Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!pacbell!att!chinet!jkingdon
From: jkingdon@chinet.chi.il.us (Jim Kingdon)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.microport,alt.co-ops
Subject: Re: Microport Buyout ( was: Microport Status )
Summary: What about a consumer co-op?
Message-ID: <8181@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 9 Apr 89 22:21:01 GMT
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Reply-To: jkingdon@chinet.chi.il.us (Jim Kingdon)
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One possibility you may not have thought of would be to organize the new
corporation as a consumer co-operative.  Giving consumers an official
voice in the corporation would make a lot of sense given the idea of
this as a consumer buyout.  If venture capitalists own a majority of
the stock, they can do whatever they want to with the corporation.
While the inability to issue stock in the usual way (though one can
issue shares under different ground rules) does limit your ability
to raise capital, other sources of capital not available to capitalists
are available, such as the National Cooperative Bank and loans from
existing co-ops.  Microport customers might also be more likely to invest
if they know they will have a say in the corporation.  This of course
does not eliminate the need to figure out whether something profitable
could arise from all this, and how one would be profitable, and so on.