The payment to Chief Digital Officer Chris Saridakis (left) for his 10% stake in the Ripple6 software company appears buried under "Related Party Transactions,'' starting on page 56 of the newly filed proxy report to stockholders.Gannett did not disclose any dollar figures when it announced the Ripple6 purchase in November. The payment to Saridakis is on top of the $1.1 million he got in wages and other compensation for 2008. My question: Does this mean Gannett paid $78 million total for the entire company -- given what it paid for Saridakis' 10% share? Word for word, here's text:
"In November 2008, we acquired Ripple6. Following the acquisition, Ripple6 reports to Mr. Saridakis. In connection with the acquisition, all of the owners of Ripple6 other than Mr. Saridakis received a payment at closing as well as the right to receive future payments based upon the post-closing financial performance of Ripple6. In order to remove any potential conflict of interest, we entered into a different arrangement with Mr. Saridakis pursuant to which we purchased his 10% interest for $7.8 million with no right to receive future payments. Mr. Saridakis did not participate on behalf of the Company in the acquisition negotiations. The Board of Directors approved the acquisition after careful consideration of the benefits to be derived by the Company from the transaction."Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green rail, upper right.
Do you mean $7.8 million?
ReplyDeleteLooks like future payments will be performance-based, but is there a "not to exceed" amount given?
ReplyDeleteHow much did Saradakis invest in the company? I have to say, my sister works at Ning (a leading social media software company founded by Mark Andreeson) and they think Ripple 6 is a pretty cool technology company, but could not figure out why they sold out so soon and especially to Gannett.
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ReplyDeleteI wasn't aware Saradakis was still alive. Anyone seen him in the past 10 months or so. WTF does he do, anyway?
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ReplyDeleteIf only someone could clue those poor moms into what's really going on with those sites. I'd be really pissed to know that I was part of social/marketing research without even having a choice in the matter.
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ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but can someone explain to me exactly WHAT is Ripple6 and why Gannett spent so much money on it?
ReplyDeleteAnd haven't there been other companies that certain execs had stakes in that got big payouts when Gannett either partnered with them or bought them outright?
Sang Kim is the CEO of Ripple 6 and he is a smart man who has built a great system. Our paper met with him and he is an impressive visionary.
ReplyDeleteHey Jim, don't you find it strange that Saradakis is listed with five others at the top of GCI. It is a position that would seem to give him much more power and authority than I felt he had. Plus his $1 million salary and all those other benefits, yet they had to phony up the figures of digital advances in the company by adding into his operations what local newspapers were already doing on the Web before he arrived. I did not realize his high position in this company before reading that proxy.
ReplyDeleteWould you clowns stop complaining about all the info Ripple6 ALLEGEDLY collects? That is a common internet practice. Facebook does it worse than any site that I'm aware of. If you're browsing the web then you need know this info is being collected. It is not that difficult to track that "Person A wrote a post about item X so show them an ad about item X or item Y". If you don't like it then get off the web. Frankly, I applaud behavioral targeting. I'm sick and tired of Facebook trying to sell me (a male) tube tops.
ReplyDeleteEven Google AdSense has started doing it so they're collecting all sorts of data on you while you read this very blog. Don't believe me? Read on: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/making-ads-more-interesting.html
They even call it something a little less threatening than "behavioral targeting".
10:41 You don't have to alert them. I was at a party where the subject of the Moms site came up, and one of the women said she quit the site because of all the product promotion made her suspicious of her counter-party "Moms." Who was it who said, You can fool some of the people some of the time, etc., etc.
ReplyDelete11:19 Advertisers want to know not only that their product ads are being seen, but that there is some reaction to them. Ripple6 does this through spying on users who visit these sites. We are spying on our customers, that is what Ripple6 is and does.
ReplyDeleteRead the Moms privacy statement and terms of service agreements. Seems the site is hooked into CareerBuilder and topix. Something about this is just not adding up to me, number-wise.
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