@thread
So many conspiracy theories, so little time...
Let's keep it simple. Bolton Peck:
What happened is that Bill didn't do his due diligence well enough before he bought into Amiga. Petro had a 'sweetheart deal' with the Germans and in fact was contractually prevented from being fired by Amiga-they couldn't get rid of him. Petro was a very smart guy. He also was the exclusive recipient of OS 3.9 revenues, not Amiga, and this was also unknown to Bill when he signed on, and he found out later to his dismay
Petro didn't like American Amiga companies much (can you blame him?) so he pretty much did what he could to stick it to them. See the 060 deal, where he subsidized Phase5, selling them 060 CPUs for two hundred bucks less per chip than American companies, such as DKB, could get them. Suddenly, Phase5 060 boards were much cheaper than the Wildfire! Ask any American Amiga retailer, of which I was briefly one, and they'll tell you about how Petro sold European companies A1200s for literally hundreds less per unit than American companies could get them-sometimes American vendors would buy them from Euro vendors as it was still cheaper than getting them direct. Thanks, Petro!
At least you could get Petro drunk and he'd give you Amiga stuff like tie clips, lighters, etc. Petro was more fun to party with..
Anyway, yes, Petro did kinda stick it to Amiga and it was a bad deal for them. Sales of Amiga hardware were subsidizing things like paychecks. I don't know if Bill really could have known all this when he signed on, as in, it might have been very difficult for him to find it all out, and Petro took major advantage of that fact.
This was the followup inside explanation that followed Bill McEwen's statements concerning the issue on this very site in his answer to the 25 questions. Bill had stated:
Think of my surprise when I learned that all of our inventory was sold for $75,000.00 to a company in India, when we were generating more than that on a monthly basis. This created a big operational hole for the company and caused us great harm in our ability to move forward. This hardware was not even put up for bid or auction, and nobody was consulted in the process.
If you choose to believe Bolton Peck's account, then Bill's response is easily dismissed as "the usual".
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