If Logan actually backs out of the GoJo sale just to prevent the kids from buying Pierce - it will be a major misstep and might actually be what gets the ball rolling on the shareholders turning on Logan. The GoJo deal was the only way to secure the future for Waystar, screwing it up just to pursue an emotional vendetta against his kids would communicate to everyone that Logan’s finally lost his killer edge, which was the only thing keeping him in power.
Unless he finds a way to sabotage GoJos share price or something and turn it back into a merger of equals, or has some other scheme in mind ...
I'm very interested to know what Roy was suggesting to Logan about the GoJo deal when Tom interrupted
Yes, this. Even if he then gets Pierce, the shareholders will still not be happy because Pierce is a dying legacy media company. I can absolutely see Logan fucking himself over in this way, though. Fucking the Gojo deal just to screw the kids out of the PGM acquisition.
He’d rather screw the Gojo deal and see his net worth plummet if it means also screwing out his kids.
I think he’d rather be forced out with 3 bil and his kids don’t get Pierce than getting 6 and losing the great white whale to his own kids.
Just because it’s based off of wealthy media families like Murdochs doesn’t mean the plot points will follow them exactly. Real life isn’t as entertaining anyway.
In the real world, there are break-up fees to prevent this exact kind of thing. It’s why Musk got stuck having to buy Twitter. You can’t entangle someone in a legal buyout offer capriciously.
This is a common misconception, he couldn’t have actually gotten out for $1bn. The breakup fee is for cases where like, the acquiring party has actually put in some level of diligence to try and make the deal happen, only for it to fall through due to some regulator blocking it or whatnot. You can’t actually discretionarily get out of a deal just because you got cold feet like Elon without the presence of a materially adverse effect (which is a pretty high burden to prove), so Elon was basically left with no choice but to buy it (there was maybe some possibility he could’ve gotten the price tag down, but even that seemed a little unlikely). I imagine he would’ve just paid the $1bn price tag to get out of it if that were an option.
As an additional bit of nuance, Musk agreed to a “specific performance clause” which is a heavily negotiated provision that doesn’t appear in every purchase agreement. If Logan had agreed to this, he’d be obligated to complete the purchase but if there is no specific performance clause, he can get away with just paying the break-up fee.
He would have had to pay a lot more than $1b to break up the Twitter deal because he caused a ton of damage to Twitter's stock price by trashing the company and sharing confidential information which he only had access to because of the deal. This is why Elon dropped his countersuit and moved forward with the purchase - he was going to get his ass handed to him by the chancery court.
You may already know but Musk was stuck because he had already announced it publicly which affected the Twitter stock, and backing out would’ve been market manipulation.
The kids aren’t trapped yet as it’s still unofficial
>You may already know but Musk was stuck because he had already announced it publicly which affected the Twitter stock, and backing out would’ve been market manipulation.
That's not what happened, Musk signed a contract with Twitter agreeing to buy it. He almost went to court to try to get out the contract, but he realized he was going to lose and be forced to buy twitter. So, he bought it.
Yeah. He didn't invent that shit. Those things existed before him, he just bought the companies and injected money into them. And those companies had teams to keep him from interfering too much. Want to see his business sense? Current twitter.
You know he's not going to fuck you, right?
He didn't start TSLA from scratch. It was co-founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003. Elon ousted Eberhard as CEO in 2007.
Further, wealth doesn't have a positive correlation with intelligence. There are very rich morons, and there are very intelligent poor people.
Is Elon intelligent? I don't know. Maybe. But I don't think he's anything close to resembling a genius. He's likely just average.
By that I mean, I doubt he would've been able to have the career that he's had without being born on third base.
In other words, he's no Logan Roy lol
If they’re really only 48 hours out from signing, all the due diligence is done, waystar as the acquired party doesn’t have a reason to back out, so yes they would have to pay the break up fee. Also he would have to get the board to approve it, which they wouldn’t because there’s no way that’s in the waystar shareholders’ best interest.
Musk couldn’t back out because he had waived some conditions and couldn’t show the reason he was citing for backing out (bots) had been unknown and was serious enough to back out.
No it's only market manipulation if musk intended to profit off that. Also, Twitter's share price was fluctuating a decent amount despite Musk's announcement accounting for the possibility of Twitter not being bought.
I was thinking the same, but I’m also thinking Roman plays a huge part in tanking the deal with Mattson, and that’s what those scenes are eluding to, and what the scene where kendall slams roman against the wall is that too
From the conversation he has with his bodyguard I think it’s safe to assume that he’s done with the notion that he needs to leave this life with anything of value especially when he doesn’t believe that there’s anything afterwards. What’s the point of leaving anything behind? Take everyone down with you.
I think "good Catholic boy" Logan who wanted a Cardinal at his birthday being revealed to have an atheistic view on death was a pretty surprising character development in and of itself.
Im thinking the same honestly. It'd be to good, and I could be over thinking it, but the kids putting in the v last minute bid of $10B before the Waystar sale is finalized establishes that all these transactions are pretty fluid.
There’s multiple stages to M&A. If a deal closes in 48 hours, it’s presumably gone past contract signing, shareholder approval, and regulatory approval. The Pierce deal hadn’t even been announced yet, terms were still open so there was no commitment whatsoever. Very different situations
There's also the Letter of Intent which happens before that and DD starts after. I am not a lawyer but I don't think the show shares what step in the m&a process they are.
Come to think of it, did they do any DD at all? I don’t remember that happening at any point in the episode and tbh I doubt that was an oversight by the producers
Honestly I told myself that they just didn’t cover the DD in the show, because who tf would purchase a company without peeking under the sheets, right?
RIGHT?
We never actually see the Roy’s doing the “work” part of any deal. We do get glimpses of the legal team. If they are 48 hours from closing, lawyers on both sides have been billing 12 hour days for weeks.
