Reply To: Email: You fell off KENNY BOY!! YOU FELL OFF!!! (Continued from 12-08-2003)

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#25941

Ken does not owe us an apology at all. You however should inform yourself a bit better about Sierra’s corporate history before judging him so harshly. Fact is that, in the early eighties, Sierra grew (and at one point nearly went bankrupt) because of venture capital. And around 1989, Sierra On-Line went public on the stockmarket. Without these capital injections, Sierra could never have made their acquisitions (Dynamix, Impressions, Coktel Vision,…), publish all these wonderfull games and become as successful as it was. The price tag for these capital injections was ownership of Sierra. Ken may have been the founder and CEO, but he was no longer the majority owner of Sierra On-Line. The shareholders were, and it’s the shareholders that had the final word on corporate decisions. So, when the shareholders got an offer from CUC in 1996 to buy their stock for about twice the marketprice, they decided to take the offer and Ken couldn’t do anything to prevent the sale of Sierra On-Line. It was only in April 1998, after CUC was merged with HFS to become Cendant, that the CUC fraud was revealed. “you cannot say you had no idea that Mr. Forbes would do something like that”. Are you suggesting Ken had knowledge about the CUC fraud?! Not even Henry Silverman knew until after he merged his company with CUC! It is regretable how things turned out but your accusations of Ken “cashing out” are in my opinion out of line.