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  "documentTitle": "Focus Media Holding Ltd. (FMCN)",
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  "authorName": "Carson C. Block",
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  "sourceTypeSlug": "short_seller",
  "sourceTypeLabel": "Short seller",
  "presentationDate": "2011-11-21 00:00:00",
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  "notes": "The text serves as a forensic accounting analysis, highlighting discrepancies between reported acquisition costs and actual market values.",
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      "kind": "callout",
      "text": "Paying 7.4x Established Market Value for a Boat Advertising Company (full discussion in “Shipwrecked”)",
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      "kind": "callout",
      "text": "Phantom Acquisitions (full discussion in “How to Fail in Business Without Really Trying”)",
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      "text": "The question is whether this abysmal track record is due to management merely being incompetent, or whether they are deliberately overpaying.",
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      "text": "accumulated deficit: $437.4 million",
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      "text": "greater than one-third of FMCN’s present enterprise value.) As a result of these write-downs, the majority of which have been written down to zero, FMCN has an accumulated deficit of $437.4 million.",
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      "text": "FMCN fraudulently claims to have acquired and disposed of six mobile handset advertising companies that it never actually acquired.",
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      "text": "This number is also 30.3x the price specified in the Share Purchase Agreement in the SAIC file. FMCN wrote-off the entire $24.2 million it spent on a company, Zong Heng Pin Yu (“ZHPY”) that had the right and license to sell advertising on a LED-equipped boat.",
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      "text": "Approximately 85% of FMCN’s write-downs consist of goodwill. (It is a clear warning sign when a company writes down goodwill equivalent to 39.7% of its enterprise value - think TYC in early 2002.)",
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      "text": "ZHPY’s SAIC file contains the equity transfer agreement between the selling shareholders and FMCN. The agreement provides for consideration of only RMB six million (approximately $800,000 at the time).",
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      "text": "55-58 footnotes detailing sources for the financial claims.",
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