Aakash Gupta@aakashgupta
"Mr. Wonderful" (not so much) sold a melting company to Mattel for $4.2 billion, dumped his stock before the disclosure, got fired six months later, and watched the buyer write off everything he sold them. He is now on a podcast telling that as a folksy work-ethic anecdote. This guy has been running the same grift for 26 years.
The Learning Company was losing $105 million a year on $800 million in revenue when Jill Barad announced the deal in December 1998. Mattel paid $4.2 billion in stock for a company hemorrhaging cash. Kevin took over as president of the new TLC digital division on May 13, 1999. He sold his Mattel shares within weeks for roughly $6 million. The buyer was still unpacking the boxes.
In October 1999, Mattel disclosed that the division Kevin ran had not produced the projected $50 million in Q3 profit. It had lost $105 million. The stock crashed, wiping out $3 billion of shareholder value in a single trading day. The next quarter the division lost another $206 million. Mattel fired Kevin in November, six months into a three-year contract. Four months later they fired Barad too. Two careers ended cleaning up the mess he sold them.
Shareholders filed a class action. It named Kevin personally. The complaint alleged TLC had used accounting tricks to inflate quarterly revenue and claimed he cashed out his Mattel stock at the peak right before the truth went public. Mattel settled for $122 million in 2003. Kevin kept his $6 million.
Sixteen months after closing, Mattel sold The Learning Company to Gores Technology Group for $27 million. BusinessWeek put the acquisition on its "Worst Deals of All Time" list. The Telegraph called it one of the worst takeovers in modern business history. Kevin's own explanation was "the technology meltdown" and "a culture clash." Translation: anything except the man holding the microphone.
The grift never stopped. The guy who sold Mattel a $4 billion turkey, dumped his shares before disclosure, and got named personally in the resulting class action is now on television calling himself "Mr. Wonderful," lecturing founders about discipline. Same playbook, smaller targets. Sell a story, cash out, blame the room.
Mattel investors lost $4 billion. Kevin kept $6 million in cash. He kept the microphone too.