It was the pre-holiday shopping season. Billionaire mogul Guy Hands strolled leisurely through the streets of London. A particularly shiny piece of jewelry in a shop window caught his eye. "Avast!" a startled Guy exclaimed. "What an exquisite bauble. It will make a perfect gift for my wife." He gallivanted into the store and was excited to discover that, with every purchase over €500,000, the customer was entitled to a multinational firm at the paltry cost of €1,000. It was the high-end version of getting one of those lotion box sets with a makeup purchase. "Well," mused Guy, "I like rock ‘n’ roll, so I think I'll take EMI."
Pleased with this impulsive buy, he pranced back home. But when it dawned on him that he'd just acquired one of the world's Big Four record labels, he promptly began hyperventilating. He went into panic mode, assigning two-thirds of his team to the new project and effectively disregarding most of his other companies. He also told his investors, in a frantic conference call, that he would fire all artists who were not "working hard enough." But even the potential gains of this outlandish claim would not sufficient to satiate the monstrous appetite of EMI's losses. He sat on his luxuriously upholstered armchair, curled into a ball, and began sobbing.
And that, boys and girls, is why you don't buy debt-ridden multinational corporations on a flight of fancy.
