Every now and then a story comes along that’s too good to be true. Usually, those stories involve Dan Snyder.
Yesterday, Snyder’s theme park chain, Six Flags, announced yet another sponsorship deal. This one makes some bedding company called Anatomic Global the “Official Mattress” of Six Flags. And you can buy the official mattress straight from Six Flags for $1,299 in queen size.
Why would a theme park chain need an “official mattress,” let alone start selling them, did you ask?
Good questions. Here’s my guess: Snyder took over as chairman of the board of Six Flags in 2005 by leading a stockholder coup to throw out the previous management team. Snyder incited the takeover by sending a letter to all Six Flags stockholders, a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in which he told them they’d have been “better off hiding their money under a mattress” than investing in the company before he was put in charge.
Enough people believed his claims to indeed put Snyder in charge of Six Flags. And its stock shot up to $11.93 a share shortly after investors turned over control of the company to Snyder.
Boy have those words come back to haunt Snyder and anybody who believed ’em. Six Flags went downhill not long after Snyder wrote that big zing at the former management. And about two weeks ago, after three and a half years of Snyder calling the shots, his chain hit bottom and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
If the initial reorganization plan proposed by Six Flags goes through, common shares of stock, which have been worth a quarter or less for some time, will be worthless.
So anybody who invested in the company under Snyder and stuck with him lost it all. Yup, all those folks now know that they’d literally be better off putting their money under a mattress.
But not under just any mattress! Under an Anatomic Global mattress, the Official Mattress of Six Flags!
Keep the dial right here for all the breaking news in Dan Snyder’s Six Flags soap opera.