So what happens when TransPerfect is permitted to operate its business without the court-ordered, hand-picked custodian, employment of countless attorneys, needless consultants, and Delaware elites? All installed as a result of Delaware and Chancellor Bouchard’s over-reaching and needless court decisions that tried to sell the business from under its founders. Ordinarily, I bet you would have wait years to find out?
Just months after Andre Bouchard and Leo Strine ended their 3-years of court-ordered “hands in the till” — which was, according to Delaware Supreme Court Justice Karen Valihura, an unlawful seizure of TransPerfect’s fast-growing and profitable business — the reins have now returned back to the always-rightful owner (Philip Shawe) and the original management team who built the company. And what has happened by returning TransPerfect to the private sector?
Revenues are now up 19% for the year!!! 200 NEW AMERICAN JOBS have been created and TransPerfect is now returning to its former glory as its industry’s largest and fastest-growing company. The fact that our Chancery Court System engineered a THREE-YEAR, $300 MILLION government take-over by a Skadden Arp’s attorney, who billed $1,475 an hour. Where both Bouchard and Strine both “coincidentally” happened to have worked before they got their political appointments. The thought continues to make my blood boil.
Delaware legislators, I said it before and I’ll say it again: There is no checks-and-balances on the cozy, back-scratching, incestuous relationship, which YOU allow to exist between the attorneys’ special-interest group (The Bar Association) and the Judiciary in Delaware. Our founding fathers required serious over-sight for all government operations and your lack of action is inconsistent with your oaths of office in my humble opinion.
Nothing puts our current crisis, and the dire need for legislative reform, more into focus than the TransPerfect case. In my opinion, new legislative reform must curb the Chancery’s unchecked power to takeover an entire business, and order excessive payments from the company with no limits, no supervision, and absolutely no accountability.
It is your job General Assembly members to protect the system. You were elected to lead. I and many of my readers are imploring you to take action to prevent outrageous tragedies such as the TransPerfect situation from ever happening again.
In my opinion, this is the only way out of our downward spiral in business confidence, in judicial impartiality rankings, and the only way to reverse the current economic crisis in all of Delaware. These wounds were self-inflicted on our entire state by the unprecedented actions of Chancellor Bouchard for reasons still unknown and still very suspect, but regardless, we need to learn from our mistakes — Delaware’s reputation cannot continue to be one of “corruption” — we need reform and we need change.
So, what has happened since? It’s amazing what happens when private property is in the hands of private citizens and private sector managers and not in the hands of government officials and their cronies.
But don’t take my word for it, please see the following article on TransPerfect’s business from last Friday’s New York Post.
TransPerfect business booming after years-long ‘custody’ battle
July 13, 2018 | 6:42pm
Elizabeth Elting and Philip Shawe
Phil Shawe is proof you can survive a breakup with your business partner — even if the partner is your ex.
Shawe gained control of the “family” business, TransPerfect, earlier this year after a nasty, “War of the Roses”-type court battle with his fiance — and tells The Post business has hardly been better.
The privately held firm is going to report this week that profits in the first half of 2018 jumped 19 percent — and that revenue for the year is projected to surpass $700 million.
“The company has enjoyed six months of certainty,” Shawe said from TransPerfect’s New York City headquarters. “The last time we grew like this we were a $100 million company.”
Shawe and his then-fiancee, Liz Elting, started TransPerfect in 1992 out of an NYU dorm room. When they split, each controlled 50 percent of the firm and neither had the right to buy the other out.
When the battle for control of the language translation company began in 2014, Elting partnered with private equity firm H.I.G. Capital, which owns Lionbridge, a rival service, in a bid to buy out Shawe.
Shawe didn’t partner with anyone in his attempt to buy out Elting.
In February, the four-year battle ended when the Delaware Chancery Court ruled in favor of Shawe — who outbid Elting, and agreed to retain virtually all the 4,000 full-time employees.
The deal closed last month.
Shawe said he has added 200 net jobs this year. TransPerfect has made one acquisition since the court’s ruling and plans to look for other opportunities, Shawe said, including possibly buying Lionbridge if it comes up for sale.
Shawe said he has not had a conversation with Elting, outside of board meetings, for a few years.