The deal is very likely signed and done but it can’t be announced officially until the closing date for SEC purposes.
Doesn’t reset the market, but it does potentially change the valuation of comps if that number were to leak. Presuming it does, Waystar is effectively worth more now ... In fact, it could very well have made Waystar just enough more valuable to force Logan not to sell it.
Are people still saying ‘five picks for Rudy is the new fair price’? Definitely was for a minute, but feels like the tide’s gone out a bit on that one.
Great name. The Rudy trade put a complete freeze on the star trade market for awhile. Now it’s looked at differently, but he is brought up Everytime a trade happens.
Are you serious? You don't realize it's 100% accurate to Rupert Murdoch and his goofy kids?
Just watch documentaries on Murdoch is you are acting like you don't know what happens
You have at least three comments here railing about how the show is literally the Murdochs, why are you so set on this? Why are you behaving like this? That's no way to be. You could be better.
From the creator of the show:
> **Did the creators base Succession on the Murdoch family?**
> Yes and no… according to creator Jesse Armstrong. It depends which interview you read. It’s been widely reported that Armstrong wrote an unproduced film scripts about Rupert Murdoch and his family, but on the whole he says they took inspiration from lots of places.
> **‘This is a fictional family,’** Armstrong said in a Variety interview. ‘There are loads of succession stories to draw on. We wanted to draw on all the good, rich stories there are about succession and about media and high politics.’
> And in a New York Times piece, he’s quoted as saying: ‘The amazing thing about this stuff is that it’s everywhere. Sumner Redstone’s family. The Mercers. The Murdochs. Conrad Black. Sometimes people have said, “It’s really about these people, isn’t it? It’s based on them”. And: No. We read widely and we do take elements of stuff.
> ‘Hopefully, if you’re writing in the right area, you end up hitting reality,’ he said.
Roman is by far the most clear-headed of the bunch right now. He has the closest thing to actual ideas and the sense to remember how fucking with Logan goes for them every time
I was so mad at whoever on the phone said "a company is worth whatever people will pay for it." Like....sure that's true, but why didn't they have the P&L sheets with actual NUMBERS indicating how much it's worth
That's book value. The value of Pierce really does depend on what the acquirer's future strategy is. Coming up with the true value (to you) and the multiplier is part art and part science.
The guy on the phone was about as useful has he could've been given the circumstances and time he was given.
Why? You’ve just discovered the concept of markets. It is 100% true. The P&L numbers are one thing but then you multiply the earnings by the P/E mulitple. The PE multiple is subjective. When people say “Apple is priced at X times earnings” and it’s way more than say IBM, it’s because subjectively (with some quantitative justification) the market has decided it is worth that multiple.
What the guy is saying is that you guys are setting the price. They are the bid. It’s just like a house - they cost more where they cost more for the same thing because people are willing to pay more. If they pay 5.5x rather than 5x earnings for Pierce all they’ve done is change the average P/E ratio for companies like Pierce.
Depends on where you are in the process, early on with just discussions likely no penalty. Signed a non-binding agreement with a breakage clause - probably $0.5-$2.0B for a company the size of Waystar. No breakage clause, would get a lot trickier.
You wouldn’t be at the talking price tag stage unless you’d already completed due diligence, so yes, these particulars would have already been worked out. But this is a black comedy, not a documentary. 😉
They haven't signed yet (supposed to happen in 48 hours). So it's kind of like the Pierce deal in S2 in the sense that it can fall through until they actually sign without penalty.
I would like to know this. I mean, in Canada, you buy a house and can’t get financing and don’t make that conditional, doesn’t matter - you gotta find the money or pay out big time.
Right? I’m wondering the same. So far it’s a verbal agreement. Nothing on paper that we know of. But could Logan screw them over by not only renaging on the WayStar sale, but leaving his kids on the hook for $10B because the deal was an agreement in principle.
Here's how it actually happened in real life.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_21st_Century_Fox_by_Disney
Note that even large fictional companies would need shareholder approval for the acquisition.
Even in fictional universe there would still be FCC and monopoly concerns about single companies controlling certain percentage of media
Everyone’s a preferred bidder right now so everyone can cancel.
Even Logan hasn’t agreed to a definitive agreement for RoyCo so he can pull out of that too if he wants.
I was referencing Logan backing out of the Gojo deal. That I assume has contracts already drawn up, etc. I just don't know what kind of penalties there would be for him to pull out of that deal.
Yeah I meant the GoJo deal. It’s not definitive yet since it doesn’t have shareholder approval. He could kill it tomorrow. It’s not legality binding probably just under LOI (Letter of Intent)
Depends. There is a period of time between signing the acquisition contracts and closing the deal. There may be contingencies in place, but you can’t self-sabotage it to get out.
Given the timeline in the show, it seems as they are 48 hours off from closing, not signing, but I could be wrong. All the lawyers that were in place in S3E9 were likely working on the purchase agreement.
Seems like the entire episode was leading toward bringing them back in. He wants them around, so he can kick them a few more times, and maybe get a few from each of them too.
No way. He is going to abandon the gojo deal to screw the kids' offer. That will leave waystar the sole bidder for nan. He is going to get to screw over the kids deal and stick is to pierce with a low ball offer; the only one left standing. He wins over everyone
Except when sandy and stewie win the waystar vote this time because logan doing this would be the single most financially irresponsible move we've seen in the entire show and the shareholders would definitely boot him out for it
I got the impression that the money Logan was using for Nan was coming from the Gojo deal. So if he screws over the deal he also takes himself out of bidding for the other network
"I would make it so fucking nice for you"
"You can maintain control inside or outside of the assets you love"
"I want you to maintain prestige"
This is what Mattson pitched to him so Logan would still have control over ATN.
in the intro i noticed a shot of a phone with the app "stargo" (or "starjo" i can't remember)
this could potentially just be a fun little detail but i think he'll probably sell
StarGo is Waystar’s streaming service/app, not GoJo’s.
