Casper Sleep, a start-up that sells mattresses online, became on Thursday the latest money-losing outfit to get a cold shoulder from Wall Street investors.
The company’s stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange at $14.50 a share, slipped below $14 in the afternoon and ended the day at $13.50. The lackluster first day of trading did not come close to fulfilling what Casper’s venture-capital investors thought it was worth a few months ago.
The New York-based start-up had been valued at $1.1 billion by private investors last year. But that was before the five-year-old company publicly revealed in January that it lost $67 million on $312 million in revenue in the first nine months of 2019, thanks in part to spending $114 million on marketing.
Casper reduced its proposed share price, valuing the company at less than $500 million. It raised $100 million in the offering.
Archive for February, 2020
I don’t buy products that are advertised on podcasts.
Friday, February 7th, 2020Obit watch: February 6, 2020.
Thursday, February 6th, 2020I wish I had something wise or profound or witty to say about Kirk Douglas beyond, “Man, what a career. Heck, what a life.”
The one thing I can say is: we’ve been lucky enough to watch a few Kirk Douglas movies recently during Saturday movie night, and I look forward to watching more. “Ace In the Hole” is a very under-rated but excellent movie about the power of the mass media to create circuses: in some way, I think it’s actually almost a prequel to “Network” (one of my top ten films). As for “Spartacus“, yes, it is a long movie, but I can’t think of anything I’d cut out of it. “Paths of Glory” is shorter, and is another Douglas movie that I think is under-rated. (I also think it may be Kubrick’s most overlooked film).
We haven’t watched “Lonely Are the Brave” yet, but it is on the list, and I may move the priority on that one up…
Man, what a career. What a life.
Also among the dead: Gene Reynolds, co-creator of “M*A*S*H” and creator of “Lou Grant.”
Pumped up Knicks.
Tuesday, February 4th, 2020Obit watch: February 4, 2020.
Tuesday, February 4th, 2020Mike “Mad Mike” Hoare, legendary mercenary.
“Legendary”? Yes. At least, if you were reading SOF in the early 1980s like some people…
Mr. Hoare crossed seas on a sailboat and Africa (south to north) on a motorcycle. He searched for the fabled lost city of the Kalahari and retraced the steps of Victorian explorers to the sources of the Nile. He fought the Japanese in Burma in World War II, rescued hostages from rebel forces in Congo, found nuns and priests hacked to death in the bush and was imprisoned in South Africa for hijacking an airliner.
The exploits of Mr. Hoare, who was called “Mad Mike” for his recklessness under fire, were recounted in books by him and others, in a film starring Richard Burton, and in sheaves of foreign correspondents’ dispatches, now faded yellow in old newspaper morgues with datelines from far-off places.
The film in question was “The Wild Geese“. Burton’s character was based on “Mad Mike”.
Tiring of life as an explorer and safari guide, Mr. Hoare first hired out as a mercenary in 1960-61, leading a European force fighting for Moise Tshombe, whose Katanga province was trying to break away from the newly independent Republic of Congo.
His mercenaries, while paid to fight, were largely motivated by anti-communism and lust for adventure, crushing larger, less well-armed Congolese forces and sometimes saving civilians from massacres.
But news correspondents covering the mercenaries said some were racists who killed with gusto. Indeed, these soldiers of fortune were largely undisciplined, sometimes looting towns and killing indiscriminately — clearly war crimes, the correspondents said.
By his account, Mr. Hoare did not condone such atrocities but, vastly outnumbered by his out-of-control forces, he had been powerless to stop the carnage, though he claimed to have once shot off the big toes of a man as he was assaulting a woman.
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Katanga’s secession failed. But in the chaos of killings and regional revolts that followed independence from Belgium, Congo faced a new crisis in 1964 when rebels — warrior-soldiers called “Simbas,” Swahili for “Lions,” backed by Cuban and Chinese Communist advisers — rebelled against the central government in Léopoldville, which by then was led by Mr. Tshombe, and seized half the country. The Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara joined his countrymen fighting in Congo in 1965.
Mr. Tshombe again hired Mr. Hoare, who recruited and trained 500 German, Italian, Greek, Belgian, Rhodesian and South African mercenaries, each paid $364 to $1,100 a month, to lead Congolese forces against the rebels. Emerging on the world stage in news reports for the first time, Mr. Hoare — or Colonel Hoare, as he called himself, replete in his black beret, military khakis and a cravat at his throat — drove the Simbas back to Stanleyville, their capital.
As the mercenaries closed in, fears mounted for thousands of Europeans trapped in the city. Belgian paratroopers were flown in, and most of the Europeans were rescued by the Belgians and Mr. Hoare’s forces. But the troops also found scores of hostages massacred, including nuns hacked to death and priests with throats cut.
