I was reading about the coming closure of Cleo. There were many articles about it. However, I noticed that as late as 14 Jan,
"a spokesman for Bauer Media told Business Insider the magazine would continue to operate. Apparently "The report by the Daily Tele is complete speculation, and we have no plans to announce to staff or issue a statement that we are closing Cleo today,"
However, a few days later they announced it to the staff, and to everyone else that Cleo was closing.
The reason why this struck me, is something very similar happened to Network Services.
On the 3rd December 2015, the Australian Financial Review announced that Bauer Media was planning to wind up its Australian distribution business Network Services Company in early 2016 and that Gordon & Gotch would pick up the distribution.
When we and others asked Bauer for more details, we were told blaa blaa blaa and more blaa but if we wanted to discuss it, we would need to sign a non disclosure agreement.
I said if I know about it but am unable to talk about it, what is the point of knowing about it?
What I found interesting was that the share market was not buying that nothing was happening either as there were big volumes in trade the next day. If it was because of this heavy trading with all the share market cleverness, these guys lost money as they brought at 51 cents and the price of PMP is now 47 cents.
Since then I have heard reports of people that were also clever and did sign these non disclosure agreements. I am not aware of anything they got that was worth signing it and I spoke to a few of them. I think they would have done better to refuse to sign and created a debate on the public merits of this decision, something that I am sure the creators of this decision certainly did not want. This maybe the real reason why they invited these *clever* people who asked to sign these NDA on the promise that they would get the *confidential* information. That SHUT 'EM UP.
My advice to anyone is do not sign these non disclosure agreement forms unless you really have too.