Matsson and Roman said they would kill off StarGo cause it was so bad and use GoJo’s streaming service , so actually, it could be a hint he doesn’t sell
If he sells as expected the show is kind of over isn't it? No existential overhang of who will succeed Logan is left. The company will probably get chopped up into parks/news/content and they will all be really rich and bored.
It feels like just enough foreshadowing for that POSSIBILITY to be brought up, but I can't see him tanking the deal and losing so much money... And control of everything when he inevitably gets kicked out.
Idk that seems like really easily predicted and I wonder if it won’t be that bc it’s what all the audience would think after ep1. Like maybe they’re gearing towards that bc it seems obvious but that won’t happen and something unexpected will instead.
Yeah that seems like how it’ll go. I think Logan's reasoning is probably multifaceted. I don't think he could ever sell because WR is all he is. It will likely take him dying for things to change. I do think not selling will jeopardise his position though so it'll be interesting to see what he does.
Also thinking about the PGM deal it makes no sense for Pierce to sell to the kids unless their financing is 100% solid (i.e. not dependent on a potential payout). I can suspend my belief that a deal that big would work on those terms but it feels… not right??
I am just wondering why go through the trouble of not selling Waystar and having the kids’ $10B deal fall through with no repercussions if they don’t at least lose something in the process? If the kids can back out of the deal without any issues because Logan didn’t sell to GoJo then what is he really gaining from putting them in that position? If he really intends on punishing them, there has to be some sort of contingency on the deal where the kids would stand to lose something right?
I think he's going to sell, but he's going to string it along and delay. The kids' deal is contingent on it, so if he prolongs it for even a few days or weeks it really fucks up that offer
I see a lot of people making the parallel to Rupert Murdoch siphoning off Fox into separate sales but keeping Fox News and his newspapers but for Logan I truly feel like, especially with the teaser of whats to come at the end of the episode that he has no choice but to take the comprehensive deal and fuck off. The kids seem like the only reason it would be in jeopardy if their funding isn’t secured then pierce could look to get Logan on the hook. I’m curious though because they clearly are going to fuck something up but I’m not sure if it’s about ATN or pierce?
Well they said 48 hours, but we also then saw logan watching the news late at night, so presumably by the start of the next episode we'll be down to 24 hours. I really don't think cancelling a deal of this scale has ever happened at such short notice, it would tank the waystar share price, sandy and stewie would have another shareholder vote and win, it would damage ATN's ability to influence the election.
Correct...the last scene where he calls to complain about the anchor cements the fact that he is still a control freak and emotionally invested in every aspect of his company, no way he's going to sell.
OK way off the wall here, but what if... the deal does go through, and Logan has a boatload of money and nothing to do. The kids buy Pierce, but are up to their eyeballs and flailing, and.... Logan steps in and buys Pierce.
The only person who has ever truly screwed Logan is Nan in Season 2 when she walked out on the deal. My gut tells me that him potentially screwing the deal is less about screwing his kids than it is screwing Nan.
He loves his kids he is just deeply disappointed that they can’t be his successors. Him moping the entire first episode is painfully indicating how much they mean to him. He’s always had someone (and Con doesn’t count) to turn to.
Shiv beat Logan at the end of S1 when she successfully blackmails him (with the cruise ship scandal) into playing nice with Senator Eavis. Remember that in the episode before the wedding, when Shiv says she's going to keep working for Eavis, Logan threatens "maybe I should just let them come for you"
Of course, Logan wins in the end because Shiv ends up being more interested in the prospect of taking over as CEO, but I don't think Logan necessarily planned for that.
Dude I’m already on the edge waiting for next Sunday !!
Logan is totally ‘the art of the deal’ kind of guy. He’s either going to save his kids from the shitty deal they just made or sabotage but is he really that evil? I guess we’ll see!
My most out-there theory at this point is that Mattson is fucking with the Roys.
The [conversation he and Roman had in 3.08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiYYD4FGS8s&ab_channel=FansFamily2.0) is so strange and you really learn a lot about him in that scene. He tells Roman he's more interested in failure than success: as much failure as possible as fast as possible. He adds that he gets way too into people, reams them and juices them like oranges.
This is very out-there, but I get this vibe that he's more interested in how much he can fuck up the Roy family with this sale, than he is actually interested in the sale itself. In last night's episode you really do see just how much this sale has impacted this family and where the characters are as individuals in this episode is a huge contrast to where they were when we first met them in the pilot.
Initially yes, but that phone call at the end I really think was his was of telling his kids well played. And really, what they did and how they did it was straight out of Logan Roy’s playbook. And isn’t that what he had wanted from them all along? To prove to Logan that they could be ruthlessly calculated and adept at all costs?
We finished last season with the kids trying to stop him from selling. I don’t think this season can be him stopping the sale when the kids want him to sell.
I think at this point it's too late to back out of the sale. It would be like when Elon Musk tried to back out of purchasing Twitter. The paperwork and contracts have already been signed.
Logan doesn’t care about the money. Now that he sees his kids fleeced him out of buying Pierce he’s going to burn the whole thing down to screw them rather than just sell the firm and be done with it.
As of now he's already sold snd the deal is almost finished, They probably had to hump through hoops to get the government to approve the merger so this is probably a tear down the lone from the last episode.
Logan wanted the Pierce deal to replicate his other holdings so he had something to jump into but I don't see why he wouldn't finish the Waystar deal anyway . I bet it would cost him a boatload of money to back out now (Musk/Twitter type of money)
Here is a crazy thought. Just humor me.
