“Charles and David Koch preside over a vast private empire that manufactures a dizzying array of products, from oil pipelines to Brawny paper towels,” Michael J. de la Merced reports for The New York Times. “On Monday, the brothers’ conglomerate made a big move into a very different business by offering to buy Molex, a relatively obscure maker of electronics plugs for the likes of Apple — for $7.2 billion.”
“The deal, the biggest by Koch Industries in eight years, will give the two control of a company whose products reside in computers, X-ray machines and even the iPhone 5,” de la Merced reports. “The transaction trails only Koch Industries’ roughly $22 billion takeover of Georgia-Pacific in 2005. But it may signal that the conglomerate is on the prowl for more opportunities.”
de la Merced reports, “Under the terms of the deal, Koch will pay $38.50 a share. That is a 31 percent premium to the Friday closing price for Molex’s common stock and a 56 percent premium to its Class A shares. A significant portion of those proceeds will go to the Krehbiel family, whose development of a new kind of plastic gave birth to Molex, which generated $3.6 billion in sales and $243.6 million in profit in its most recent fiscal year.”
“Molex was born in 1938, when Frederick A. Krehbiel and his son Edward sought to take advantage of their new invention. Among its initial uses was the manufacturing of flowerpots and clock cases,” de la Merced reports. “Based in Lisle, Ill., Molex had 35,983 employees as of June 30. When its sale closes, expected by year’s end, the business is expected to operate as an independent subsidiary of Koch Industries. Selling the company to private owners could also buy Molex time to improve its operations. The Koch brothers have little need to generate a profit immediately: Forbes magazine estimates that Charles and David Koch are each worth about $34 billion.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dialtone” for the heads up.]
There goes the neighborhood
Dear Apple,
the Koch brothers are evil. Don’t let them have any control whatsoever over any aspects of your business. Outbid them or find a new manufacturer this aspect of your business. You’re gonna wanna.
I can’t imagine what it must feel like to so casually throw around the word “evil.”
To be fair, Koch brother are pretty evil:
Yes, I get Internet mentality:
Rich + Conservative = Evil
Having never met either of them personally, I cannot make a judgement regarding their character, considering most of what I read about them contains the word “evil” without any justification except the above equation.
Having resided in their headquarters city, they are evil. At the trial where they were convicted of stealing oil from Indian lands, they were quoted as saying, “We just want what’s ours. And it’s all ours.” In the ’90s one of their offspring murdered a runner with their Jeep on the streets of Wichita. Never charged, never went to trial. Instead, the Koch brothers donated a new “Law Enforcement Center” building to the city. How special is that.
Evil is a pretty good summary.
I’ll take you at your word and assume that’s true. Pretty bad.
But the people who accepted the bribe are even worse. Presumably they are elected officials and/or police officers, who are supposed to uphold the law, not subvert it. Where’s the blame for them?
The proverbial race to the moral bottom, with the rich guys leading the way. That’s why people are so pissed about the 1% and their lackeys.
It is not about equating rich and conservative with evil.
How about if they came in and bought your state legislature to change the environmental laws so they can continue their dirty polluting ways.
The big question for the Kochs is simple:
When you have ruined this planet with your pollution, exactly where do you intend for your family to live?
“Buying a legislature” is a two-sided affair.
I have to say BRAVO Darwin Evolved.
Your point is specifically why I call BizTards like the Koch Brothers “self-destructive”. They’re great at playing the finance game, but meanwhile they’re digging their own graves and inflicting the ramifications of the death-seeking ways on everyone around them. What do biznizz bozoids like these two really ‘win’ in the end? Nothing-at-all. Meanwhile, they lost their humanity, at the very least.
All hail the psychopaths and negative anarchists, for they shall inherit The Vacuum. Thanks guys for nothing.
Two can play that game….
The Lincoln Center in NYC has a ‘David H. Koch Theater’.
I’m VOMITING as I watch the video…
:-Q********
It reminds me of Bill Gates, rapist of the computer community, enabler of the ongoing Dark Age of Computing, deciding to be nice for a change by throwing money at world health in a desperate attempt to save his soul. Dark, cynical laughter ensues.
😆 *cough* 😆 *gag*
Then you don’t understand “evil.”
By the way, here is funny story how one of Koch brothers did not mind free healthcare for himself (though he is against universal healthcare now):
Ironically, Ayn Rand had the same hypocrisy — she took free social security, even though declared it evil all of her adult life:
Well I’d scrap SS if I could (and replace it), and I hate paying into it, but you can sure as hell bet I’ll be withdrawing from it when the time comes, if the money is still there. I paid into it, albeit unwillingly, so I’ll definitely be withdrawing from it, even though I shouldn’t need it. I don’t find that hypocritical at all. There is nothing “free” about SS (or health insurance, for that matter), unless you somehow managed to never pay into it.
sorry buddy, but your understanding of how funding for social security, or the federal gubmint in general, works is hopelessly inadequate if you harbor the fantasy that you can just ask for your money back on account of how you don’t plan to use a particular service.
if that were the case there would be a lot of people asking for their money back that was used in iraq and afghanistan.
I know exactly how SS is funded. Your reading comprehension seems to need work. I never said I was “asking for my money back.” I’m saying that if I’m forced to pay into SS, I’m sure as hell going to take withdrawals.
I am on Social Security. If I did not have it my only option would be suicide. That would make you happy, wouldn’t it?
Hyperbole has no place here. I guess you entirely skipped over the “replace it” line, didn’t you?
