Well Ben Stein certainly is tenacious. When he called for a ban on management buyouts in The New York Times in September, he caught a lot of flack. The Going Private blog spilled a lot of pixels tearing apart Stein’s argument. And Larry Ribstein basically called Stein an idiot in a clown suit. Even DealBreaker felt compelled to join in on the action. But somehow Stein withstood the sound and fury of the blogs and is sticking to his position.
Today, on the refurbished PEHub website (still no RSS feed though!), Daniel Primack interviews Stein on his anti-MBO stance. If anything, Stein seems even more convinced in the interview than he does in print. Management buyouts are a “scam against the ordinary investor,” Stein says. He calls some of the ordinary rationales for buyouts “bullshit.”
It’s worth listening to the whole clown-suited thing.
Ben Stein Q&A [PEHub via Going Private]