The merged Merger thread (again !!)

[indycool]

Ronbo,
1. You don't need a link to read Robin's stories on the CC website. He doesn't write for free.

2. The Carb Day numbers are IMO from watching from the year before. There were a lot of people there. Were you? Either year?

3. KK said they went skiing and drank a little wine and yes, he said to leave him and TG alone. Read any story on the subject. He said they were socializing.

4. Your assessment of the CART buyout is just wrong. CART hired Bear, Stearns to seek potential buyers of the company. Bear, Stearns contacted TG, France, Ecclestone and a whole bunch of others. They all were not interested. The bid in August of '03 was made by The amigos under the banner of a company called Open Wheel Racing Series, which they formed. A stockholder vote to sell CART to OWRS was scheduled for December of '03. Shortly before that, CART filed bankruptcy papers. The vote was canceled to sell CART. A bankruptcy hearing was scheduled for January '04. TG bid $13 million on the contracts with promoters at Long Beach, Toronto and Mexico City. OWRS bif $3.1 million on the whole shebang. OWRS got the bid because it picked up potential liabilities and the holding CART company told the court it would forgive $60 million in loans to the bankrupt CART company if OWRS got the bid. OWRS got the bid. But TG NEVER tried to buy all of CART under EITHER set of circumstances.

5. The IRL did NOT hire Jacobson Promotions. Jacobson Promotions was trying to put something together with the city and the IRL at the same time. It failed to put anything together with either one. You can talk to Mike Nealy all you want, but the IRL did NOT hire Jacobson. Jacobson was trying to get in bed with the IRL.

6. The IRL did NOT try to buy Long Beach. The IRL proposed a sanction agreement to Dover for Long Beach. Dover used that as a weapon to force KK to buy it to keep it away from the IRL and KK paid $5 million more than the race was worth internally to Dover to keep it. Similar thing happened to Molson in Toronto. There was no "middleman" in the Portland thing and there certainly wasn't a middlemanin the Long Beach deal because the IRL wasn't even trying to buy it.

Sorry you don't understand history properly.