If you want to scare the willies out of yourself, go watch some Rand Paul speeches. He is, IMHO of course, a bona fide sociopath with no conscience and a startling penchant for outright lying in an effort to hurt others. He is brilliant, again IMHO, at mimicking the behavior of a good Christian and family man while having no comprehension whatsoever of why other humans behave in that way out of a devotion to helping humanity and bettering themselves.
Scary-As-Shit, again IMHO.
People vote for this monster. Oops, wrong species.
I think there is more than enough objective evidence to conclude that the Koch brothers are evil. They are the personification of how our country is ceding its sovereignty to corporations and the uber-rich.
The people doing the ceding are the guilty ones. “Corporations and the uber-rich” can make offers all they want, but they can’t take anything, it has to be given to them. So I’d say the evil people are the ones ceding the control.
Yes, I now know you’ll talk about corps and uber-rich influencing elections, but again, they can only influence, the people are the ones that vote. Blame the voting public.
So the people of America are all evil except the Koch Brothers?
Your words, not mine. My words are saying that the same people who complain about their representatives giving their country away are the same ones that put those representatives into office.
Nothing casual about evil. The Koch Brothers are destroying Democracy!
What superpowers do they have that allow them to do that single-handedly? Mind control? It’s gotta be mind control.
… These two attempted to buy the last election. Not because they didn’t like Obama – OK, they didn’t – but in the hope they could use their influence to buy a larger slice of the profits.
Cut employee benefits. Cut employee payrolls.
Maybe you don’t work for your living. Most people do. Most people create much more profit for their employers than their bosses do and much more than they are paid. They deserve a decent living wage, sick days, vacation days, health benefits, etc. Certainly NOT so much that the company would be paying them more than the profit they earn for the company, but certainly more than those greedy putzes want to screw them with.
Just how many billion$ do you need before you can spare a few dollar$ for the folks that are making you ungodly rich?
Camel><heaven.
Jealousy is a very ugly emotion. Maybe you wouldn’t hate rich people so much if you got a job.
I guess you like cheaters. You think anyone comes by BILLIONS more than millions of TRUE hard working Americans including Doctors and lawyers will make in multiple lifetimes combined. Screw OLIGARCHY!! They spent over 40 million just to try to defeat a black man. They are not conservatives they are wolves in sheep clothing. They are rotten to the core. Their father is a john Birch society dude. Truly worthless human waste is too polite of a label for these trust fund dooshbags.
Who did you vote for?!
If they spent $40M to try to keep the teleprompter-in-chief from getting re-elected, then they’ve done far more for the cause of peace than you will ever do in your life.
-jcr
Get a brain. Do your homework. Recognizing these two for the scumbags they are does not take much research and should be completely unrelated to your own financial situation or employment status. You conservatives are brainwashed parrots who are now incapable of critical thinking. As well as being nasty, hostile human beings. Stay away from Fox “news.” That, too is evil.
Some people would say the same about Apple’s leadership and their support of Obama’s Marxism and their support of homosexual agendas. I tell you what, let’s just get this whole collectivism vs individualism argument over, meet in th backyard and get it on. You Leftists bring your mealy mouths, we’ll bring our fists. May the best men win.
Anytime, handsomesmitty…anytime. You just keep on underestimating your opponent. We like it when you are smug and complacent.
“Fists?’ Brainless homophobe.
You have a pathetic definition of “men”, but I guess when one lacks a brain, there are few alternatives.
Amen, brother!
Way to tell them!
I don’t understand. So if you fight it out and you win what happens next? You get to call up Obama and explain that because you won the fight he has to change his policies?
Please explain how this fighting thing works. It seems like it could be a rather useful phenomenon if it works like that. You should write it up.
yes, the are evil. And no, I’m not jealous of people who use their wealth to steamroller their social values onto the rest of us. I happen to admire rich folks like Bill Gates and Steve Job’s widow, who use their billions to help those who are less fortunate. They realize, like Andrew Carnegie did, that it is their responsibility to give back to the society that allowed them to be so successful.
“Relatively obscure”? Molex is far and away the top name in connectors. They have been for decades.
-jcr
I agree that Molex is far from being obscure. But I would not say that Molex is “far and away the top name” in connectors, either…at least, not for high quality connectors. Molex has some decent stuff, but they also spit out a lot of low-end consumer-grade crap with unreliable bifurcated pins. If you want quality mil-spec connectors, then look to Glenair, Amphenol, etc.
Gross…not good period with these two controlling a diversity of companies.
Things go better with Koch!
Just wondering if all these anti-Koch brothers posts, if they are the same people that bitch and moan about political stories on Obama or Dems on MDN, who’s heroes of the left meet with the same scorn and ridicule? I have yet to see a post from the usual anti Obama suspects griping about this political posts on MDN. What’s that saying, ‘you can dish it out but you can’t take it’… Big Open Tent people… Big. Open. Tent.
That’s a convenient retort for someone with no answers. Blame the other side of using the same tactics you use. Stop projecting.
By the way, Obama is a corporate shlll too. Bow to your Billionaire Gods!
Good deal!
If their in- its time for Apple to use someone else. They are just pure evil
Actually . . . “If they’re in–it’s . . . .” Homophones just aren’t your thing, Rob.
The Koch Brothers also supply poison gas to Syria, no joke!
Please supply source if you are going to make such a claim. The Internet is rampant with rumors and while MDN is news/rumor site we don’t need you post unsubstantiated rumors here as well.
Christ. Buying from Samsung is bad enough.