I can see why Frontier might want to keep quiet on future plans then.
How do you feel about Elite today?
- Thread starter Kathryn Kando
- Start date
It will be the first pc only game patch.
For me , patch 12 and 13 will show which future the game has. Currently I don't have a lot hope but would be happy if the devs prove me wrong.
I also think FD has massive financial problems after the stock price crash last year and if Chaos Gate will flop too, I'm not sure if they will be able to continue as right now.
I think the poster is a bit confused because of the whole "rating" system. Before EDO, Fdev was rated A, I think, the highest rating possible. Meaning it was a very safe investment, which is what most bank and fund look like (to make some money safely). Not having the expected revenue mean they lose that rating. They threw EDO out of the gate the way it was to save their rating, at the time, and it did.
Eventually though, with all the issues the company faced (relatively poor EDO sales, no console port, poor sales fro JWE2....) they eventually lost said rating anyway.
But it's up to the company to decide if they chase profit or not. However, the truth is, DB always said he wanted to turn Fdev into a big publishing company, most likely like Paradox. He also admitted in public in an interview that profit is literally the first goal of the company concerning ED and their other venture. It's no secret.
They have quite a lot of cash saved up, and the share price doesn't directly affect the running of a company unless they want to issue more shares or hold shares in their own company. The share price has a direct effect on the wealth of the shareholders and may make a takeover easier.
Yes, I'd tend think that this is true of most any company, but possibly at the discretion of the board not the only guiding principle.
DB hold the majority of shares, by a large margin (like really large). He can do whatever he want, and the board can't do much.
Make no mistake, he is the one making decision, and it's on purpose. He made sure he stay the majority shareholder so not to lose his company or the decision making power.
Fdev shares as of this year :
| David Braben * | 12,899,953 | 32.7 |
| Tencent | 3,386,252 | 8.6 |
| Swedbank Robur | 3,172,309 | 8.1 |
| Invesco (Oppenheimer Funds) | 3,050,556 | 7.7 |
| UBS Securities | 1,402,393 | 3.6 |
| T Rowe Price International | 1,362,329 | 3.5 |
| Canacord Genuity Wealth Mgmt | 1,310,028 | 3.3 |
Source :
https://www.frontier.co.uk/investors/shareholder-information
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I don't thing DB is a majority shareholder, he is the largest single shareholder though.
Technically he doesn't own more than 50% true, but it doesn't matter considering how far away is literally everyone else. I edited the post to show the shares.
How does it work in the UK (FDev in particular), are there different shares, some that allow a vote on the board and some that don't and only pay dividends?
It's complicated and I'm not super savvy on it. But my understanding is that your decisional power is related to the amount of shares you got.
Considering how low everyone else is, they basically have no power whatesoever. Also, as I said, even if they did, they are likely not interested in actually directing the company.
For instance if Braben's shares give him two votes per share, while the rest only one, then he's in total control of the company..
I profess complete ignorance on the matter, but I know enough to know that many common held beliefs on how companies and finance work are complete untrue.. 
It's more like everyone else got zero at this point. A 8% is nothing compared to nearly 33% (34% with the rest of the Fdev executives). I think you need a specific related values to get a say in a company.
Plus, as I said, none of the investor strikes me as people who would make demand. Tencent have shares everywhere and can't simply have the manpower and resources to tell hundred, thousands of companies what to do. The rest are fund and bank with tons of company shares, and they don't care either (they use safe investment to grow people's money, that's how banks works).
Well in anycase, did we establish that maximizing profit isn't a legal requirement in the UK, and that a publicly traded company can have other objectives than the maximum of profit?
No ? We are not yet in a cyberpunk dystopia (yet) with law enforced profit making companies. There are any laws regarding that. Unless you deliberately crash the company for some money scheming, you're OK. Plus it would be difficult to evaluate, anyway.
That’s most disappointing. Extremely so.
There’s just not enough in odyssey as it stands. By a long shot. I mean, where are wispy clouds? Water and suchlike.
Flimley
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Are you a pc player by any chance?
Publicly traded companies are bound to investors' will foremost. The CEO can and will be removed by the Board of Directors if they fail in any capacity the Board deems, meaning the CEO is very much just another "manager" answering to a higher authority, even if he makes every top-level decision.
The main thing is that, if a publicly-traded company takes steps that are proven hurtful to its profitability, investors can push the Board to take actions against the current Leadership so that profitability returns. So while it is not explicitly written in law that any publicly listed company MUST chase profit, failure to do so will have lasting consequences on the Leadership. And we can all agree that a Leadership change would probably seal even more Elite's fate.
This means that pushing a lot of resources on a failed IP/product will pretty much ensure that Braben gets removed, since he's a minority shareholder and thus does not have the power to keep himself in place if the Board decides he's up.
Things do not have to be written in law to be in fact laws. Imagine you get caught slacking at your workplace - While there is no law preventing you from doing that, you'll get in trouble, lose your job, and be replaced by someone who's not, slacking (as much). Frontier obviously, like all companies, have some leeway - they do not need to be cost chasing everywhere as long as they continue to generate healthy profits - but the spending and allocation of resources are monitored closely by the investors through the Board.
The investors can be very quick to pool their votes if a big shareholder is rallying them. While most of the investors don't have any interest in running the company - otherwise they'd have just bought it out - that doesn't mean they wish to see their investment dwindle. A LOT of companies got their historic leadership kicked out in mere months, even when said leadership had 30%+ of the share and 40%+ of the votes, simply because of bad decisions made by that historic leadership.
But this whole discussion can be pretty much closed down by these statements sadly:
EDO was space legs just because SC has space legs. I always thought it was a very weird direction to take for Elite, and nothing released since the launch of EDO has proven me wrong.
Is that personal attack supposed to bother me?