The transfer grants Aspex Management the exact mathematical leverage required to list the food-delivery chief executive on a balance sheet as an unprofitable subsidiary and liquidate him.
AMSTERDAM — Tech investment firm Prosus NV announced Thursday it has sold a 5 percent stake in Delivery Hero SE to Aspex Management, granting the activist investor the exact amount of voting power required to legally categorize the food-delivery company's chief executive as a superfluous line item and sell him for scrap.
Aspex Management, already the second-largest shareholder of the German e-commerce firm, has spent months publicly demanding that the company shed unprofitable divisions or oust its leadership. Financial filings indicate the new 5 percent acquisition will finally allow the Hong Kong-based fund to write off the CEO on the upcoming quarterly earnings report and leave him on the curb alongside the company's underperforming Asian subsidiaries.
We have repeatedly advised management that they need to trim the fat and focus on core markets, but since they refused, we simply purchased the legal right to pack the executive suite into a cardboard box and leave it in the loading dock.
Prosus representatives stated they were happy to step aside and facilitate the transaction, noting that their own investment strategy no longer aligned with the day-to-day exhaustion of trying to convince a food-delivery executive to fire himself. The Dutch tech conglomerate had previously attempted to politely suggest the CEO resign through a series of increasingly aggressive shareholder letters, but ultimately decided it was more cost-effective to sell its shares to a hedge fund that specializes in direct corporate demolition.
Market analysts praised the 5 percent transfer, projecting that once Aspex successfully offloads the CEO to a third-party commercial liquidator, Delivery Hero's stock could see a moderate bump in late afternoon trading. Financial watchdogs noted that while selling human executives as distressed commercial real estate is technically a regulatory gray area in the European Union, the maneuver is widely considered standard practice for optimizing quarterly delivery margins.
At press time, Aspex representatives were reportedly wandering through Delivery Hero's Berlin headquarters with a clipboard, placing brightly colored asset-liquidation tags on various breakroom appliances, mid-level managers, and the visibly sweating chief executive.