Posts Tagged ‘MARK SHAPIRO’
Update: SIX Flagging
Dan Snyder's Six Flags debacle has taken a turn toward the contentious.
We couldn't be happier!
The bankrupt company's creditors are asking the courts to hold up proceedings until they can investigate the relationship between Six Flags and Red Zone LLC, an investment group Snyder formed with a lot of Redskins Park, including team bigwigs Vincent "Vinny" Cerrato and Karl Swanson. Snyder used the group's Six Flags stock holdings take over the amusement park chain via a stockholder coup in 2005. Snyder anointed Mark Shapiro, also a Red Zone member, as made CEO of Six Flags.
The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that in recent filings with the court, attorneys for the firms holding notes for Six Flags, which is now more than $2 billion-plus in debt, singled out as questionable several actions made under Snyder's tenure that involve Red Zone.
Among the dubiousest: Red Zone's sale of a chunk of Dick Clark Productions to Six Flags, a deal that took place shortly after Snyder acquired the production company.
Back to us: SIX Flagging pegged that sale as fishy long ago. In a July 2008 post in this space, we called it "a bizarre transaction that essentially amounted to one of Snyder’s private equity outfits (Red Zone) making a $40 million sale to one of Snyder’s public equity outfits (Six Flags)."
Think the Private Snyder, playing with his own money, would strike a fair bargain with the Public Snyder, who was spending stockholders' loot?
Sure he would....IN OPPOSITE LAND!
Cheap Seats Daily: Washington Warriors Won’t Ever Play in the AFL?
The Arena Football League ain't ever coming to DC after all.
Sports leagues, like romantic relationships, can't survive taking a break. Last year AFL owners thought they were different, announcing that while they'd be spending the 2009 season apart, they weren't breaking up.
Again: Just need some space. Just taking some time off from each other before getting back together.
Well, this week, several AFL owners leaked to the press the date that they'll be getting back together: The 12th....OF NEVER!
The AFL is dead.
The disbanding means, alas, Dan Snyder won't ever bring us the AFL team he promised back in 1999.
(AFTER THE JUMP: MMA is the next arena football? How many Redskins blogs are out there? Dan Steinberg marvels at whose muscles? The Washington Times toasts Bruce Smith? Michael Vick is partying where? The Nats are still playing?)
Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Washington Warriors Won’t Ever Play in the AFL?" »
Update: SIX Flagging
I'm getting the feeling that maybe Six Flags HASN'T REALLY TURNED IT AROUND?
Team Snydiro -- Chairman Dan Snyder and CEO Mark Shapiro -- have now been telling the world for almost four years that Six Flags has gotten things together.
Today, more proof that Six Flags hasn't gotten things together.
Update: SIX Flagging
Where art thou, Mark Shapiro?
Dan Snyder's business partner and protege was named CEO of Six Flags when Snyder took over the amusement park chain by leading a stockholder coup in 2005. And for a long time, Shapiro was front and center whenever the company was in the news. Shapiro generally came off like Leonardo DiCaprio in "Titanic," hanging off the bow of the big boat and boasting that he was on top of the world; for as long as Shapiro talked Six Flags up, everybody knew his ship was eventually gonna sink.
Update: SIX Flagging
Dan Snyder's juxtanothing theme park chain, Six Flags, is back in the news. For all the wrong reasons.
Snyder's sub-Mensa-esque brainchild, the network of stand-alone kiddie hair salons known as Six Flags Rollercoaster Cuts, opened its first outlet in West Hartford, Ct., and started hawking costly coif makeovers with dumbass names -- The Glammy, Zoink, Big Kapow and Blama Jama -- to breeders of young New England bluebloods.
Yet the liberal media was only tweeting about the parent company's economic woes.
Seems Vegas is torn over what will come first: Snyder's company going bankrupt or 64 1/2 seed Morehead State getting bounced from the NCAA Tournament. (Gimme Morehead in that pool!)
In a conference call with Six Flags investors this morning, Snyder's cohort Mark Shapiro pinned Six Flags' sorry chances for staying afloat on a failure to communicate with his major creditors.
I'm no Ben Bernanke, but I'd say the hole Six Flags finds itself in is probably related to both whatever communication breakdown Shapiro is whining about, plus the fact that his company is MORE THAN $2 BILLION IN DEBT!
Yet before we credit all of Six Flags' problems to Snyder's ineptness, let's gander at Mark Shapiro's portfolio.
