353
Judge Rejects Sale of Infowars to The Onion (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
68 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

“It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,” Judge Lopez said. “Nobody knows what anybody else is bidding,” he added.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 79 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

The market decided.

This can't be the first time the courts had to liquidate assets to pay for a civil suit, right? There must be an outline of some sort for them to follow?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The market did not decide, given the bids were secret.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 36 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    No, that's actually still the market deciding. It's a perfectly standard type of auction that discourages low-ball bids. Bidding is secret, you only get one bid, and you don't know who or if anyone else is bidding.
    If you want it, you make your best offer for what you're willing to pay for it, and if someone else bid more they get it. If you would have been willing to pay more with more rounds of bidding, you should have bid that from the start.

    Open-bid auctions get better prices for sellers when there are a lot of bidders, and better prices for buyers when there are few. Given there were two bidders, it's fair to seek the most either party will bid, rather than seeking $1 more than the maximum the loosing party will pay.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [+] [S] -13 points 2 years ago

    Thing is, starting with lowballing (high in a market's case) and then getting into a price war is exactly how a market decides things. I get what you mean, but I also agree that the market is equivalent to open-bid.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Yeah, secret bids aren't normally accepted in auctions. You're generally supposed to know how much people are bidding so that you can bid above them, and I don't think you're supposed to include assets you don't yet have control over as part of your bid either.

    These rules not being followed is why the judge was initially so mad in the first place.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent