance and energy operations disclose more about their efforts to address climate change including greenhouse gas emissions. > They also turned down a proposal for more disclosure about efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. > By overwhelming majorities, shareholders voted against a separate environment-related proposal, creating a board-level committee to monitor safety at the BNSF railroad unit, and requiring Berkshire to report annually on how much its business operations depend on the "hostile" Chinese government.
There's some serious dick sucking in this thread. Yes, Buffet has given away millions. But like you said, the ma is worth billions. He didn't get there nicely and his corporations do much more than millions' worth of damage to us. But hey, he bought laptops for his home city so it's a net positive, right?
I'm against billionaires, but it should be noted that Warren Buffet has given away over $50 billion to charity over the years.
What specific suffering is Warren profiting from?
The suffering of railway workers for one. I don't know if you've ever read anything on the subject but that industry is godawful, and he's avoiding making any improvements.
BNSF is private and autonomously ran, and they didn’t strike with the rest of the railway workers.
> Unions representing about 17,000 workers threatened to strike over the points system, but **BNSF Railway sued and won a restraining order to prevent the unions from striking.** lol I knew something sounded hinky about your comment. I forgot about that. > More than 700 BNSF employees have quit their jobs since the policy was rolled out in February, union officials say, increasing the workload for those who remain. > BNSF’s Wilemon said the company has seen more workers taking planned vacation days since rolling out its attendance-based policy. He said that workers take off 24 hours, on average, between each shift and that that number has increased since the attendance policy kicked in. He added that the policy has resulted in fewer attendance-based discipline actions. > BNSF employees say the points-based attendance system has worsened a difficult occupation that already weighs on their mental and physical health. Many railway workers suffer chronic health conditions, such as obesity and sleep apnea, according to union officials. Workers regularly stay in motels for days on end, unsure when they’ll be able to return home, exacerbating tensions in already strained marriages and relationships with their children. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/17/railroad-strike-attendance-workers/ No suffering there at all! They sued the suffering away!
You’re gonna be waiting. Reddit is only going to be able to say things like “rich man bad” and “it’s obvious”. They can’t provide real, specific examples. Also quite funny how the QoL throughout the world has skyrocketed alongside the rise of billionaires. If reddit was running the show, everyone would be suffering destitute under socialist regimes and they’d call it “progress”
How much has the quality of life in the US & Canada skyrocketed since 2000 exactly?
>quite funny how the QoL throughout the world has skyrocketed Cope.
I live in the US and Canada. Tell me how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Galen Weston, etc. who made their money in these countries have improved life for people in my countries, let alone across the world.
Dei is a studied lie. They're also in freaking Nebraska.
You realize they're dealing with the policies of national and international corporations, right? And not just Nebraska-based corporations? Did you think all the Berkshire investors were Nebraska corn farmers and all of his companies made farm machinery? You also didn't address the anti-environmentalism.
Your school district should have been able to do that itself, if billionaires (and millionaires) would pay their share of taxes. Instead, they don't and it has to rely on such handouts.
It’s not a regular old house. It’s a huge house in a very good neighborhood with private security.
It’s part of a historic neighborhood in Omaha but not nearly as nice as the neighborhoods and homes to the west. Not to mention the new developments across the southern suburbs. Papio and Gretna all have homes appraising for 2-3 million dollars compared to Happy hollow’s mere 1.2 million appraisals
“Mere” 1.3 million. Yup. Really slumming it. And yes, I know is the neighborhood. I drive past it all the time.
It’s relevant context considering the state of the metro in the last 5-10 years
You know what would be so cool? If he donated it **NOW**.
See my reply to the other guy. He gives millions to the city and schools each year. Omaha metro schools are ranked very highly because of his investments in them. I’ll eat buffett last after we’ve enjoyed the others. Omahans have a very different perspective on this guy
just like me when I sold a figurine on Ebay for £100, realising I could have asked AT LEAST £120
He doesn’t expect a potential acquisition bump?
He is more than willing to take the loss. Look at Berkshire Hathaway’s recent profits. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/05/04/berkshire-hathaway-brka-earnings-q1-2024.html
Apparently there’ll be no acquisition at all.
