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Update on Ed Fishman lawsuit
By Zach Arnold | April 20, 2007
By Zach Arnold
Last Monday, the next court-approved meeting for the Fishman Companies vs. DSE Inc. was originally set for May 17th at 9 AM PST in Clark County (Las Vegas), Nevada. However, there is a new hearing scheduled for Wednesday, April 25th at 9:30 AM PST.
For the 4/25 hearing, the lawyer for the hearing on behalf of Fishman Companies will be Lawrence Semenza III (replacing Todd Bice as the lawyer for Fishman Companies). The 4/25 date is for the plaintiff’s motion for a hearing on waiving compliance.
The motion for a hearing was filed on Thursday. The name Bonnie Bulla is listed for overseeing the 4/25 meeting. It should be noted that she is the commissioner of the Civil Discovery Office in charge of resolving problems in pre-trial disputes regarding the discovery process in civil lawsuits.
Topics: Media, MMA, PRIDE, Zach Arnold | 10 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
(This follows from a post you made on other entry but I thought that by posting it here you wouldn’t miss it. I’m the guy who’s been arguing with you about Zuffa’s due diligence).
Just to make it clear, I really like your Web site and visit it every day. This is not meant as an attack. What I don’t understand about Fight Opinion and what I see in other sites as well is this penchant among MMA commentators for trying to distinguish themselves from ordinary fans at all costs. While this is good, it can also result in the commentators adopting absurd positions such as being overtly critical and skeptical for the sake of it.
I honestly don’t know how can you suggest that Zuffa’s strategy as it relates to Pride is “flawed†when: a) you are not privy to any internal documents that could suggest to you what that strategy is in the first place, b) they just acquired the damned thing, and c) you are basing your opinion on second-hand news accounts (neither Dana nor anyone else at Zuffa is famous for revealing anything concerning the business side of their operations) and your own biases, since it’s very clear that from day one you weren’t really happy with the Pride acquisition. Naturally you are entitled to your opinion, but many of these comments you make pretend to be neutral and yet they are very biased).
As for the use of the term due diligence, what I’ve said is that by its own definition a due diligence must happen BEFORE an operation such as the asset acquisition takes place. Hence, you are using the wrong term. A due diligence is an investigation or audit of a potential investment which serves to confirm all material facts in regards to a sale. Generally, due diligence refers to the care a reasonable person should take before entering into an agreement or a transaction with another party. Since in this case the operation is a done deal and negotiations lasted for months (during which it’s safe to assume Zuffa’s due diligence took place unless you can prove that they simply bought Pride on a whim, which is patently absurd), due diligence is over and done.
Source? I’ve never heard any definition of the term saying it only happens before, only that it’s a reasonable effort by one party to ensure that something bad doesn’t happen, so I don’t agree with your claim that it only happens before.
In addition, the legal and accounting due diligence work is done at the end of the due diligence process (more often than not because they are the most time consuming parts to examine and they can potentially cause a deal backout whereas the other components are less likely to cause such a backout), more often than not after contracts are signed. Virtually all M&A contracts that I’ve seen have clauses that basically are ‘exit strategies’ if the acquiring firm sees bad things in the accounting books or in terms of legal obstacles that were not expected/explained by the acquired party (so-called ‘bad faith’ clauses).
In summation: just because the contracts are signed doesn’t mean due diligence still isn’t going on.
Since it’s such a common-use term I didn’t think I would need to source it. That’s akin to sourcing the use of other terms such as acquisition or assets. In any event, here’s a list of different financial sites defining due diligence. Note that all the ones that are relevant to our discussion, starting with the first one, suggest that due diligence is an operation that comes before committing capital.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:Due+Diligence&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title
and your still going to be saying that months from now right?
…Yes? Because that’s how M&A transactions in general (note: I’m not saying that every transaction requires due diligence after the contracts are signed, but it is more common an occurance than pretty much anyone gives credence to) work and I’m not suggesting whether or not the DSE-Zuffa transaction is working in such a manner, just explaining that it’s possible?
your not but zach arnold is, hes constantly saying that theyre just now doing all of that now
I agree that there must be much more to the acquisition than what people are opinionating. If the the deal really was for $12 million, the name value alone may have been worth it. The inroads that PRIDE has in Asia and Europe is much further along than UFC and will give it a leg up on the competition there.
I had already posted a reply a while back but apparently it was filtered as spam. Is there a way to retrieve it? In any event, the standard definition of “due diligence” states that it’s an operation that’s undertaken before the actual deal. Asking me to source it is like asking me to source a definition of asset or acquisition. You can check any financial glossary or simply google it.
Alan – your post that got filtered is up above.
And yes, everyone’s replies lately are getting filtered as spam. I need new spam filter recommendations pronto, as I’m getting bombarded with spam but I don’t want to sacrifice reader comments, either.