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  "documentTitle": "Focus Media Holding Ltd. (FMCN)",
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  "authorName": "Carson C. Block",
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  "notes": "This is a text-heavy research note page from a Muddy Waters report.",
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      "text": "The inside joke at Muddy Waters when reviewing conference call transcripts was: The analysts treat every call like a job interview.",
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      "text": "3. FMCN management used an artificially aggressive write-down of Allyes to justify its bargain basement purchase of 38% of the company from FMCN. Management flipped its positions to a venture capital fund seven months later for a 5.7x exit, which has an annualized IRR of 2,127.2%. Transactions in Allyes have put tens of millions of dollars into insiders’ pockets while costing shareholders $159.6 million. We discuss the Allyes opprobrium in detail in All(Directors Say)Yes.",
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      "text": "In contrast, FMCN seems to have an overly cozy dynamic with many of its sell-side analysts. The inside joke at Muddy Waters when reviewing conference call transcripts was: The analysts treat every call like a job interview.67 Indeed, FMCN’s current CFO, Kit Leong Low, used to cover FMCN from the sell side. Also of note is that FMCN has not taken a single buy-side question on a call since Q1 2007 when Kingsford Capital asked some graduate-level questions.",
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      "text": "We find it likely that Olympus would have had an easier time hiding its overpayments if it could have given the acquisitions away. We believe that it did not gift its problematic acquisitions away (despite them being a smaller percentage of enterprise value) because analysts would have noticed. Olympus is a much larger company than FMCN, and is traded on an exchange that has not seen froth since 1989.",
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      "text": "Muddy Waters struggles to think of a greater form of banality than the standard US-listed Chinese company call with analysts. — Footnote 67",
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