@AMCTheatres#AMC needs a exclusive membership for MCU members. I’m a proud APE and a advent Marvel fan. It would sign up real quick to be apart of the #AMCU moves.
@silenceisduck That fact it was buried in the paragraph speaks volume. Very likely that it’s coming. Could spark MOASS or be a benefactor in causing it. Im buying more
Hey there @dangallagher, in the past week you and @vladtenev CEO of Robinhood have made public comments defending your use of and “standing behind” your relatively new Stock Token concept.
I think this practice is abhorrent. It defeats the very ethos of share ownership. Public financial markets were created so that companies could raise capital, and so that investors could share in the wealth created as a result. Not to turn investing instead merely into some gamified business-oriented casino.
If by your own admission you can’t offer or sell Stock Tokens to “U.S. persons” why does your U.S. web site talk about them so much and so favorably?
Vlad: How can a U.S. brokerage firm be proud of creating an offshore Channel Island operation in far off Jersey specifically with the intent to operate outside U.S. securities laws? Is there potential confusion that Stock Token purchasers are getting less than all the rights accorded to real shareholders, and if so do you care? If those tokens are theoretically backed 1:1 by real shares, but hypothetically some of those underlying real shares are in turn lent out to short sellers, are the Tokens really backed 1:1 in fact?
Dan: I think U.S. securities laws have protected the public very well over the past century. You spent much of your career at the SEC. Deep down, in your heart of hearts, how can you really think a world without the precautions imposed by U.S. securities laws creates a better, safer environment for investors?
Choose whatever descriptors you think best make sense under the circumstances: Non-regulated, derivative, synthetic, sham, debt-backed securities trying to simulate actual real stock, or pick your own words if these don’t fit.
Stock Tokens may make you an innovator in your own eyes. In my eyes, they bring your firm dishonor.
I note that Cinema United, the movie theatre's national trade association in the United States, issued a letter today addressed to both David Ellison, Chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance and to the Honorable Rob Bonta, Attorney General of California, on behalf of the various states who have joined with California.
In the letter, Cinema United called on the two parties to sit together and find a mutually acceptable resolution to Paramount’s plan to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery. Cinema United apparently has come just now to the same conclusion that I came to fully four months ago.
As I have repeatedly said and written since April, a weak movie slate is a far greater threat to movie theatre operators and to moviegoers than is a strong studio.
Of course, I also believe that it is wise to have in hand certain protections that will: assure a sizable number of films, that are well marketed, are shown in theatres first and for a reasonable period of time, along with continued access to film libraries and status quo economic splits between film distributors and film exhibitors.
But it has been my experience that Paramount has been willing to make and even guarantee such assurances. Indeed, since April, Paramount to its great credit has been putting those policies into place right now, already.
At this juncture, then, the choice is between the two parties soon reaching an amicable settlement between them, or instead waiting in limbo for at least seven to eight months or more, until the results are known from a trial that is not scheduled to be held until March of next year.
Our industry can not wait that long.
In 2026, the box office is finally booming, after six long years of the aftermath first from Covid in 2020 and then from the Hollywood labor strikes in 2023. There is a grave risk that delay now will be another unfortunate or unnecessary disruption to the movie business. At the worst, Paramount and Warner each may be partially paralyzed if they have to wait for this cloud of uncertainty to dissipate. Or at best, they only will be distracted and slowed down from seeking that desired optimal outcome of creating more movies to hit theatre screens in the near and medium term.
What’s more, the staggering cost of all the legal wrangling is mind-boggling, and will divert monies that could be going to film makers and which instead will be going to the lawyers representing these warring litigants or to Wall Street arbitragers holding WBD shares.
Business leaders across any and all industries will always say that protracted uncertainty or disruption will be unsettling. Worse, it often sparks unintended consequences that far too frequently produce truly negative developments, sometimes devastatingly bad ones.
I wholeheartedly endorse that the two parties, Mr. Ellison of Paramount and Attorney General Bonta of California, along with their respective teams, seriously engage together and immediately solve this conundrum.
Now is the time for wisdom, safeguarding affected constituencies for sure in the process.
If you know your biblical history, I am hoping for a King Solomon to emerge, perhaps both of the key players eventually rising to share together such a vaunted throne.