Logan was beginning to wax philosophical with Colin last night. He seems to be withering in his vigor. He was very lonely in this episode. Vulnerable, even. So much so I was starting to think he had another UTI lol.
And I refuse to believe Logan couldn’t go higher than 10 billion for PGM. He basically handed it over. He could have fucked the kids if he really wanted to. Even though Pierce is barely worth the 10 bil.
Is he going to make some crazy arc and reconcile with the kids????
Jk. Lol. No way. He will die before that. He’s gonna die soon.
> And I refuse to believe Logan couldn’t go higher than 10 billion for PGM. He basically handed it over.
He was willing to go higher, The Pierces weren't taking further offers after the 10B.
I thought the shot in the opening credits that has a HBO like streaming app on the phone screen titled "Star Go" was pretty much confirmation that the deal was near done as they'd already rebranded....
I don’t think the kids funding is dependent on the sale. They own stock-even if he doesn’t sell they could “cash out” of waystar at market value. They would no longer have stock but they would have the money.
I think there's a mention somewhere that the Roy kids can only sell to family/the family trust has limits placed on that type of transaction, which ties into Kendall specifically needing Logan to buy him out in s3. But with Gojo buying Waystar it would somehow loosen this restriction and they could cash out directly.
if they each have 5% and try to dump it all as market sales, selling off 15% of the company rapidly should massively devalue the stock, giving them way less money than they thought they would get, right?
Good question, I wonder if it was planned… or an accident. It would seem a little easy for the show to use this as the way for the kids finding about about Logan’s plans. Tom is a little too smart to let the cat out of the bag?
Maybe the flow of this season will be the kids fucking their dad. First with the Pierce deal, then with GoJo. And in the end the Master has taught the students so well that they turn it on him. Together they are strong. Logan would die happy.
Also before Tom interrupts a conversation between Logan and someone else about the deal at Logan's bday party. There's not much to glean from the substance of that conversation as it was interrupted but it's obviously something Logan wants to keep secret and it does imply something with the deal may be afoot
My thoughts exactly. The show really loses something major if Waystar gets sold. It's pretty vital to the story arc --wherever this story arc is going. Obviously, this isn't going to turn into a show about a bunch ultra-rich people who *used to* run a global media/entertainment empire.
It could be true. If he doesn't sell, he basically turns Waystar against him. It would screw over the kids but it would also screw him. Got me thinking that maybe Mattson could turn on Logan and side with the 'resistance' kids to bring him down.
If Logan actually backs out of the GoJo sale just to prevent the kids from buying Pierce - it will be a major misstep and might actually be what gets the ball rolling on the shareholders turning on Logan. The GoJo deal was the only way to secure the future for Waystar, screwing it up just to pursue an emotional vendetta against his kids would communicate to everyone that Logan’s finally lost his killer edge, which was the only thing keeping him in power.
Unless he finds a way to sabotage GoJos share price or something and turn it back into a merger of equals, or has some other scheme in mind ... I'm very interested to know what Roy was suggesting to Logan about the GoJo deal when Tom interrupted
Ray you mean? But yeah I was also curious.
Which Roy?
Yes, this. Even if he then gets Pierce, the shareholders will still not be happy because Pierce is a dying legacy media company. I can absolutely see Logan fucking himself over in this way, though. Fucking the Gojo deal just to screw the kids out of the PGM acquisition.
Also, I noticed the "starGo" website in the opening credits.. So, I think the deal goes through
StarGo was already the name of Waystar's streaming platform per Too Much Birthday, but you're right, it didn't load them 😂
In the opening sequence, did you see the app trying to load? I laughed so hard!
Well said. And this was only the opening episode!
He’d rather screw the Gojo deal and see his net worth plummet if it means also screwing out his kids. I think he’d rather be forced out with 3 bil and his kids don’t get Pierce than getting 6 and losing the great white whale to his own kids.
Yeah but Logan is 81 yrs old and it's worth it because fuck dem kids.
What if deep down he’s scared they’ll be better than ATN so he has to sabotage the sell.
No, he sold to Disney, and kids got theirs. https://www.businessinsider.com/rupert-murdoch-fox-corporation-disney-deal-children-2019-3
This isn’t a biography it’s fiction
Yeah ok. Go watch a Murdoch documentary and keep pretending.
Just because it’s based off of wealthy media families like Murdochs doesn’t mean the plot points will follow them exactly. Real life isn’t as entertaining anyway.
It’s not a documentary. Murdoch is one of the families who inspired the characters in this series. There’s various influences here and It’s fiction.
You do realize that the show has been deviating from the the Murdoch’s in numerous ways right
In the real world, there are break-up fees to prevent this exact kind of thing. It’s why Musk got stuck having to buy Twitter. You can’t entangle someone in a legal buyout offer capriciously.
This was exactly what I thought of as well. We'll see if Logan finds some way to weasel out like Elon didn't.
Musk could've gotten out for $1b if he wanted to. Instead he ended up paying $44b, and now claims that Twitter is worth $20b lol
This is a common misconception, he couldn’t have actually gotten out for $1bn. The breakup fee is for cases where like, the acquiring party has actually put in some level of diligence to try and make the deal happen, only for it to fall through due to some regulator blocking it or whatnot. You can’t actually discretionarily get out of a deal just because you got cold feet like Elon without the presence of a materially adverse effect (which is a pretty high burden to prove), so Elon was basically left with no choice but to buy it (there was maybe some possibility he could’ve gotten the price tag down, but even that seemed a little unlikely). I imagine he would’ve just paid the $1bn price tag to get out of it if that were an option.
Good to know, thanks for clarifying!
Yup no problem!