You know, this is getting long. How about a musical interlude?
In 1981, when he was 62, Mr. Hoare again made headlines, leading a gaggle of over-the-hill mercenaries from South Africa, Zimbabwe and several European nations in a bizarre attempt to overthrow the Socialist government of the Seychelles, an Indian Ocean island republic.
Apparently with Pretoria’s connivance, they flew to the Seychelles posing as rugby players and members of a beer-drinking club, the Ancient Order of Foam Blowers, carrying equipment bags with false bottoms hiding weapons and walkie-talkies. But a customs agent spotted a gun muzzle and a firefight erupted.
After hours of combat, 44 mercenaries escaped by hijacking an Air India jet on the tarmac. They flew to South Africa, where most, including Mr. Hoare, were tried and convicted of air piracy. The affair had none of the glamour of his earlier exploits. A judge called it “a farce,” and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. He was released three years later under an amnesty for aging inmates.
Mr. Hoare passed away at the age of 100 in a nursing home in South Africa. As Borepatch said when I sent him this clipping, “Damn, who would have seen THAT coming?”
Willie Wood, Hall of Fame defensive back for the Green Bay Packers during the Lombardi era.
Playing for the Packers from 1960 to 1971, Wood did not have much speed and he was only 5 feet 10 inches and 180 pounds at best. But he was an outstanding tackler, often hitting opponents around the ankles when he was not intercepting passes or batting them down. Roaming the secondary at free safety, he was quick to dissect plays and get to the ball. He was also a league-leading punt returner.
A key figure in the Packers’ dynasty built by Coach Vince Lombardi, Wood was a first-team All-Pro five times and was selected for eight Pro Bowl games. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1989 and selected to its all-decade team of the 1960s.
Daniel arap Moi, former ruler of Kenya.
But after suppressing opposition and consolidating power in a single-party state, he began a 24-year dictatorial reign. Mr. Moi — with his nimbus of silver hair, buttonhole rose and ivory baton — dominated life in Kenya. He put his face on bank notes, ordered his portrait hung in offices and shops, enriched his family and tribal cronies and, as investigations showed, stashed billions in overseas banks. For much of his tenure, it was illegal even to speak ill of him.
Kenya remained an island of political stability in East Africa, but a democracy in name only, and a land of stark contrasts: dire poverty and fabulous wealth, natural beauty and decaying infrastructures, luxury safaris for foreigners and vast slums for Kenyans, who faced unemployment, crime, epidemic AIDS and one of the world’s highest infant mortality rates.
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As Mr. Moi retired, his successors found even more corruption and human rights abuses than had been suspected. A 2003 inquiry exposed torture cells at Nyayo House in Nairobi, a government building where dungeons yielded evidence supporting the accounts of victims.
Mr. Moi was never prosecuted, though corruption inquiries implicated him and his family. Kenya in 2003 found $1 billion in stolen funds in overseas accounts. Others in his administration were pursued, but Mr. Moi was treated as an elder statesman.
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#62 in a series)
Monday, February 3rd, 2020My apologies: I missed this story last week, and only found out about it when Legal Insurrection covered it.
Mohammed Nuru, the San Francisco Director of Public Works, was charged last week with “public corruption”. Also charged: Nick Bovis, a local restaurateur.
The complaint unsealed against San Francisco Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru and longtime restaurateur Nick Bovis focuses on an aborted attempt in 2018 to bribe a San Francisco airport commissioner for retail space.
It also alleges other schemes in which Nuru is accused of trying to help his friend score contracts to build homeless shelters and portable toilets, along with a restaurant at the city’s new $2 billion transit station.
“homeless shelters and portable toilets”. You. Don’t. Say.
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I. Can’t. Even.
Here’s the criminal complaint if you’re interested. I haven’t gone through all of it yet.
Obit watch: February 3, 2020.
Monday, February 3rd, 2020A little bit of catch up:
Mary Higgins Clark, noted suspense author.
Peter Serkin. I swear I’ve heard this name somewhere before, but I can’t place where. He was a pianist, came from a prominent musical family, and was a child prodigy.
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Throughout his career, he presented recital programs that juxtaposed the old and the new: 12-tone scores and Mozart sonatas; thorny pieces by the mid-20th-century German composer Stefan Wolpe and polyphonic works from the Renaissance. Admirers of his playing appreciated how he drew out allusions to music’s past in contemporary scores, while conveying the radical elements of old music.
He played almost all the piano works of Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Wolpe. He also introduced dozens of pieces, including major works and concertos, written for him by composers like Toru Takemitsu, Charles Wuorinen and, especially, his childhood friend Peter Lieberson.
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Just in this morning: Bernard J. Ebbers, convicted WorldCom CEO.