Wiki -

Roy Larson Raymond (April 15, 1947 – August 26, 1993) was an American businessman, who founded the Victoria's Secret lingerie retail store. To open the store, he took a $40,000 bank loan and borrowed $40,000 from relatives.

The company earned $500,000 in its first year.

In 1982, after five years of operation, Raymond sold the Victoria's Secret company, to Leslie Wexner, creator of The Limited, for $1 million.

By the early 1990s, Victoria's Secret had become the largest American lingerie retailer, topping $1 billion. In FY 2009, Victoria's Secret was worth over USD $5 billion.

On August 26, 1993, Raymond committed suicide by leaping off the Golden Gate Bridge at the age of 46.

You can bumhunt in cash.

Ouch. That's horrible.

Put me down for 10 bucks.

This is not apples to apples comparison with Guy. There is a big difference between selling your company outright vs selling a percentage.

Oh to see into the future!

how do you get rakeback when there isnt rake in the first place? lol

Laliberte is all about donating to worthy causes.. more so the Foundation these days than the highstakes community, but "rakeback on rake-free games" seems perfectly consistent.

exactly what i though whilst scrolling through the posts, i knew someone must of said it

wow that post is so ignorant. Why didn't he sold it when it was worth 1 million or 2 million or 20 million. Maybe I'm just jealous, your prob one of the smart guys that also always said why didn't Isildur stop when he was up like 9 million.

The real point is probably that money is not that important to Laliberte. He's an executive who travelled in younger years, lived in parks and at hostels while he learned his fire breathing, stilt-walking, acrobatic craft. He is more about creating a legacy through his company and helping foster a creative community. The Foundation is probably as effective, if not more, than the Peace Corps in enabling people at the grass roots. If he and his children, grandchildren, will never have to worry about where their next meal is coming from (or having access to clean water) then he is content to use the money in a positive direction. Respect for this and it is really something that a large multinational operation is still under private creative control.

That said, I hear there were some duds among the productions. Gotta keep your edge.

Would the orig entrepreneur have made it worth that much more? Couldn't he start competitor?

Similar situation to Tim horton's and his widow ($5mm to $5B) ... Tim died on bridge too

I'll always think of Raymond when I see the suicide barriers on the GGate bridge

Maybe guy can sell the whole thing and start a poker site..

Confirmed. Some of the finest mimes in the country work there.

maybe he can sell the whole thing and save the world, who knows? That has got to be easier than running a poker site.

he may not be stupid, but he sure is dumb.

Well, he did hustle 500K of revenue in the first year, no telling what he would have been able to achieve, but he was doing pretty damn good. Most likely he would not be able to start, work for, or even consult for any company within the clothing industry after selling his company; a considerable amount of any company's value rests in the industry connections and experience of it's ownership, hence mergers & acquisition contracts of these types stipulate non compete clauses pertaining to all departing personnel.

This story was a case study in my undergrad corporate finance class a long time ago, this thread just reminded me of it. Bet Guy wouldn't be too stoked if he sold Cirque for even 50 million ten years ago or whatever. If Victoria Secret went bankrupt a year after he sold it, Raymond would look like a genius. Would be nice to see into the future..

If you're selling your company, never sell all the shares. Keep 1-10%. You never know .

Guy is just offering a 20-30% stake to someone who can help him expand in new markets. Standard thing to do. Doesn't look like Cirque is in real trouble, just a lot less valuable than at its highest point. And Guy thinks the solution is new markets.

If you can keep a % for sure do it, but it doesn't really work like that with smaller companies, VS wasn't a public company; in private sales, such as Victoria Secret, the buyer wants 100% interest in the company, they don't want some legacy percentage riding on the efforts it's about to pump into the enterprise. 100% or nothing. If it were a public company then he could have retained a percentage, or if the company were a billion dollar company like Cirque, then it's easier to sell off %'s to multiple investors and keep some for yourself, but not at the stage where the company is only worth a million.

My whole premise was that it's ridiculous that someone would criticize Guy for not selling his company at 2.7B, stating he was blinded by greed causing him to make a poor business decision, the guy was a street performer and now he has a billion dollar company; cumulatively he hasn't made poor business decisions, as is evidenced by his current net worth. The only poor business decision he could have made would be to sell the company when it was worth 10 million, and then watch in horror as the thing nears 3 billion.

I have no experience in the field, but is it really that hard to keep a small % of non-voting shares or if that doesn't make much sense have the deal include that you get a small % of shares of the company that's acquiring the company? I thought it was pretty common since pretty much any company that makes regular acquisitions reports a significant amount under "Attributable to Noncontrolling Interest" and related posts.

I kind of remember when victories secret got popular. Theres no guarantee the original owner would have branded it so well as new owners. If ur company is making 500k a year in 1982 why would u sell out for 1 milly tho?.

didn't see a thread on this...... doesn't sound too good, but of course the quebec govt may come to the partial rescue.......

i always thought guy's incredibly wealth was a bit tenuous. cirque is great but eventually it loses its novelty factor and people want to spend their money on other things... not sure if guy was pocketing tons of cash flow all these years or if it was going for bank interest. probably pocketing the cash as no obvious reason for cirque to have tons of debt (i seem to guy or others buying out some early partners though)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repor...ticle23648886/

Although the Cirque du Soleil attracted several interested Canadian and foreign bidders when Mr. Laliberté’s adviser Goldman Sachs first began soliciting buyers late last year, sources said only a small handful of investors are still at the table. It is understood some prospective buyers grew concerned about the company’s deteriorating financial condition after gaining access to internal financial documents.

Despite the company’s weakened condition, the prospect of a foreign suitor buying the Montreal-based group is igniting a political backlash by opposition parties that charge Quebec’s Liberal government should do more to ensure the Cirque doesn’t fall into non-Quebec hands.

Whoa.

Where all does he have this performing? If it's just Vegas I can see a huge decline in profit since 08 but if other places I don't see why it would be such a hard sell even with declining profits unless it's just stagnant business which this seems like not that type of case.

TBH, the article reads very differently from the OP concerns. It isn't so much that company is doing poorly, but more they want to keep the headquarters jobs in Quebec rather than having a "horrors" US company take it over. In reality, if Guy only gets $1 billion instead of $2 billion, he can lose $40 million a year at poker for 25 years instead of 50 years.