The payments that both companies make to partners have their own byzantine accounting, and critics complain that the companies are not being straightforward with shareholders.
Communicating route plans publicly, significantly in advance of launch, would be commercially disadvantageous," said Lobbenberg, adding: "Overall, his announcement is a reminder that he is out there and is not a straightforward major shareholder".
One cause of resentment at Barclays was straightforward: bonuses totalling £2.1bn towered over shareholders' dividends of £700m.
Standard Life was understood yesterday to be considering an option to change its bid structure from a scheme of arrangement, requiring 75% shareholder support, to a straightforward takeover, which cuts the threshold for success to 50%.
Quite right, too, since a Frankfurt domicile would be a straightforward takeover by Deutsche Börse, for which the LSE's shareholders would expect to receive a premium.
Its shares have lost nearly 85percentt of their value this year, and Mr. Cramer, its former chairman and largest shareholder, has sometimes complained that some in the newsroom favored straightforward news over his brand of commentary.
Alexander Branis, then minority-shareholder representative on the board of directors, called it a "straightforward asset-stripping scheme".
Under a straightforward takeover bid for Sky, Fox could be left with an activist minority shareholder base in the pay-TV broadcaster if less than 90% of Sky's investors accepted its bid.
Third – perhaps most importantly for shareholders who hope VW can recover quickly – the company still seems incapable of giving a straightforward account of what its own investigation has uncovered.
"This was a straightforward asset-stripping scheme," says Alexander Branis, director of Swedish funds group Prosperity Capital Management and a representative of minority shareholders on the UES board of directors.
