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[HollowOak]

Bear in mind that Mr. Larsen sold e-Loan for approx $300 million.

But the $300M from Popular didn't go to Larsen.  E-loan was already a public company at that time.  I looked up some of the history tonite.  

Thanks, I didn't do any homework on this.  However, at time of the buyout (2005), he had enough to net him $15M (less taxes). That leaves how much he got by selling stock at IPO and between the IPO and 2005. I'm going to make a blatant guess and say that he had (net of taxes) at  least $20M from E-Loan.

I thought I'd give it a quick try and see if I could find how much stock Mr. Larsen sold during the IPO and whether he sold any other stock during the intervening time. Instead of using EDGAR (or it's new version), I Googled and found this interesting class-action lawsuit. Poor Chris.

If I read the IPO prospectus right, Chris Larsen had approximately 1,851,707 shares of E-Loan stock prior to the IPo. He had no SARs or other options.

[Fred93]

If I read the IPO prospectus right, Chris Larsen had approximately 1,851,707 shares of E-Loan stock prior to the IPo. He had no SARs or other options.

There was a 3x split in preparation for IPO.  3 x 1,851,707 = 5,555,121 shares which is the number the prospectus showed owned by CL on page 61.  (using the page numbers centered under the pages, not the other page numbers following the tag "<page>").

But then it gets complicated.  Note the discussion of Put/Call agreements and pledges.  Apparently the venture capital investors had some arrangement which took the form of 2 loans to the founders plus some puts & calls which gave them some sort of a sliding scale pricing.  Specifically note the footnote to the above mentioned table which says

Also includes 2,576,577 shares that are pledged to certain investors to secure $10.8 million in full recourse loans made to Mr. Larsen by these investors.

I suspect some shares were lost by CL thru those put/call agreements.  How many is not clear.  While I believe these transactions should have been documented on 13G or form 3/4/5 filings, they were not.

The first 13G filed by CL appears on 2/29/2000, and it says CL owns 3,672,153 shares.
We don't know how he  got from 5,555,121 shares down to 3,672,153 shares, but it could have been entirely due to those put/call agreements mentioned in the prospectus.  If some of his shares were called away by the original investors, then they gave CL some money for this call.  I suspect that money was the $10.5 Million they originally loaned to him at the time of their investment.  In other words, I'm guessing it was arranged so that the loan converted to shares.

The Proxy (DEF14A) on 4/29/2002 says CL owns 3,834,652 shares.
Various documents on various dates list similar amounts.  It is typical for these numbers to bounce around a little, as people get shares from employee stock purchase plans, or give some shares to charity, etc.  One would expect to see those transactions documented on form 3/4/5, and some of them are, but there are some missing.
The proxy on 4/29/04 says CL owns 3,177,185 shares.

Then the only substantial sized sale of shares recorded on a form 3/4/5 appears ...
Form 4, 11/1/2005, at the time of the acquisition by Popular.  Form 4 says CL disposed of 2,830,312 shares at $4.25 each, ie $12,028,826.

That leaves mystery of how you get from 3.8M shares to 3.17M shares to 2.8M shares.  There's a million share slop in there.  Some documents may have been lost or misfiled.  History is always difficult.

So $12M is a minimum.  I think we should add the $10.5M loan, which I suspect was converted.  Then there may be another million shares which could be a few more dollars, but not much.  The E-loan stock was trading at $1 to $3 for much of this time.

So $12M to $23M is my estimate.

This is somewhere between chicken scratch and fabulous wealth.  Does seem quite possible that he has enough dough to put some into Prosper.  The trick would be establishing a price, or terms in the case of a bridge loan.  He can't negotiate with himself at arms length. 

[Xenon481]

Amazing work, Fred!

[no-whammies]

When AOL first started doing it they would only send out the 720K low density diskettes but then their program finally grew bigger than that and they had to ship the 1.44MBs.

One year, I decorated my christmas tree with nothing but AOL cds. 

Also, if you have somewhere to throw 'em without hitting something, sling 'em straight up in the air.  It's amazing how high a spinning cd will go.  Turned edge on, there's no wind resistance. 

[red12049]

When AOL first started doing it they would only send out the 720K low density diskettes but then their program finally grew bigger than that and they had to ship the 1.44MBs.

One year, I decorated my christmas tree with nothing but AOL cds. 

Also, if you have somewhere to throw 'em without hitting something, sling 'em straight up in the air.  It's amazing how high a spinning cd will go.  Turned edge on, there's no wind resistance. 

We used to make interesting "wall art" with the cd's.

R

[bankomatic]

If I read the IPO prospectus right, Chris Larsen had approximately 1,851,707 shares of E-Loan stock prior to the IPo. He had no SARs or other options.

