That could still be arranged, if we so chose. There’s plenty of rice grown along the Mississippi river.

I also forgot to mention that many PE deals are structured as an LBO or very heavily debt financed. Essentially, what that means is that in order to pay the shareholders of a target company a PE firm will take out a bunch of debt and then, through the merger process it gets shoved down to the target company’s balance…

Forty years in broadcasting and you are SPOT ON. There may be liberals that work in the media (I’m guessing they’re slightly in the majority there) but rich Conservatives write their checks.

No. The “court battle” would have been “Hey, that’s great, now get in line with all the other unsecured creditors”.

It looks like there will be a number of openings in the Trump administration...

Can’t lay this entirely at Amazon’s feet... https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/15/news/companies/toys-r-us-closing-blame/index.html

A source familiar with the negotiations said nothing will happen until next week at the earliest, admitting: “It’s taking slightly longer than expected, the paperwork is going back and forth.”

They couldn’t have won the $75m in court so in that sense you could say $20 mil was not bad. It’s obviously not enough. But they are still hoping to get several other firms who had pieces of the company to pay into that fund so it could get bigger. 

It’s nice to see Kelly is really suffering the consequences of being a huge racist on television

Agree fully. I dont even blame her for her payout. She sucks. For just about every reason. But not this. Hell, if Fox news came to me right now and offered me a 5 million dollar contract with a stupid buyout, I’d take it right now and still say what i believe til i got my buyout.

God, no kidding. They are the ones that hired Ms. Santa-is-White Kelly. Maybe if these companies keep having to pay sexual harassers and racists giant golden parachutes they’ll be more careful about who they hire? Also, I’m no attorney and have literally no professional connection to the media industry, but it seems…

Came down here to ask the same thing. I don’t think companies are going to just “adhere to norms” when their dollars are concerned. I hope Hamno is right that the PR risks would be enough but I don’t share the optimism.

There’s only one party to blame in this debacle, and it’s NBC News, for thinking hiring her was a good idea in the first place. It was more “pivoting” to potentially gain more Trump-supporting cretins.

Not a lawyer, so what do you make of the willingness to settle? Obviously $20M is a bargain against the $75M owed, but was there any danger that a court battle would have resulted in more pro-labor precedents, or was this settlement simply just cheaper then seeing the process through?

For Christ’s sake - do they not understand that they can spend $25M fighting her in court and still come out ahead? Say that she underperformed so badly that she’s in breech of her contract and terminate it with no payout.

Sure, but the PE model is also somewhat to blame. Their investments are rarely longer-term than 10 years and they have few incentives to invest in a company they own that’s struggling when they can restructure and sell off the parts or mostly be made whole by manipulating the bankruptcy system with high priced…

Ailes, O’Reilly, and now Megyn Kelly. It amazes me how these ex-FOX people people who resign in disgrace manage to exit with a parachute worth more than most of us will ever make in a lifetime.

I need them to pay me by the inch.

[...]it is proof that even without a formal labor union in place, the richest, most powerful, and most rarefied financiers in the world can be moved by a strong labor campaign. Never forget it.

I think it’s great the workers are getting something back, but I can’t help but be dismayed by the $20 million figure. Seems awfully low when Bain and the like will probably make a killing.

In other words, it was won by activism, not in court. That is a precedent that employees at any company screwed by private equity vampires can turn to in the future.