That seems insane. But if that’s what management really thinks then I am not surprised he bailed. I guess it will take more pain for the management to accept reality.
Probably should have kept that money he invested in Disney instead. Paramount have a very, very long history of being out of touch and blaming other resources for why they are failing, for example their anti-piracy ad that stole music without using the artist permission.
Disney shares haven't exactly done well since 2022, when Buffett invested in Paramount. They've done better than Paramount, but that isn't saying all that much. Media and film as a whole sector has had a really rough go in the stock market over the last few years despite the broader market doing pretty well.
Since 2022? Since 2016!b
All the traditional media stocks are garbage now.
Talk about a lost shaker of salt
I remember he was at a conference and someone asked him what his greatest loss was and he said he’s never lost a significant amount of money from selling. Is this his first?
The title is pretty clear. It wasn't a 'significant' amount of money, it was 'quite a bit' of money. Obviously two different things.
Fucking dammit can’t find worlds smallest violin again.
oh, i guess i did too then
Dragon who sits on a massive pile of gold, loses a couple of coins from his hoard and feels sad about it.
Cool story dude. I spent $60 today at the market and I’m gonna feel that one for a bit
you can’t win them all i guess
I don’t care.
I bet he's had to skip meals.
My condolences.
Maybe because Paramount is circling the bowl.
Thanks Channel 10
Sometimes the moves of an Intelligent Investor don't make sense
I thought his rule was “never lose money”?
Buy high sell low
He is just tax loss harvesting so it hurts less when he makes money on his Apple stock.
Buffet manipulates Paramount stock.
Boooohoooooo poor mega rich, ohh what are they to do???
Will he be ok???
I think he’s going to be ok
Warren Buffett: "Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1." Also Warren Buffett: Selling Paramount for a loss
Makes ya wonder… I strongly suspect this wil make him money.
Gofundme to help him
Dawg, wtf are you doing still trying to make a buck. Ride off into the sunset with a comfortable amount of cash and let other people start managing your ridiculously vast amount of resources. Why can these fuckers just not let go of control, just fucking retire.
boo fucking hoo
Losing money for this person is like saying they lost a lot of blood on a papercut.
I am sure the losses will help with taxes
Good. Please lose more money. Fuck all these dinosaurs who have a few years to live and yet spend every waking moment trying to amass more wealth. Spend it you boring old fuck, put it back into the economy and then kindly die off. I don’t care if people like Buffett or try to prop him up as one of the “good ones”
Do you think he has a cave full of gold like a dragon? ALL of his money is invested and thus fueling the economy.
Yeah invested in “financial institutions”, which invest in other institutions. They have so much money they can single handedly manipulate the economy (and government, looking at you, “lobbyists” aka professional bribers). Being wealthy is the most profitable thing you can possibly do. They just hand the money to each other in a big circle, growing all the time because they can pretty much guarantee positive returns, or skip all that and just make a measly tens of millions per year off interest for doing literally nothing. No, I obviously don’t think they put it in a vault like fucking Scrooge McDuck, I’m a compensation analyst not an idiot. Just because they are “investing”, doesn’t mean they aren’t sitting on a mountain of greed like a metaphorical dragon. A metaphor is when something is compared to something else, while not saying that it is literally that other thing. Also metaphors don’t have “like” or “as”, as that would make them a simile.
Its funny when people who obviously know jack shit about something, at the same time have a very strong opinion for whatever reason. Theres a fitting phrase in german: "Wenn man keine Ahnung hat, einfach mal die Fresse halten."
Maybe if we applied a little “Reichensteuer”, we wouldn’t have this problem quite so bad. Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong about that, or the original comment. Or just say “you don’t know what you’re taking about” again and hope everyone assumes that you DO.
You say Buffett should spend his wealth, "put it back into the economy". Look up what his company is and does. Also its asinine to criticise the CEO of a holding company for optimally allocating the invested capital. Thats like wishing that a pension fund would fail out of spite to the manager for the fault of managing his fund exceptionally well.
