Staple Street (Dominion), the 20-employee company that brought Murdoch to its knees – Corriere.it

David versus Goliath. What CNN calls the largest libel settlement in US history for a media company can also be read as one of countless versions of the legendary biblical clash. A small Manhattan private equity, Staple Street Capital, 20 employees, majority shareholder of Dominion Voting Systems, the company that operates the now famous voting machines in the US, has obtained a settlement of 787.5 million dollars from Fox, putting an end to a legal battle that lasted two years and which destroyed the credibility of the networkconservative. Staple Street was the first to be damaged, as he reiterated to the Financial Times The co-founder Hootan Yaghoobzadeh, immigrated to the US from Iran with his family fleeing the revolution when he was five.

Acquisitions blocked

Three takeovers of rival companies planned by Dominion after the 2020 election failed following Fox allegations, as the manager points out, who founded Staple Street thirteen years ago, paying off about $40 million and then raising more than $30 million in debt from a small lender called PennantPark to finance the Dominion operation, which at the time was a Denver-based company with only ten million operating profits. It was 2018, 38 million dollars spent to acquire the majority, with a company valuation of 80 million dollars, according to the City newspaper. An agreement like many others on Wall Street, but which would have held many surprises.

History

Dominion was born as a family business, founded by the current CEO John Poulos, with investments from relatives and friends. Over the years the business has grown and its machinery has been used in 28 states in the 2020 vote. Yaghoobzadeh explained that the company’s future was extremely bright and this smear campaign stole it. The Staple Street legal action begins immediately after Fox’s first moves, in 2021. Yaghoobzadeh – curriculum of excellence with studies at Harvard – and the other partners, a past in the well-known investment firm Cerberus, have begun to develop a plan which drew on their strong financial background, already hardened by the years of the collapse of Lehman. We were going against a colossus – Yaghoobzadeh told the Ft -. We were supposed to be faster, better and smarter, but we knew we had the truth on our side.

The figures of the settlement

Fox vainly argued that Dominion’s cause was a political crusade in search of a financial windfall for the company and that the damages suffered were in any case lower than the requests. By FT calculations, Staple Street’s investment in voting machines was already a success: Dominion’s value roughly tripled between 2018 and 2021, and Staple Street had already recouped much of its original investment through dividends paid by Dominion to its owners. The value of Dominion itself has been estimated to be equal to the $800 million settlement provided by the settlement. The proceeds of the deal are essentially pure profit for Staple Street, which is about to earn hundreds of millions of dollars, the FT says. Even after paying taxes, more than half a billion dollars will remain in the pockets of Davide Yaghoobzadeh and associates.