Groupon snatches a great deal ... on itself Groupon's IPO has gone better than expected, with shares selling $2 above the expected top price, valuing the company at almost $13bn. We feared all the pizzazz had gone out of the daily deal site's public outing, after various delays spurred by a rocky market, irregular accounting metrics and an out-of-turn rant by CEO Andrew …
In Groupon's case, the quiet period is probably good for them.
Last I read, the owners have already filched so much cash out of the company that they'd left it technically insolvent: relying on future, unguaranteed, sales to balance their current liabilities. If they missed a sales target, they'd be toast.
Of course, now that the markets have given them a few hundred million dollars of cash, this problem kind of goes away, doesn't it... Oh, did I say "goes away"? I meant "transfers to the shareholders" - it's a usual, and quite legal, accounting measure...
Is that Groupon and their executives are so obviously a farce that the shareholders deserve what comes. If they gauged the risks and decided the rewards were sufficient to balance it, then good luck to them. If they didn't do any due diligence before investing then they can't reasonably claim to have been hoodwinked later.
Obviously illegal activity remains illegal activity, and the execs should go away if they perpetrate any, but in the likely event that Groupon's behaviour falls into the 'sharp but legal' category, the shareholders will rightly bear the consequences.
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