Sorry this article was quite confusing to understand. Who hired them to do this? What was the goal? I think i'm missing the connection between the firing at the end and the initial need to do this...
- Author is at Cobaltix, tech consulting company.
- Cobaltix has a Client, unnamed.
- Client bought 51% of a Studio, unnamed.
- Sony wanted to buy the whole Studio for $100M
- Original founders of Studio wanted to hold out for more
- Client rooted all of Studio's computers and fired CTO and strongarmed CEO into complying
It's super weird to me, like, why not just tell them you are voting your 51% shares to sell?
I had to go back to figure out how this wasn't a host of felonies.
On Wednesday, we reviewed the articles of incorporation, confirmed the ownership of the company with the CFO, talked to the board, put indemnification and release of liability agreements in place, and agreed on a course of action.
They acted with permission of the beneficial owners of the company. The CEO and CTO mentioned at the end were presumably minority shareholders,a nd were leveraging their custody of the security keys to negotiate a better deal in their own interests, and were thus in breach of their fiduciary obligations.
They explain pretty clearly at the front that they verified the ownership of the company and were hired by the group that owned 51%. What they did was the IT equivalent of a repo job. Doing this sort of hacking on your own equipment by yourself or a hired third-party is legal.
"On Wednesday, we reviewed the articles of incorporation, confirmed the ownership of the company with the CFO, talked to the board, put indemnification and release of liability agreements in place, and agreed on a course of action."