inonba wrote:The Master wrote:Whoa.
New episode, strongly recommend the full version, that was quite entertaining.
Also - in today's episode - Torre said that the second investment (10 mil $) was for a price of ... 23$ even though the company was in default and no one wanted to invest in it at that point.
Re: episode - I don't see any summaries on Twitter yet, so I watched the full episode: it was a huge rebutal to two things Cuban was constantly saying:
1. Ballmer would've invested more in the company if he had wanted to cover up Kawhi scam.
2. Ballmer would've invested in the carbon credits because it was safer option.
According to Torre today:
1. Clippers did invest in carbon credits.
2. No one wanted to invest in Aspiration in March 2023; testimonies from Aspiration workers say that they were in shock that anyone wanted to invest in the company in 2023 (Ballmer) as it was well known that Aspiration is in default and in pretty awful situation.
First and foremost - the point Torre makes in the last episode is that Ballmer indeed tried to invest in the company as much as it was possible to pay off Kawhi and both his payments and the cooperation between the Clippers and Aspiration stopped when federal investigation started.
Also: the first 50 mil $ investment was already spent by Aspiration before Kawhi agreement as the company didn't have any money in the early 2022. Here, carbon credits come out. April 4th 2022 was a moment when both Kawhi deal was signed and the Clippers payment for carbon credits happened. So we thought that 50 mil $ from Ballmer was directly for Kawhi payment, it looks like it goes waaaaay beyond our earlier assumptions.
Also: we're talking direct Clippers investments in carbon credits signed by the Clippers CFO, if someone still needs direct connections between both parties.
It also shows the scale of what happened - Clippers and Ballmer literally invested almost ~120 mil $ in Aspiration, it clearly shows why Aspiration was willing to pay that much to Kawhi and that literally almost no one in the NBA would've been able to run similar scheme.
At this point, it's hard to wrap up everything of what happened.
I have to remind everyone, Cuban isn't helping Ballmer. He's cornering him.
That being said, I'm still trying to digest the carbon credit purchases. That was part that caught me off guard. While I suspected Ballmer was bankrolling Aspiration's operation is the reason why Kawhi's payments were such high priority, I did not think Ballmer would be brazen enough to do so with the Clippers buying carbon credits directly.
The investment part was exactly what I expected and commented multiple times earlier. Ballmer can't keep throwing money into Aspiration in perpetuity without triggering the NBA reporting requirements. As expected, as Aspiration financial troubles grew, the harder it was to support the investment valuation Ballmer is investigating at.
To me, whether the $50 million went directly to Kawhi didn't matter. It's like if I gave you $3000 in cash so you can write a cheque to me for the same amount, it doesn't matter if you have $10,000 in your bank account that you later claim the $3000 is separate from the $10,000. The money trail is clear.
I didn't listen to the whole episode, but the main takeaway seems to be that the carbon credit purchases and especially the later Wong and Ballmer investments essentially were put into the company to pay off Kawhi, with the latter being the most obviously fishy and calling into question the all the financial transactions between all involved parties. So yeah, the exact literal money transfers within the company really don't matter.
- Why would a failing company struggling to pay employees prioritize large payments for no show/questionable sponsorship deal over well, just about anything else to actually save the company?
- Why would Dennis Wong invest $2M into what was obviously a failing company at that point? Even the minimum amount of due diligence would have called into question the viability of the company (including talking to your own daughter).
- Why would Ballmer invest another $10M into the company even later, at what everyone else knew to be a ridiculous valuation of $23/share? Anyone else would be buying into the company at pennies on the dollar at that point (unless you needed to keep ownership below a certain amount.) Of course the larger question is why would anyone invest at all?
I just don't see any plausible deniability here. The NBA is going to take its time because it has to. Whether you think Silver is going to try to do the right thing or not, they need to uncover every stone in order to get to the bottom of this, whether it is to assess a proper ruling or to cover its own tracks in absolving Ballmer. They can't come out and quickly absolve him, and then have more damning info come out afterwards.
This whole thing is starting to remind me of the opening scene of Michael Clayton-
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