Quote:
Originally Posted by samooth
When you're a shareholder, you know how much of the company you own. When you get a dividend on each share, you know how much dividends were paid in total.
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I'm guessing you don't invest in the stock market. These statements of yours are generally not true. You could find out these things as a shareholder, but most shareholders don't bother.
I'm a shareholder in a number of companies (but not FTP). ATM I can't even tell you which companies I own stock in, let alone how many shares, what % of total shares they represent, what the total dividends issued were and what proportion of revenues they represent. I can find out my holdings and dividends received by checking my monthly statements from my broker, but, in the normal course of events, why would I? I can figure out what the total dividends paid by the companies were, and how this compared to revenue and net income by looking up financial statements, but again, why would I want to?
In the case of a fairly closely-held private company like FTP, things might be a little different, but I think they are a lot less different than you seem to assume. There's a good chance that the shareholders know who the other shareholders are. There is a chance that some shareholders know what % of total shares they own. Their is little reason to believe they knew what the financial reports said, and we don't have any knowledge that what financial reports existed for FTP as a whole were accurate. The public financial reports of Pocket Kings do not give anything close to the total picture.
Quote:
Originally Posted by samooth
When this sum is way bigger than what you think the site rakes (as a shareholder you at least have an idea), you realize that you're getting paid with players' money.
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Leaving aside the likelyhood that many shareholders didn't know what the site raked, we need to realize that the
distributions were much smaller than rake, probably a decimal order of magnitude smaller. A lot more money went into running the site, advertising, seizures, payment processor fees, theft from the company and phantom deposits than went into distributions to shareholders.
That doesn't diminish the fact that distributions were greater than they should have been, but it is not reasonable to expect that a shareholder had any reason to know this before BF.
Quote:
Originally Posted by samooth
When you don't question the management of a company that simply steals from their customers only because that company is sending you hundreds of thousands of $$$ each month, then you're are effectively stealing, too, and you are scum.
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Questioning management is not the job of a shareholder. It is, however, the role of the board of directors. It is their responsibility of know (and approve) the financial statements, to authorize distributions and to review the performance of the managment. They also supposed to hire external audtors who are supposed to review the statements for accuracy. It seems safe to say that the directors were extremely negligent in the performance of their duties, if not criminally involved.
The only responsibility the shareholders have in this is to select the members of the board of directors. But that responsibility is to themselves, not to the public or to the company's customers. The responsibility to you lies with the management, and given the specifics of this case, the directors.
Quote:
Originally Posted by samooth
When you don't pay back the money and continue to not release press statements/play in high buy-in events/play innocent even after you have realized that said company (including you) has stolen all the players' money, then you are even more than scum, you are just goddamn mother****ers.
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Well that's a pile of bull****. You are letting your anger out on any handy target. But you've got the wrong targets in your sights.
It is not up to shareholders to issue press statements.
Thre is no reason why a shareholder should stop pursuing his usual way of making a living.
And shareholders don't have to "play" innocent. they
are innocent (at least based on all the evidence we have seen).
The shareholders don't owe any money, even though they have been overpaid, unless they were complicit in making a willful decision to make improper distributions. There is no evidence that they were. It is true that players are owed money, but not by the shareholders. The company owes the players money, and the directors are responsible to the company for the improper dividends. So, indirectly, the directors owe the players. Why do you say the shareholders owe you money when it is the directors who owe you the money? If you loan person A $100, and then person A gives person B a $100 gift, then goes bust and doesn't pay you, you have no right to collect $100 from person B. That is essentially what happened with FTP.
One might make an argument that the shareholders have a moral obligation to pay back the overpayment, but how much is that? If the directors came up with 3/4 of the improper distributions, you surely can't hold the shareholders morally responsible for more than 1/4. Until you have seen how much the directors come up with, you have no idea what is left for the shareholds to cover. If FTP made a profit throuhh 2009, then only dividends in 2010 and 2011 were improper. If the loss in 2010-11 was $350M, and the total distributions in 2010-11 were about $100M, then you can only ever consider the shareholders to be morally reponsible for whatever portion of the $100M the directors don't cover. Legally, they don't even have that obligation. It is totally ridiculous to think that shareholders have any moral obligation to repay any dividends paid out of legitimate profits.
Quote:
Originally Posted by samooth
But thankfully, people like us on funny internet forums keep supporting Phil Ivey. Thankfully, Doyle Brunson writes a non-sense blog stiffed with level-one thinking processes, letting us empathize with people like Howard Lederer. Thankfully, we let a company that steals in the most ballsiest fashion negotiate with potential investors for a ****ing year and burn more and more % of the potential money we could have recovered in case of a simple bankruptcy. Thankfully, we cheer up to guys like Barry Greenstein and Mike Matusow for not paying back loans that were made out of stolen money, either because they simply deny the loan, or because we simply buy any ****ing excuse they give us.
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It is entirely possible that not a single cent of loans to pros was out of stolen money. The loans we know the most about seem to have been made years ago. There is no indication that FTP management was skimming player funds back then.
Unfortunately, people like you on funny internet forums like to throw words like 'scum' around without having a clue.
You think shareholders know things that nearly all shareholders do not know.
You think distributions at FTP exceeded rake.
You think shareholders have a responsibility to the public and to the company's customers.
You think the money that the shareholders received is your money.
You're wrong about the first two, and you are probably wrong about the other two.
Consider you might be wrong about who the "scum" are too. Maybe you should worry that when you throw around words like that, some of it might stick to you.