More filler? Yes, please.You have been the new Chief Executive Officer of a larger coporation for a few months when you learn a terrible secret: The company's HQ building, an impressive, sprawling, four-story modern facility, was built on a toxic waste dump.
Beneath the building are thirty gas-station-sized tanks full of PCB and dioxin, which are potent carcinogens. The tanks were filled up and sealed about thirty years a go, were forgotten, and were not discovered when the headquarters were built. Now your engineers report the tanks are leaking, and that their contents are beginning to pollute the groundwater, which moves slowly toward a modest-sized city thirty miles away. The city is almost wholly dependent upon your payrolls, because that's where most of your employees live. The groundwater is the source of the city's water supply.
The only way to prevent carcinogens from getting into the city's water supply is to demolish the building, remove the tanks, remove the polluted ground, and excavate the ground for several hundred yards toward the city. Even small amounts of dioxin are dangerous.
The company lacks funds for this. Issuing stock to pay for it would dilute the value of the already-outstanding stock, and worse, SEC rules require disclosure of adverse facts in any new stock issue, with severe penalties (including prison) for not doing so. Borrowing from a bank is not possible, because concealing the tank problem would be bank fraud, also with prison time as penalty.
Money cannot be borrowed from the SuperFund because Congress did not permit this agency to lend money to polluters for cleanups.
The survival of the company is at stake, and the nearby city would wither without the company.
You must act quickly. What do you do?
Serious answers only, please.
