The Other Side of Every Trade (a three-part series)
On 16 March 2022, two men agreed by phone what 70% of a Tokyo-listed company was worth. One of them ran it. The other was about to own it. They settled on ¥11 a share, because the first offer, ¥10.6 “was not a round number.” The stock closed at ¥56. The company checked neither figure, and said so in a filing.
The buyer was EVO FUND, a Cayman company owned by one man, Michael Lerch of Incline Village, Nevada. The seller was the parent of the CEO, Simon Gerovich. Since that call, Lerch has been on the other side of every capital event at Metaplanet: the ¥292bn raised through twelve moving-strike warrant series, at strikes that averaged 5% below the day’s close; the shares he borrowed from Simon’s personal vehicle to sell before he exercised, at a fee that vehicle has asked the regulator not to publish; and the US company, Superplanet, that he owned a third of, brought to Metaplanet, and hosted the negotiation for, then walked out of and walked back into on the strength of an evening phone call with the CEO, holding 10 million warrants whose purchase price the contract records as “[Reserved].”
He holds fifty Metaplanet shares today. Every one of the 401 million he was issued has been sold.
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I want to take a moment to be very clear here. The intention of my writing is not to make accusations (unless fully evidenced), nor to spread misinformation or FUD. And if I've misstated something, please share the evidence and I will repost it and consider that a win for everyone. That includes from the company's own management team of course. There has been heated debate around Metaplanet’s transparency, shareholder alignment and the fiduciary duty of management – and in that spirit I spent countless hours connecting dots that, taken together, may tell a meaningful story.
In his X post of 11 September, Simon (@gerovich) wrote: https://t.co/z9l63lpAKC
“shareholders approved a long-term equity ownership and incentive program: the Series 10 stock acquisition rights.”
In the same post he goes on to say:
“We also now recognize that disclosure and awareness are not always equivalent.”
But what he didn’t (or perhaps forgot to) mention is that at the time of the Feb 2023 shareholder vote on the Series 10 compensation structure, EVO held 70.2% of the voting rights on the record date. The resolution required a two-thirds majority of the votes cast, at a meeting whose quorum the articles set at one-third. If only one shareholder needed to vote ‘yes’, and that shareholder holds fifty shares in the company today, does that potentially say something?
And were you aware of that? Because I was not.
And do you consider it to be material information to properly judge the issue we are debating?
These are the kinds of questions we are going to explore in this trilogy. Over the next few days I will lay out the facts as I see them — all sourced — and leave readers to draw their own conclusions. At the very least, the story I’ve pieced together should offer a clearer view of the company, how it came to be, and how it operates, in a light that hasn’t been seen before.
Part One, The Machine, follows the money from the March 2022 phone call, through the February 2023 shareholder vote that created the option pool and the warrants, a vote the buyer could carry alone, to the twelve warrant series, and prices what the “no discount” channel cost.
Part Two, The Vehicle, is about MMXX Ventures, the Simon’s company that sat on EVO’s side of the borrow, the lapsed rights and the off-market blocks, and about the two filings with the same regulator that say opposite things.
Part Three, The Room, is Superplanet: who was in the Nevada office in April, who owned the target, who got paid, and why the Japanese release calls it somebody else’s arrangement.
By the end, the reader will have a four-question test to apply to every transaction Metaplanet does from here: who brought it, who owned it, who got paid, and did the Japanese and English filings say so on the day.
Part One starts tomorrow. Parts Two and Three on the two days after.
$MPJPY $MTPLF $DN3 $SLE
@thebtcpharaoh Holy.... This company is un-investable. How can anyone defend this level of grift. Basically extracting from shareholders every step of the way.
It doesn't matter if so and so is okay with Metaplanet's new comp plan. If its widely disputed then it'll forever be a stain on the company's otherwise beautiful story.
Let a 3rd party consultant create the comp plan with backfill and let shareholders vote on it.
@btc_overflow The fairest way is to lay out the comp package with a 3rd party consultant AND have a shareholder vote on it.
Nobody will dispute this result, and Metaplanet will fully regain its trust amongst all investors, not just selective ones.
@RoaringRagnar I for one, will not trust this management team again.
Still taking 12% after being caught is worse than 20%. It reveals intention and shows true colors. However, most people still in have accepted it and are cheering crazy for it, so I think it may not be worth another saga.
@BigpictureBTC I think the comp package should be one that's voted by shareholders. 12% or 330M+ is still an astronomical number for just issuing shares, not sure why everyone is cheering like crazy for this.
Ok, we’re sorry. Our bad.
We are only going to partially rip you off.
It would be like a thief only taking 60% of the money in your wallet. Still. Not honorable men.
@thebtcpharaoh The chances of them saying anything is going down with each day passing. At some point we will just have to accept that they will not respond and they’re in another “quiet period”.
I think Metaplanet management will either come out with a banger statement and kill all FUD and the stock moons or they'll just remain in quiet period until this saga dies down.
I'm really hoping for the former but setting the expectations for the latter given the track record.
@1914ad Excellent write-up. Still 0 response from the management.
I think you could add how the Japanese community brought this issue up and all the folks who did were blocked on X.
@dRiskDave Unfortunately, it looks like they said no to Donald for the past year so Eric did not prove his value or worth at all, much so the options he was granted as part of the board.