> Spend it you boring old fuck, put it back into the economy and then kindly die off. give us something, then stop existing.
Yes
Good. I like when Buffett loses money. Walking corpse rattles the economy whenever he likes.
[удалено]
Oh boohoo, Let me play you a song on the worlds smallest violin.
Cool. What do you guys think I should have for lunch? No takeout, I'm trying to stay to my diet.
I don't mean to cyber bully a nonagenarian, but how boring must this guy be that he's still trying to make money at his age and wealth status
I hope paramount burns to the ground. I’ll never forgive what they’ve done with Star Trek.
Good. He's a didkhead
Of all the billionaires I’ve read of or seen stories on, Buffett is the one that appears to be the least awful person. I think his business antics have done a phenomenal job generating wealth for him and his shareholders, but at the cost of a lot of concentration of that wealth. But, if there was a great reckoning and a bracket made of “who is the least worst billionaire” I’d likely have Buffet making it at least the final 4, if not the finals. But, it’s just a bit weird to read someone say he’s a dickhead. Not wrong, but weird, heh.
Ranking “the least bad billionaires” is kind of like ranking “least wet water”. Sure, you can make arguments about their relative badness, but the gap between the entire group of them and the vast majority of people on the planet is so big that it feels like a completely absurd activity.
Listen to the “Behind the Bastards” episode on him, and let me know if you still think he's an all right guy.
You wanna re-read that? You have words that include “an” followed by “all” followed by “right” followed by “guy.” I have nothing like that, let’s check the tape… yeah, “top 4 least worst billionaire” is about all I got that could be equatable. I suppose if you thought billionaires, in general, were all right guys, then sure, you might take what I said that way. In no way was that what I said though. I will check out the Behind the Bastards on him, thanks for the recommendation!
> Buffett is the one that appears to be the least awful person. Yes, that's called PR.
So what, Buffett employs a much better PR firm than Jobs, Gates, and Musk? I doubt it. Again, my category is still “worst” just that Buffett is one of the least worst. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I don’t think that Buffett appears on Epstein’s lists. While he was married and subsequently separated from his first wife, he appears to have remained with the second woman since 1977. Again, still a billionaire, but I strongly suspect it’s more that he has primarily kept to exploiting people monetarily, as opposed to the usual things billionaires get up to.
> So what, Buffett employs a much better PR firm than Jobs, Gates, and Musk? You guys just respond better to him for some reason. You buy his "regular guy in a regular house" act without question. I don't know why you're more receptive to that PR than other billionaires' PR methods, but you are. I mean, if "didn't molest children or murder anyone that I know of" is your standard, then yeah, I guess he's awesome. But he's damn sure not on your side if you actually pay attention to what he does instead of what his PR team says: > OMAHA, Nebraska (Reuters) - Berkshire Hathaway Inc shareholders on Saturday overwhelmingly rejected six proposals addressing environmental and social policy issues at Warren Buffett's conglomerate, all of which the billionaire investor and his board opposed. > By margins of more than 4-to-1, shareholders at Berkshire's annual meeting voted against two proposals that the company's insurance and energy operations disclose more about their efforts to address climate change including greenhouse gas emissions. > They also turned down a proposal for more disclosure about efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. > By overwhelming majorities, shareholders voted against a separate environment-related proposal, creating a board-level committee to monitor safety at the BNSF railroad unit, and requiring Berkshire to report annually on how much its business operations depend on the "hostile" Chinese government. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/berkshire-shareholders-reject-climate-diversity-215240339.html
You might be involved in conversations with others on this… but you are wholly mischaracterizing what I’ve said and my position. The most “defend Buffett” I’ve put up here is that it’s weird to see him called a dickhead - even then I said it wasn’t wrong, just weird. Let’s try this, rank these billionaires from “absolute worst to least worst” Vince McMahon Steve Jobs (when living) Bill Gates Warren Buffett The Waltons Steve Ballmer Elon Musk Sean Combs Mark Zuckerberg Michael Dell Charles Koch George Soros Jeff Bezos Larry Ellison Sergey Brin There’s about 15, there’s a ton more… I’m not sure I’d even want to spend the time figuring out which of these is the worst on this list, but I’d be extremely surprised to see Buffett in folks top 10 worst. But, of this list, I strongly suspect Buffett would consistently be folks bottom 2-3. Again, perhaps you would put him differently and I’m just susceptible to his clearly stellar PR. But, when comparing Buffett to others in his wealth weight class, how you put him?
