Financial Savages: A History of M&A and its Strategies You find out how a business instrument really works, and why it’s worth something, when you learn how it’s used by the guys who have the ability to shake some trees. Does the company have to listen to you because you hold its asset? Or can they say “Meh, shoo shoo, don’t care”. PE firms and activist investors are the unsung heroes of markets. They are the Batmans watching in the shadows who step in if a company is mismanaged or if stock price grows disconnected from business value. They don’t target someone for no reason, and almost always have a very good point to make - and they enforceably make it by holding enough of the stock. And even when they lose… they still kinda win: some concessions or change in company behavior happens and shareholders benefit. They keep the company accountable by way of wielding an enforceable asset. You cannot ignore Carl Icahn, you cannot brush aside KKR. Because the credible threat of M&A and board control always looms, and because those capitalist Batmans are always watching, stocks track underlying business earnings. The cash flow statement and balance sheet show up in the equity - fundamentals matter and you can invest in the company, as the stock is an investable asset. Stocks do not have to, and often don’t, pay any dividends and you have no “right” to one unless the board says you do. The “claim on cashflows” description is an academic platitude that does not manifest in reality. But… they always effect enforceable control. DeFi “project” tokens (a childish turn of phrase, you are a business who doesn’t act like it) are not investable assets. They are trading beans with no rights and no reason to be worth anything. They are vibe units whose reason for existence is selling them to someone else for more than you paid. Price is what you pay, value is what you get. Crypto thinks manipulating a number and dumping on a greater fool is what investing is - demonstrating they do not comprehend what makes an asset truly worth something. So much nonsense pours out of these false pretenses. They LARP as if the token is a stock by frivolously deploying equity concepts (e.g. market cap, buybacks, P/E ratios), when the token has zero stock characteristics! “Did you know buybacks are tax advantaged and companies prefer them, do a buyback for your token”… thank you counsel, quick question: is the token a stock? Do you actually understand why buybacks work for equities? You cannot just vibeaciously (when one is guided only by vibes) abstract that same concept to any asset! Why does the equity reflect the value of the issuing company, but DeFi tokens do not? It’s because the tokens lack enforceable control, binding connective tissue, over the companies that issue them. The raw mechanics of value accrual are laid bare by examining the history, methods, and outcomes of M&A - and how stocks concretely work. New post, see comments.

Financial Savages: A History of Corporate M&A Salutary Research, read here:

BFW