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my friend's family business was just the victim of a hostile takeover. no lie. i'm shocked that something like this could happen, but i guess when you become a publicly traded company you open yourself to that kind of risk. but whoa.
C's dad was always an entrepreneur when we were growing up. for most of our high school and college years, he ran a perfume company that sold those "impostor" fragrances, and we'd earn extra money on the weekends by licking labels and helping with sample packaging. towards the end of college, he met a researcher who was developing a cold lozenge that worked in a new way, by using zinc to shorten the duration of cold symptoms... and Cold Eeze was born. i was one of the first people to take it, a couple of months before it hit the market, when i developed a cold the day of C's wedding.
recently, an investor of some sort pulled together a stable of business guys (don't know what their expertise is), and started an aggressive campaign to unseat the company's board. and damn if they didn't succeed last week. so there is a good chance that this corporation, that bears their family name, will soon not have a single one of their family members in it. the dad, C's husband, her sister, her mom, her uncle... all of these family members who moved to the states and became american citizens, who built this company from the ground up in a country they love, are now going to be given the boot.
i wonder, what does this mean for all of them? do they get bought out? or just booted? what do you get when someone comes in and snatches your life's work out from under you?
C's dad was always an entrepreneur when we were growing up. for most of our high school and college years, he ran a perfume company that sold those "impostor" fragrances, and we'd earn extra money on the weekends by licking labels and helping with sample packaging. towards the end of college, he met a researcher who was developing a cold lozenge that worked in a new way, by using zinc to shorten the duration of cold symptoms... and Cold Eeze was born. i was one of the first people to take it, a couple of months before it hit the market, when i developed a cold the day of C's wedding.
recently, an investor of some sort pulled together a stable of business guys (don't know what their expertise is), and started an aggressive campaign to unseat the company's board. and damn if they didn't succeed last week. so there is a good chance that this corporation, that bears their family name, will soon not have a single one of their family members in it. the dad, C's husband, her sister, her mom, her uncle... all of these family members who moved to the states and became american citizens, who built this company from the ground up in a country they love, are now going to be given the boot.
i wonder, what does this mean for all of them? do they get bought out? or just booted? what do you get when someone comes in and snatches your life's work out from under you?
