Archives of “Publishing” tag

rss

Hertz wins approval to sell shares from bankruptcy judge

  
  Analysis
#  #  #  #  #  #

What a sordid saga

What a sordid saga
This Hertz fiasco is one of the most-sordid, depressing stories in market history. The company shares are worthless or close to it.
Yet somehow Robinhood traders were duped into pumping it.
The bond holders need to be made 100% whole before equity gets a sense. To give you a sesne of where that stands, the 2022 bonds are trading at 42-cents and that’s about par for the course. There is a total of 5.5B in debt outstanding overall so at 42% recovery, that’s something like a 2.3B shortfall.
That all needs to be paid out by liquidating whatever assets are left.
Somehow the equity is trading at $2.83 and the bondholders got the idea to sell $1 billion in shares, which was approximately 247m shares at the levels where they petitioned the judge. That compares to 142m currently outstanding in the entire float.
The bondholders have been honest with the judge. They told him “the common stock could ultimately be worthless.”
But, hey, if we offer $1B in shares and someone wants to buy them, who is the judge to stop it? The judge just agreed in a decision shortly after the close.
Now I don’t think they’ll actually be able to float that much stock at reasonable levels but in this market, you never know. In any case, that money will go straight from the stock holders to the bond holders who no-doubt can’t believe their good fortune.
The NYSE is already in the process of delisting HTZ.
On the one hand, this is hilarious. On the other, it says so many bad things about market functioning, the intellect of market participants and the overall madness of crowds; that it’s frightening.

Jeff Bezos announces $10 billion ‘earth fund’

  
  Analysis
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

Amazon founder on his plan to fight climate change

Jeff Bezos announced this on his instagram account:
Today, I’m thrilled to announce I am launching the Bezos Earth Fund.⁣⁣⁣
⁣⁣⁣
Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet. I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share. This global initiative will fund scientists, activists, NGOs – any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world. We can save Earth. It’s going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation states, global organizations, and individuals. ⁣⁣⁣
⁣⁣⁣
I’m committing $10 billion to start and will begin issuing grants this summer. Earth is the one thing we all have in common – let’s protect it, together.⁣⁣⁣
That’s a big chunk of money for the world’s richest man, but still only a dent in his $130.5B estimated net worth.

Apollo Robbins: The art of misdirection (Mind Blowing Video )

  
Analysis, Education, Video
#  #  #  #  #  #  #  #  #

Pickpocketing is a triumph of craft: a distracting touch with one hand, while the other hand gets to work, and the next thing you know … where’s my wallet? Apollo Robbins is a modern master of picking pockets, possessor of a subtle understanding of human attention, a taste for classic crime, and something he calls “grift sense” — which, as he told the New Yorker , is “stepping outside yourself and seeing through the other person’s eyes, thinking through the other person’s mind, but it’s happening on a subconscious level.”
 
Robbins makes a living as an entertainer, speaker and television personality, and he also is the founder of Whizmob Inc., a collective of misdirection experts — including reformed criminals — that schools military and law enforcement leaders in fraud and scam tactics. Robbins has also collaborated with academics in his quest to understand how awareness and attention can be manipulated. He’s co-author of a 2011 paper that explores something he noticed in his countless hours of practice: people’s eyes are more easily misdirected to follow a curve than a straight line. (more…)

Go to top