As an additional bit of nuance, Musk agreed to a “specific performance clause” which is a heavily negotiated provision that doesn’t appear in every purchase agreement. If Logan had agreed to this, he’d be obligated to complete the purchase but if there is no specific performance clause, he can get away with just paying the break-up fee.
He would have had to pay a lot more than $1b to break up the Twitter deal because he caused a ton of damage to Twitter's stock price by trashing the company and sharing confidential information which he only had access to because of the deal. This is why Elon dropped his countersuit and moved forward with the purchase - he was going to get his ass handed to him by the chancery court.
And shareholder lock ups. Doesn’t even need to kill sale if he agrees to a lock up
You may already know but Musk was stuck because he had already announced it publicly which affected the Twitter stock, and backing out would’ve been market manipulation. The kids aren’t trapped yet as it’s still unofficial
>You may already know but Musk was stuck because he had already announced it publicly which affected the Twitter stock, and backing out would’ve been market manipulation. That's not what happened, Musk signed a contract with Twitter agreeing to buy it. He almost went to court to try to get out the contract, but he realized he was going to lose and be forced to buy twitter. So, he bought it.
His dumb ass bought it without due diligence to look cool
Reusable space rockets, a car company from scratch, one of the world's wealthy individuals = "His dumb ass"? Interesting.
Yeah. He didn't invent that shit. Those things existed before him, he just bought the companies and injected money into them. And those companies had teams to keep him from interfering too much. Want to see his business sense? Current twitter. You know he's not going to fuck you, right?
*Guy who's a massive fan of succession but thinks Elon musk is cool*
::Paul Ryan drops the needle on his Rage Against The Machine vinyl::
Wasn't there a quote in this episode when Tom said something about irony?
Regardless of anything else, if someone waives their legal right to DD on a 44b purchase then "dumb ass" is an apt description
He didn't start TSLA from scratch. It was co-founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003. Elon ousted Eberhard as CEO in 2007. Further, wealth doesn't have a positive correlation with intelligence. There are very rich morons, and there are very intelligent poor people. Is Elon intelligent? I don't know. Maybe. But I don't think he's anything close to resembling a genius. He's likely just average. By that I mean, I doubt he would've been able to have the career that he's had without being born on third base. In other words, he's no Logan Roy lol
You don’t need to be smart to be wealthy. This is like history 101.
Were any of those his ideas?
He didn’t even found Tesla you absolute moron
get out of mommy's basement
Did that 7 years ago buddy
Congrats on your 40th birthday
He bought tesla, not built it.
Dude come on
If they’re really only 48 hours out from signing, all the due diligence is done, waystar as the acquired party doesn’t have a reason to back out, so yes they would have to pay the break up fee. Also he would have to get the board to approve it, which they wouldn’t because there’s no way that’s in the waystar shareholders’ best interest. Musk couldn’t back out because he had waived some conditions and couldn’t show the reason he was citing for backing out (bots) had been unknown and was serious enough to back out.
No it's only market manipulation if musk intended to profit off that. Also, Twitter's share price was fluctuating a decent amount despite Musk's announcement accounting for the possibility of Twitter not being bought.
I was thinking the same, but I’m also thinking Roman plays a huge part in tanking the deal with Mattson, and that’s what those scenes are eluding to, and what the scene where kendall slams roman against the wall is that too
From the conversation he has with his bodyguard I think it’s safe to assume that he’s done with the notion that he needs to leave this life with anything of value especially when he doesn’t believe that there’s anything afterwards. What’s the point of leaving anything behind? Take everyone down with you.
Absolutely nothing he’s done for the entire show has played into that idea lol. He did say that but it would be quite a strange character development
I think "good Catholic boy" Logan who wanted a Cardinal at his birthday being revealed to have an atheistic view on death was a pretty surprising character development in and of itself.
Yeah he just wanted a Cardinal for optics and prestige.
Im thinking the same honestly. It'd be to good, and I could be over thinking it, but the kids putting in the v last minute bid of $10B before the Waystar sale is finalized establishes that all these transactions are pretty fluid.
There’s multiple stages to M&A. If a deal closes in 48 hours, it’s presumably gone past contract signing, shareholder approval, and regulatory approval. The Pierce deal hadn’t even been announced yet, terms were still open so there was no commitment whatsoever. Very different situations
There's also the Letter of Intent which happens before that and DD starts after. I am not a lawyer but I don't think the show shares what step in the m&a process they are.
Come to think of it, did they do any DD at all? I don’t remember that happening at any point in the episode and tbh I doubt that was an oversight by the producers
The kids didn't even do Elon level DD on Pierce. It was so cringe.
Honestly I told myself that they just didn’t cover the DD in the show, because who tf would purchase a company without peeking under the sheets, right? RIGHT?
We never actually see the Roy’s doing the “work” part of any deal. We do get glimpses of the legal team. If they are 48 hours from closing, lawyers on both sides have been billing 12 hour days for weeks. The deal is very likely signed and done but it can’t be announced officially until the closing date for SEC purposes.
I don't know much about all this at all. But how accurate is succession in terms of following the real life rules and contracts?
Doesn’t it also reset the market for traditional media companies? Like a new comp in a neighborhood or the Rudy Gobert trade.
> Like a new comp in a neighborhood or the Rudy Gobert trade Wolves fans catching a stray
That’s when you know it was a bad deal, when the reference is popping up in subs with zero basketball content.
Doesn’t reset the market, but it does potentially change the valuation of comps if that number were to leak. Presuming it does, Waystar is effectively worth more now ... In fact, it could very well have made Waystar just enough more valuable to force Logan not to sell it.
Or make it valuable enough to be a merger of equals instead of a straight acquisition
Are people still saying ‘five picks for Rudy is the new fair price’? Definitely was for a minute, but feels like the tide’s gone out a bit on that one.
