Six Flags to reimburse Snyder for most expenses in proxy fight

Burke spent $9.4 million of SF cash to defend agains Snyder. SF will re-imburse Snyder for $10.4 million spent gaining control of SF. Shapiro got a $5 million signing bonus.

That's $24.8 million not spent on new attractions or maintenance. Keeping my portfolio free of any PKS stock seems like a great idea.

No... the signing bonus was a part of that $10.4 million figure.

And it's still not a lot of money.

Ah, but there is more in the linked article.

Mostly, it's important to note it's subject to shareholder approval to be decided in May.

What I find of note is this:

"The Six Flags board agreed to reimburse Snyder for $2.4 million he spent on investment banking fees and nearly $1 million for food, lodging and airfare over the course of three months as he and Shapiro crisscrossed the country to meet with shareholders."

Wow. 1 million for food, lodging, and airfare! I guess they were eating at the parks after all. :)

Welcome to the real world. Enjoy your stay. :)

For a company that is 2 billion in debt and now forcing guests to pay $15 to park among the many high prices they offer, you would think snyder wouldnt want to saddle the company with any more un-needed expenses. I guess this is just one more part of there family friendly strategy, eat and travel lavisly and overpay on signing bonus'es.

Snyder is a rock star type, working in the entertainment industry. It's just what he does. I'm sure he wasn't flying commercial jets around the country.

So because "he does what he does," people should just blindly hand over their hard earned cash so he could be who he is?
Ummmm, OK.

DBJ, great line about eating at the parks! Maybe they rented Q-bots too!

Wait, what cash are you handing over to him? Which part of visiting Six Flags and spending money there is beyond your control?

So that's what these price increases are all about. Six Flags Inc. is shutting down parks and raising prices to pay him back. They should spend millions of dollars on grease and try greasing their wooden coasters. That would be a much more lovely thing for the company to do, in my opinion.

I swear some of you have absolutely no sense of perspective.

I am not some 13 year old child posting in here. I am 37 years old and I have a great sense of perspective. Did you even know that they had wooden coasters in their parks? Have you ridden one lately? My perspective says that they need to take care of these rides. PERIOD! You cannot argue that. If you do, YOU have no perspective. I just don't think he should be paid back. I wish I could be paid back for all the expenses and things I have bought throughout my life. I'm sorry, I am not going to cry because some millionaire spent some money on this whole Six Flags thing. I think the parks need the money a whole lot more to help these rides that are neglected. He knew what he was getting into when all this started. It's not like he turned poor in the process. That is my perspective, and I guess people like Jeff see it as a stupid point of view. I honestly hope he does turn the parks around because, right now, I think almost all of them need a lot of help.*** This post was edited by coasterkitty 4/15/2006 12:54:49 PM ****** This post was edited by coasterkitty 4/15/2006 1:20:05 PM ***

No, you don't have perspective. You're connecting a corporate executive expense, which accounts for pennies in the grand scheme of things, to higher admission prices. That's absurd. You're trying to oversimplify corporate finance.

We've been through this before... prices are up because they were too low to begin with. They've been undervaluing the company for years, which was pretty stupid given the debt load.

I'm done.

Jeff, my statement had to do with the fact that a lot of people posting in here are of the opinion that people should be willing to accept higher prices and hopefully, hopefully see some improvement in quality sometime down the road.

So Snyder's a rock star type. And this is some special quality needed to run an amusement park how? Do me a favor--- contact Dick Knoebel, the Koch's and the folks at Kennywood and tell them that they have it all wrong. They should be handing out 5 million dollar signing bonuses, and spending a million bucks in six months on food and drink in order to run their parks the right way.

You're right about one thing. I won't be subsidizing his bar tab any time soon.

You're missing the point. There's big business, and there's family business. Six Flags always was big business through the various ownerships, and the guy that took it over is a media and marketing type on top of that. It's par for the course.

And did I mention that said expense is practically a rounding error for a company of this size?