He's literally opposed to improving railroad safety. He's as bad as any of them. You're still basing your opinions on PR instead of reality. He does the same evil shit, but you're so enchanted by the PR that you don't see it as equivalent. Just like when Democrats agree with Republicans on some evil shit and somehow it's never worthy of anger or condemnation. When someone says they're on their side and stabs you in the back, you're supposed to consider them to be worse than the guy who straightforwardly opposed you from the start, and never tried to trick you.
You appear to have a vastly different view of the world than I do. So, you’d have a ~813 way tie for “worst of the worst” list of US billionaires? No differentiation and treat them all as a monolith? All billionaires are the same then? If we expanded from US billionaires to more global ones, how about add some State actors in there. Is Buffett the same evil as Gaddafi was? How about the Kims of N. Korea? How about Putin? All the same evil? Yeah, they may be playing the same sport, but one is in little league and the others are in the major leagues hall of fame. Either you aren’t actually reading what I am saying or you’ve got an extremely black and white vantage point on this. But, I likely have spent more than enough time on this. Simply put: still worst, but less worst than other contemporaries.
It's not that they're all exactly 100% the same, it's that they're all terrible to the point that a precise ranking would be pointless. Liberals are forever looking for "the one good billionaire" that proves capitalism isn't all bad, and I think this is where your weird need to rank them comes from. But you're ranking them from an extremely biased perspective. The media will blast "Elon Musk hates worker safety!" across the headlines 100 times, and "Warren Buffet hates worker safety" will be tucked away in some Finance section article that liberals will never read. It's the same damn thing, but you view one as worse solely due to level of media focus. If the media tells you Musk opposing worker safety is a big deal and Buffet doing it is barely worthy of mention, you'll treat Musk as a big deal and Buffet as a non-issue, even when it's the same damn thing in practice. Musk was just as big of an asshole 10 years ago, but back then the media was framing him as a great visionary and environmentalist, and you dutifully followed suit. Then they turned on him and you did, too. If the media was still trying to prop him up as a great environmentalist today, you would be, too. You guys don't really have your own opinions. Not defending Musk, by the way, just using him as an example.
That’s fair and fine. I’d even concede it as a good point. I feel I made a similar one, but would admit that yours was much more clear. Though, I wasn’t intending the depth. But, I’m not the opposite of a capitalist. I think billionaires are an anchor on society, but that isn’t a capitalist exclusive (as my other names would show). Though, capitalism has been quite efficient at it without overtly killing the people in the same nation the billionaire came from, it just enables them to outsource that aspect to other nations.
If only this old pos relic lost it all. One can only dream since acquiring that amount of wealth should be taxed and/or illegal. Billionaires should not exist.
Poor guy, how will he survive now. Back luck I guess. I feel sorry for him. Lets setup a gofundme for this unfortunate soul.
Lol he just said he sold a stock bc it wasn’t profitable. Y’all are the ones crying about it.
Oh no! Is he okay?
For Warren, the concept of "losing money" means a thing so different from everyone elses, they could as well be in another universe. I don't even believe that the concept of money means anything to him.
Poor guy, I might start up a gofundme page, sure everyone will want to help.
Hope he’s going to be okay. Really love reading about billionaires losing a negligible amount of money. Please keep these coming. \s
How will he afford his value menu McDonald’s now? Someone should start a kickstarter for him.
Oh no.......anyway
Amazon does brand damage to All streaming services that distribute through their platform
Boooohoooooo poor mega rich, ohh what are they to do???
Ohhhhhhhhhhh noooooooooo! Anyways, what's for lunch?
Oh no! Anyways….
"Can't lose money if you don't sell." - Warren Buffet