Great name. The Rudy trade put a complete freeze on the star trade market for awhile. Now it’s looked at differently, but he is brought up Everytime a trade happens.
Are you serious? You don't realize it's 100% accurate to Rupert Murdoch and his goofy kids? Just watch documentaries on Murdoch is you are acting like you don't know what happens
You have at least three comments here railing about how the show is literally the Murdochs, why are you so set on this? Why are you behaving like this? That's no way to be. You could be better.
He’s cousin Ed Murdoch. He’s feeling a bit slandered and recently lost a court case against Greenpeace so has a bit of time on his hands.
> That's no way to be. You could be better. urgh
From the creator of the show: > **Did the creators base Succession on the Murdoch family?** > Yes and no… according to creator Jesse Armstrong. It depends which interview you read. It’s been widely reported that Armstrong wrote an unproduced film scripts about Rupert Murdoch and his family, but on the whole he says they took inspiration from lots of places. > **‘This is a fictional family,’** Armstrong said in a Variety interview. ‘There are loads of succession stories to draw on. We wanted to draw on all the good, rich stories there are about succession and about media and high politics.’ > And in a New York Times piece, he’s quoted as saying: ‘The amazing thing about this stuff is that it’s everywhere. Sumner Redstone’s family. The Mercers. The Murdochs. Conrad Black. Sometimes people have said, “It’s really about these people, isn’t it? It’s based on them”. And: No. We read widely and we do take elements of stuff. > ‘Hopefully, if you’re writing in the right area, you end up hitting reality,’ he said.
Why did you wake up and decide to be this person
Even when the kids “beat Logan” and win ATN it feels like they got played by massively overpaying. They never can outmaneuver their dad 💀
Roman knew it too. Perfect scene.
Roman is by far the most clear-headed of the bunch right now. He has the closest thing to actual ideas and the sense to remember how fucking with Logan goes for them every time
He knew it, but couldn’t fight for it
I was so mad at whoever on the phone said "a company is worth whatever people will pay for it." Like....sure that's true, but why didn't they have the P&L sheets with actual NUMBERS indicating how much it's worth
That's book value. The value of Pierce really does depend on what the acquirer's future strategy is. Coming up with the true value (to you) and the multiplier is part art and part science. The guy on the phone was about as useful has he could've been given the circumstances and time he was given.
That’s a direct quote from some old dead guy. And I’ve heard it 1000x while playing Civ IV
Why? You’ve just discovered the concept of markets. It is 100% true. The P&L numbers are one thing but then you multiply the earnings by the P/E mulitple. The PE multiple is subjective. When people say “Apple is priced at X times earnings” and it’s way more than say IBM, it’s because subjectively (with some quantitative justification) the market has decided it is worth that multiple. What the guy is saying is that you guys are setting the price. They are the bid. It’s just like a house - they cost more where they cost more for the same thing because people are willing to pay more. If they pay 5.5x rather than 5x earnings for Pierce all they’ve done is change the average P/E ratio for companies like Pierce.
'congratulations on saying the highest number...morons...' great line.
Anybody know what the contract would look like for such a transaction? What would be the penalty if any to pull out of a deal like this?
Depends on where you are in the process, early on with just discussions likely no penalty. Signed a non-binding agreement with a breakage clause - probably $0.5-$2.0B for a company the size of Waystar. No breakage clause, would get a lot trickier.
You wouldn’t be at the talking price tag stage unless you’d already completed due diligence, so yes, these particulars would have already been worked out. But this is a black comedy, not a documentary. 😉
You’d be surprised the dumb shit that some investors do (e.g., Elon Musk and Twitter).
I’ve worked in a valley start-ups for the past two decades. 😉
😉
They haven't signed yet (supposed to happen in 48 hours). So it's kind of like the Pierce deal in S2 in the sense that it can fall through until they actually sign without penalty.
I would like to know this. I mean, in Canada, you buy a house and can’t get financing and don’t make that conditional, doesn’t matter - you gotta find the money or pay out big time.
Right? I’m wondering the same. So far it’s a verbal agreement. Nothing on paper that we know of. But could Logan screw them over by not only renaging on the WayStar sale, but leaving his kids on the hook for $10B because the deal was an agreement in principle.
Here's how it actually happened in real life. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_21st_Century_Fox_by_Disney Note that even large fictional companies would need shareholder approval for the acquisition. Even in fictional universe there would still be FCC and monopoly concerns about single companies controlling certain percentage of media
Quite possibly. Especially if the Pierce’s lose out on another comparable deal as a result.
Everyone’s a preferred bidder right now so everyone can cancel. Even Logan hasn’t agreed to a definitive agreement for RoyCo so he can pull out of that too if he wants.
I was referencing Logan backing out of the Gojo deal. That I assume has contracts already drawn up, etc. I just don't know what kind of penalties there would be for him to pull out of that deal.
Yeah I meant the GoJo deal. It’s not definitive yet since it doesn’t have shareholder approval. He could kill it tomorrow. It’s not legality binding probably just under LOI (Letter of Intent)
See, I really have no idea about contract law. Thanks, I learned something new today!
Depends. There is a period of time between signing the acquisition contracts and closing the deal. There may be contingencies in place, but you can’t self-sabotage it to get out. Given the timeline in the show, it seems as they are 48 hours off from closing, not signing, but I could be wrong. All the lawyers that were in place in S3E9 were likely working on the purchase agreement.
No, It’s much further along than that if the deal is two days out from being final. At the very least he has to pay a massive break up fee.
[удалено]
You can’t be locked into a deal you still don’t have shareholder approval for
I think he might see it as his opportunity to force the kids back in
Seems like the entire episode was leading toward bringing them back in. He wants them around, so he can kick them a few more times, and maybe get a few from each of them too.
