Would you bet for…or against someone who is the CEO of AMC if Not Deadline told you the following about them?
–this person fanned the flames of his publicly traded company’s meme stock price increases (meme stock increases are when the value of a stock is artificially inflated because of a coordinated effort by individual investors to buy that stock at the same time) so he could unload the majority of his shares (to the justifiable shock of retail investors) before the value of the stock came crashing down to its actual value.
–this person, in spite of his company’s consistently terrible financial performance, was granted tens of millions of dollars in stock in 2023, which he claimed were once but no longer worth millions and instead worth pennies on the dollar, so that he could tweet out to the world how selfless he is, when in reality, the ‘once allegedly valuable’ shares that were worthless all along..will be the perfect tax writeoff when he decides to sell or abandon the shares.
–this person, in spite of his failing company’s business and a hemorrage of hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, invested $28 million of the company’s money in a gold-mining outfit that has dropped in share price since then from just above $12 per share to just above $3 per share (Not Deadline hopes to devote a special article to this highly suspect investment down the road).
–this person has insisted, since the end of the Covid pandemic, that company earnings would get on the right track and the company would thrive instead of dive…only to see it continuing to dive as of the day this blog is being written…and as a result, he has to consistently raise more funds by selling more and more stock in the company to the horror of investors who didn’t realize he would put himself above what was best for the company.
–this person knows the theatrical business will never make a consistent return to its pre-pandemic ways because Covid accelerated the theater-going public’s pivot to streaming after previous pivots to television, videotapes, DVDs, and cable television as content distruptors.
–this person stacked his Board of Directors with individuals who, for the most part, are not adept at looking under the hood of the business to trust, verify, and challenge every financial and moral move he makes. Instead, the vast majority of the board members specialize in domestic and foreign relationships with creative talent and investment entities and theatrical entities. Exhibit A: this person somehow kept his job after sexting with someone (not his wife) and geting blackmailed for it. He then referred his situation to the FBI so that no one will ever learn the sordid details. No CEO has ever or ever should survive this absurd breach of morality (and, for sure, a morals clause which may or may not be in his contract). Other CEO’s get canned for far less.
Bottom line: this person inspires financial and moral distrust.
And yet, some still say ‘don’t bet against Adam Aron…at least not yet.’
Not Deadline says ‘bet the house against Adam Aron right now and force him out so his replacement can file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and start the inevitable rebuild of financial management and trust between not just the company and its stakeholders…but, with regular everyday investors who will no longer be suckered into buying shares of the Titanic before it leaves port.