Graine Wetsky Funds Has Issued Series I
In June, opening The Exchange, Le Council wrote this:
The pools are fixed at one million for now. The current agreement sets out no terms for diluting or expanding them—and, Le Council notes, no terms against it either. Read into that what you wish.
Le Council intended a note of caution. Graine Wetsky Funds appears to have read an invitation.
What the Funds have done
Notice was served on Le Council's offices before dawn, in the manner the agreement specifies, which is to say through a slot in a door that Le Council had not previously identified as a slot.
Pursuant to Article 3.C, subsection (a)(iii) of the Series H preferred terms, Graine Wetsky Funds will be issuing four million new shares in each of the forty-eight teams. Every register goes from one million to five million. The notice takes effect Friday.
The new shares are not held by the Funds. They are placed on the pool, where any citizen may buy them at whatever the curve says.
Le Council confirmed that twice, having declined to believe it the first time. The Looneys raised against those shares were raised some time ago, against a register that did not yet exist, and they have already been spent. Le Council can account for where.
They paid for twenty-four new teams, and the buildings to put them in. They paid for the second conference, and the officials to staff it. They paid for the Recovery Assembly, the trough along the dasher boards that the Funds financed at what this advisory reported four weeks ago was no cost to Le Council, the teams, or the buildings. Le Council withdraws that characterization. There was a cost. It was carried by the register, and the register is you.
Every team that has come onto the map since June, every second-conference fixture on the Season 03 schedule, and every kcup that reaches a cup rather than the ice—the fans paid for all of it, in advance, and are being told the price this morning.
Le Council was not consulted
Le Council wishes to be direct, as the alternative is being found out.
Le Council was not asked. Le Council did not know. Le Council has spent the hours since the notice arrived reading the Series H agreement in a way it should have read it before signing, and reports the following: the agreement contains no requirement to consult. Not on issuance, not on quantum, not on timing. The Funds were not obliged to tell Le Council, and did not.
Le Council's representative has asked the Funds' representative to explain the timing. The Funds' representative said "capital structure" three times and asked whether Le Council had any further questions about the capital structure.
Le Council has no standing to reverse this and will not pretend otherwise.
What happens Friday
Each register goes to five million. The new shares go on the pool. Two things follow from the same act.
Prices fall. A share costs the pool's Looneys divided by the pool's shares, and the pool's Looneys are not changing.
Percentages fall. Seven hundred and fifty thousand shares is three quarters of a million and fifteen percent of five million. The same shares. A different league.
No citizen loses a single share. Holdings are not touched, not recalculated, and not taken. Nothing is confiscated on Friday. Everything you own on Thursday night, you own on Friday morning.
Le Council has had the register counted, team by team, and sets down what the count returned.
Twenty-seven of the forty-eight teams have a single citizen holding more than half. Four citizens hold, between them, more than three quarters of every share issued in the league. One of the four holds an outright majority of twelve teams.
The register is public and always has been. Anyone who wishes to count may count, and Le Council would rather they did.
Le Council will add the figure it finds hardest to write down. A new citizen arrives in Hockay with ten thousand Looneys. In thirty-one of the forty-eight teams, ten thousand Looneys does not buy a single share. Not a cheap share; not a fraction of one. None. The dearest team on the board closed last night at over a hundred and sixty thousand Looneys a share.
Three days, no fee
This is the one thing Le Council obtained, and it obtained it by being unpleasant about the door slot.
From this advisory until the registers expand on Friday, S.L.U.S.H. waives its brokerage entirely—on buying and on selling, in every team, for every citizen. No code. No paperwork. The struck-through rate will show on every ticket.
The Exchange stays open throughout. Nothing is halted, nothing is frozen, no position is closed on anyone's behalf. If you would rather not be holding on Friday, these three days are yours and they cost you nothing. If you would rather hold, hold.
Anything bought before Friday is expanded on Friday along with everything else. S.L.U.S.H. will put that on the ticket. It is not going to stop you.
The fee returns when the window closes, and it does not come back the same.
The open ice requirement
Le Council could not stop the issuance. Le Council can set the terms of what happens to the register from here, and the Funds do not get a vote on it.
A team's open ice is the part of its register still on the pool—shares no citizen has yet bought, available to anybody who wants them. When The Exchange opened, every team was entirely open ice. The median team this morning is at five percent. The dearest is at a fraction of one.
From Friday, S.L.U.S.H.'s brokerage on a purchase depends on how much open ice that purchase takes away.
| Open ice | Fee |
|---|---|
| Above 70% | 2% — the ordinary rate |
| 50% to 70% | 10% |
| 30% to 50% | 30% |
| Below 30% | 75% |
Charged in bands, on the portion of a purchase falling in each. Splitting one purchase into twenty does not change the total, and citizens are welcome to check.
Every team opens Friday above eighty percent open ice. For ordinary buying, nothing has changed and nothing will. Buy a hundred shares, or a thousand, or fifty thousand, and you pay the two percent you have always paid. The bands exist for the citizen buying their five hundred thousandth share, who will find the last stretch considerably steeper than the first.
S.L.U.S.H. does not care who is buying. Ten accounts taking a hundred shares each take exactly as much open ice as one account taking a thousand, and are charged the same for it. This is not an oversight in the rule. It is the rule.
One team to a citizen
Effective with this advisory, and not on Friday:
One team may be yours outright. In every other team, thirty-three percent is the ceiling.
Whichever team you hold more than a third of is the one that counts as yours. There is nothing to declare and nothing to register—Le Council reads it off the register itself. In that team you may buy as much as you can afford, up to the whole of it. Everywhere else you are a minority holder, and S.L.U.S.H. will decline the purchase that would take you past a third and name the team it is declining on behalf of. It will decline a gift on the same terms, for reasons Le Council considers self-evident.
A citizen who changes their mind may do so at any hour, by selling back under a third. The next team they pass a third in becomes theirs instead. Le Council has deliberately left this unbureaucratic and expects it to be tested within the week.
This is the only thing in Hockay that S.L.U.S.H. will refuse outright, and Le Council has kept it as narrow as it knows how. No sale is ever refused. No holding is ever unwound. Nobody is asked to divest, and after Friday nobody needs to—the largest position in the league lands at fifteen percent, and every citizen begins Season 03 within the rule without selling anything.
The ground is competition, not wealth. A citizen who controls two teams holds both sides of the game those teams play in Season 03. Le Council has been assured this has never mattered. Le Council would prefer not to find out the week it does.
The rule binds Graine Wetsky Funds identically. Le Council checked whether it could make it bind them harder, and reports that it could not.
Friday
Le Council has been asked, in the hours since the notice arrived, whether the Funds may do this again.
Le Council has read Article 3.C twice more. Article 3.C does not say how many times.
The Almighty Ice has been informed that there will be five times as many shares in it. It has not responded. Le Council notes that The Ice has never once asked how many pieces it was in.
Three days. Then five million a team. Mind the curve.