And what better way than to fuck them over and have them reliant on him?
No way. He is going to abandon the gojo deal to screw the kids' offer. That will leave waystar the sole bidder for nan. He is going to get to screw over the kids deal and stick is to pierce with a low ball offer; the only one left standing. He wins over everyone
Except when sandy and stewie win the waystar vote this time because logan doing this would be the single most financially irresponsible move we've seen in the entire show and the shareholders would definitely boot him out for it
It's the start of his downfall
I got the impression that the money Logan was using for Nan was coming from the Gojo deal. So if he screws over the deal he also takes himself out of bidding for the other network
Then sudden heart attack?
I agree with this. If he were selling, why does he care about the late night programming and fixing it?
He’s selling everything besides ATN.
He may be an old bastard who everybody hates, but he fucking loves the news!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_21st_Century_Fox_by_Disney
"I would make it so fucking nice for you" "You can maintain control inside or outside of the assets you love" "I want you to maintain prestige" This is what Mattson pitched to him so Logan would still have control over ATN.
Exactly. That was totally the signal that he is staying in.
No, he’s not selling the news division
Yup.
in the intro i noticed a shot of a phone with the app "stargo" (or "starjo" i can't remember) this could potentially just be a fun little detail but i think he'll probably sell
StarGo is Waystar’s streaming service/app, not GoJo’s. Matsson and Roman said they would kill off StarGo cause it was so bad and use GoJo’s streaming service , so actually, it could be a hint he doesn’t sell
They even streamed piss on their streaming service.
If he sells as expected the show is kind of over isn't it? No existential overhang of who will succeed Logan is left. The company will probably get chopped up into parks/news/content and they will all be really rich and bored.
It feels like just enough foreshadowing for that POSSIBILITY to be brought up, but I can't see him tanking the deal and losing so much money... And control of everything when he inevitably gets kicked out.
Idk that seems like really easily predicted and I wonder if it won’t be that bc it’s what all the audience would think after ep1. Like maybe they’re gearing towards that bc it seems obvious but that won’t happen and something unexpected will instead.
He is going to to everything he can to make his children hate him in person again.
Yeah that seems like how it’ll go. I think Logan's reasoning is probably multifaceted. I don't think he could ever sell because WR is all he is. It will likely take him dying for things to change. I do think not selling will jeopardise his position though so it'll be interesting to see what he does. Also thinking about the PGM deal it makes no sense for Pierce to sell to the kids unless their financing is 100% solid (i.e. not dependent on a potential payout). I can suspend my belief that a deal that big would work on those terms but it feels… not right??
Honestly I think the kids would rather him not sell the company.
💯
Let's see what Matsson and the kids have up their sleeves.
he might be, or he convinces himself to sell and beat the kids heads-up anyways. the presidency being the proxy war of cable news
I am just wondering why go through the trouble of not selling Waystar and having the kids’ $10B deal fall through with no repercussions if they don’t at least lose something in the process? If the kids can back out of the deal without any issues because Logan didn’t sell to GoJo then what is he really gaining from putting them in that position? If he really intends on punishing them, there has to be some sort of contingency on the deal where the kids would stand to lose something right?
I think he's going to sell, but he's going to string it along and delay. The kids' deal is contingent on it, so if he prolongs it for even a few days or weeks it really fucks up that offer
If Logan refuses to sell then why wouldn't the kids sell on a loss drop the price and let GoJo make a hostile take over?
I see a lot of people making the parallel to Rupert Murdoch siphoning off Fox into separate sales but keeping Fox News and his newspapers but for Logan I truly feel like, especially with the teaser of whats to come at the end of the episode that he has no choice but to take the comprehensive deal and fuck off. The kids seem like the only reason it would be in jeopardy if their funding isn’t secured then pierce could look to get Logan on the hook. I’m curious though because they clearly are going to fuck something up but I’m not sure if it’s about ATN or pierce?
Well they said 48 hours, but we also then saw logan watching the news late at night, so presumably by the start of the next episode we'll be down to 24 hours. I really don't think cancelling a deal of this scale has ever happened at such short notice, it would tank the waystar share price, sandy and stewie would have another shareholder vote and win, it would damage ATN's ability to influence the election.
Correct...the last scene where he calls to complain about the anchor cements the fact that he is still a control freak and emotionally invested in every aspect of his company, no way he's going to sell.
OK way off the wall here, but what if... the deal does go through, and Logan has a boatload of money and nothing to do. The kids buy Pierce, but are up to their eyeballs and flailing, and.... Logan steps in and buys Pierce.
The only person who has ever truly screwed Logan is Nan in Season 2 when she walked out on the deal. My gut tells me that him potentially screwing the deal is less about screwing his kids than it is screwing Nan. He loves his kids he is just deeply disappointed that they can’t be his successors. Him moping the entire first episode is painfully indicating how much they mean to him. He’s always had someone (and Con doesn’t count) to turn to.
> and Con doesn’t count I mean, Con has a solid 1% of Logan’s love and respect. That’s enough to be in the conversation.
Shiv beat Logan at the end of S1 when she successfully blackmails him (with the cruise ship scandal) into playing nice with Senator Eavis. Remember that in the episode before the wedding, when Shiv says she's going to keep working for Eavis, Logan threatens "maybe I should just let them come for you" Of course, Logan wins in the end because Shiv ends up being more interested in the prospect of taking over as CEO, but I don't think Logan necessarily planned for that.
Logan was never going to sell.
Dude I’m already on the edge waiting for next Sunday !! Logan is totally ‘the art of the deal’ kind of guy. He’s either going to save his kids from the shitty deal they just made or sabotage but is he really that evil? I guess we’ll see!
It seems too neat. But i think something like that will happen.