There was a 3x split in preparation for IPO.  3 x 1,851,707 = 5,555,121 shares which is the number the prospectus showed owned by CL on page 61.  (using the page numbers centered under the pages, not the other page numbers following the tag "<page>").

But then it gets complicated.  Note the discussion of Put/Call agreements and pledges.  Apparently the venture capital investors had some arrangement which took the form of 2 loans to the founders plus some puts & calls which gave them some sort of a sliding scale pricing.  Specifically note the footnote to the above mentioned table which says

Also includes 2,576,577 shares that are pledged to certain investors to secure $10.8 million in full recourse loans made to Mr. Larsen by these investors.

I suspect some shares were lost by CL thru those put/call agreements.  How many is not clear.  While I believe these transactions should have been documented on 13G or form 3/4/5 filings, they were not.

The first 13G filed by CL appears on 2/29/2000, and it says CL owns 3,672,153 shares.
We don't know how he  got from 5,555,121 shares down to 3,672,153 shares, but it could have been entirely due to those put/call agreements mentioned in the prospectus.  If some of his shares were called away by the original investors, then they gave CL some money for this call.  I suspect that money was the $10.5 Million they originally loaned to him at the time of their investment.  In other words, I'm guessing it was arranged so that the loan converted to shares.

The Proxy (DEF14A) on 4/29/2002 says CL owns 3,834,652 shares.
Various documents on various dates list similar amounts.  It is typical for these numbers to bounce around a little, as people get shares from employee stock purchase plans, or give some shares to charity, etc.  One would expect to see those transactions documented on form 3/4/5, and some of them are, but there are some missing.
The proxy on 4/29/04 says CL owns 3,177,185 shares.

Then the only substantial sized sale of shares recorded on a form 3/4/5 appears ...
Form 4, 11/1/2005, at the time of the acquisition by Popular.  Form 4 says CL disposed of 2,830,312 shares at $4.25 each, ie $12,028,826.

That leaves mystery of how you get from 3.8M shares to 3.17M shares to 2.8M shares.  There's a million share slop in there.  Some documents may have been lost or misfiled.  History is always difficult.

So $12M is a minimum.  I think we should add the $10.5M loan, which I suspect was converted.  Then there may be another million shares which could be a few more dollars, but not much.  The E-loan stock was trading at $1 to $3 for much of this time.

So $12M to $23M is my estimate.

This is somewhere between chicken scratch and fabulous wealth.  Does seem quite possible that he has enough dough to put some into Prosper.  The trick would be establishing a price, or terms in the case of a bridge loan.  He can't negotiate with himself at arms length.  

Well it certainly seems like he has the money to put into it, but they burn through 2 million dollars a quarter. His money wouldn't go very far even if he put in a lot of his wealth into the company, and this loan will only prolong the existence by 1.5 months. I think the current management has failed, and I am guessing as they are forced to give up control for additional funding we'll see prosper management get booted.

[Flying Missle]

This investment is not the substantial investment we've been waiting for. Its just a bridge. Bridge to what we're not quite sure.

Why, it's the infamous Bridge to Nowhere!

[msava]

A lot of credit card companies like Capital One spend more on marketing (rewards and advertising) than they get back on Interchange.    They try to slash costs elsewhere to make up for it.

The wikipedia page for Capital One says that they are the 4th largest customer of the US Postal Service.  

I find this easy to believe.  A few years ago I noticed that I received more than one credit card advertisement per day in the mail.  I started opening them and reading them, and found that almost all of them were from Capital One.  Different color paper.  Different size envelopes.  Different looking material inside.  Different company names (Capital One has many names), but all owned by Capital One.  I received, over a long period of time, more than one letter per day from Capital One!  Just astonishing.  At that point I called them and asked them to stop.

Remember how AOL used to send everyone in America about 10 floppy disks in the mail per day?

Back in the day when there was still a lot of Sneakernet going on I collected those disks.  I had over 3,000 of them.



When AOL first started doing it they would only send out the 720K low density diskettes but then their program finally grew bigger than that and they had to ship the 1.44MBs.

Chris, what are you plans for all those AOL disks?

[christoofar215]

Chris, what are you plans for all those AOL disks?

I shed most of them.   I got about 100 or so still in the basement.


And several years ago a friend of mine bought me a USB floppy disk drive... 2X speed!   I still have it.    The only time I use it though is when I need to boot a computer from floppy to flash the motherboard.   Comes in handy.

My main computer at home is a baby-ATX computer about the size of a Gideon bible with a DVD/CD+RW.    I bought a USB DVD burner and almost every computer peripheral I buy is USB.   I love USB stuff, it comes in handy.

Most computers now have the ability to flash the motherboard while you're running the OS, but older DELL computers still need to be booted from floppy disk unless you want to risk Windows crashing during the flash.