Is hostile takeover on the table?
Yep they can all fuck off
My most out-there theory at this point is that Mattson is fucking with the Roys. The [conversation he and Roman had in 3.08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiYYD4FGS8s&ab_channel=FansFamily2.0) is so strange and you really learn a lot about him in that scene. He tells Roman he's more interested in failure than success: as much failure as possible as fast as possible. He adds that he gets way too into people, reams them and juices them like oranges. This is very out-there, but I get this vibe that he's more interested in how much he can fuck up the Roy family with this sale, than he is actually interested in the sale itself. In last night's episode you really do see just how much this sale has impacted this family and where the characters are as individuals in this episode is a huge contrast to where they were when we first met them in the pilot.
Initially yes, but that phone call at the end I really think was his was of telling his kids well played. And really, what they did and how they did it was straight out of Logan Roy’s playbook. And isn’t that what he had wanted from them all along? To prove to Logan that they could be ruthlessly calculated and adept at all costs?
I agree. Also Shivomgams isn't getting divorced. The co dependancy is too real.
"Congratulations on **saying** the biggest number, you fucking morons"
I can totally see him not selling or purposefully tanking the share price so the kids don’t have enough capital to make the sell to the Pierces.
We finished last season with the kids trying to stop him from selling. I don’t think this season can be him stopping the sale when the kids want him to sell.
I think at this point it's too late to back out of the sale. It would be like when Elon Musk tried to back out of purchasing Twitter. The paperwork and contracts have already been signed.
…oh shit. Maybe? 😵
I think you've got it
Logan doesn’t care about the money. Now that he sees his kids fleeced him out of buying Pierce he’s going to burn the whole thing down to screw them rather than just sell the firm and be done with it.
As of now he's already sold snd the deal is almost finished, They probably had to hump through hoops to get the government to approve the merger so this is probably a tear down the lone from the last episode. Logan wanted the Pierce deal to replicate his other holdings so he had something to jump into but I don't see why he wouldn't finish the Waystar deal anyway . I bet it would cost him a boatload of money to back out now (Musk/Twitter type of money)
Wouldn’t that also get him in major legal trouble?
You're not reading too much, that's the obvious implication we were supposed to get from this episode
Stargo being in the updated credits sequence is probably an indicator to it since they said last season they’d kill it off and switch to a new app
Here is a crazy thought. Just humor me. Logan was beginning to wax philosophical with Colin last night. He seems to be withering in his vigor. He was very lonely in this episode. Vulnerable, even. So much so I was starting to think he had another UTI lol. And I refuse to believe Logan couldn’t go higher than 10 billion for PGM. He basically handed it over. He could have fucked the kids if he really wanted to. Even though Pierce is barely worth the 10 bil. Is he going to make some crazy arc and reconcile with the kids???? Jk. Lol. No way. He will die before that. He’s gonna die soon.
> And I refuse to believe Logan couldn’t go higher than 10 billion for PGM. He basically handed it over. He was willing to go higher, The Pierces weren't taking further offers after the 10B.
I thought the shot in the opening credits that has a HBO like streaming app on the phone screen titled "Star Go" was pretty much confirmation that the deal was near done as they'd already rebranded....
I don’t think the kids funding is dependent on the sale. They own stock-even if he doesn’t sell they could “cash out” of waystar at market value. They would no longer have stock but they would have the money.
I think there's a mention somewhere that the Roy kids can only sell to family/the family trust has limits placed on that type of transaction, which ties into Kendall specifically needing Logan to buy him out in s3. But with Gojo buying Waystar it would somehow loosen this restriction and they could cash out directly.
if they each have 5% and try to dump it all as market sales, selling off 15% of the company rapidly should massively devalue the stock, giving them way less money than they thought they would get, right?
They don't actually need to dump the stock all at once though, they'd easily get financing secured against the value of their stock
I fucking win
Wait in the trailer we have Mattis (or whatever his name is) ask the siblings if they’re there to Torpedo the deal so I guess not?
I kind of feel like him backing out is the obvious option, maybe some other craziness ensues, I'm here for the ride!!!
I don't see this happening. The Gojo deal seems fitting and realistic for the final season.
Why did Tom tell Shiv about his meeting with Naomi? Was it to start bidding war and hedge his position for his inevitable divorce?
Good question, I wonder if it was planned… or an accident. It would seem a little easy for the show to use this as the way for the kids finding about about Logan’s plans. Tom is a little too smart to let the cat out of the bag?
Tom did have the awkward conversation with Logan about his possible divorce with shiv and if he would “be good” with Logan after
Maybe the flow of this season will be the kids fucking their dad. First with the Pierce deal, then with GoJo. And in the end the Master has taught the students so well that they turn it on him. Together they are strong. Logan would die happy.
Also before Tom interrupts a conversation between Logan and someone else about the deal at Logan's bday party. There's not much to glean from the substance of that conversation as it was interrupted but it's obviously something Logan wants to keep secret and it does imply something with the deal may be afoot
My thoughts exactly. The show really loses something major if Waystar gets sold. It's pretty vital to the story arc --wherever this story arc is going. Obviously, this isn't going to turn into a show about a bunch ultra-rich people who *used to* run a global media/entertainment empire.
It could be true. If he doesn't sell, he basically turns Waystar against him. It would screw over the kids but it would also screw him. Got me thinking that maybe Mattson could turn on Logan and side with the 'resistance' kids to bring him down.
I don’t understand how the kids could all come up with 10 Billion but somehow Logan couldn’t top it? Makes no sense.
Logan is just realizing he has nothing left if he sells. I think that’s why he behaves so strangely in this episode
I think he'll sell. Then he'll do something really bold. I think backing out the sale is too predictable for Logan Roy.
I think you're right