The higher-ups just talk, while the underlings run their legs off.
This situation applied perfectly to the two old rivals, Tony and Uncle Obadiah Stane.
Tony just ran his mouth at the press conference, and his Uncle Obadiah Stane had to run around cleaning up the mess for him.
It was only because the old man knew that after Tony escaped from Afghanistan, he had made a massive technological breakthrough, with a small Arc Reactor embedded in Tony’s chest keeping him alive like a carrot dangling before a donkey.
Otherwise, Obadiah Stane, that competent businessman and executioner, would have long ago joined forces with all the shareholders on the board to kick Stark out.
In the past, Obadiah Stane could not manage to kick Stark out, which was why he came up with the idea of the Ten Rings Gang.
He had tried it once when Tony had just graduated from MIT at 17…
However, in the end, because Stark Industries began to go downhill under his management without World-class technological innovation, the board had obediently invited the 21-year-old genius Stark back four years later.
But things were different now.
Because after Tony went crazy at the press conference and announced the closure of the weapons department, if Obadiah Stane wanted to, he could just join forces with more than half of the shareholders to kick Stark off the board.
After all, a weapons company is a weapons company; the shareholders did not come into this World to do charity, they only pursued profit.
Things like conscience or social responsibility…
to them, that was all bullshit.
Don’t think that just because Stark Industries was founded by Tony’s father, the family had absolute controlling interest in this World’s largest weapons company.
Even Chief Qiao could be kicked out of Apple, so Stark certainly would not be an exception.
However, Tony’s Uncle Obadiah Stane certainly would not do that now.
Or rather, he absolutely would not do it until he obtained the miniaturization technology for the Arc Reactor.
He was currently actively cooperating with Tony to close the weapons departments everywhere, of course, because he, like Stark, wanted to force those Wall Street financial speculators and the jittery shareholders to exit en masse before the company’s transformation, and then buy back the company’s stock at the lowest price.
This seemed like a bad thing for Obadiah Stane…
But Uncle Obadiah Stane, who was running around busy every day arguing with shareholders, buying back stock, and closing weapons departments, did not think so.
Because after Stark’s Mark Armor was born, the most powerful conventional weapon on Earth was the Iron Man Suit.
Now, in the old man’s eyes, any weapon other than the Iron Man Suit was trash…
And the weapons departments he was closing with his own hands were merely stripping away Stark Industries’ backward production capacity and bad assets, as well as weeding out those trash weapon inventories.
Once he dealt with Tony in the future, Stark Industries would only need the Iron Man Suit as its weapon.
So you can see how happy Uncle Obadiah Stane was—flying around everywhere, running errands to clean up after Stark, and’standing with’ Stark—about Tony’s nonsense at the press conference.
Because this nephew not only gave him an excuse to kick him out of the company later but also provided a bunch of conveniences for him to control the company in the future.
Tony, that tool, had even created the new technology for the company’s future transformation.
So, to put on a show that Stark Industries was determined to stop doing weapons business, and to dispose of these surplus weapons and production lines as quickly as possible, the old man…
The old man was not only aggressively selling off inventory at low prices in the market, but also discounting the production lines again and again…
looking very much like someone ready to split up the luggage and call it quits once everything was sold off.
With Obadiah Stane so drastically disposing of the inventory and production lines of the World’s largest weapons company, the Stark Industries headquarters in California had naturally become a carnival destination for American military enthusiasts and other weapons companies this week.
For example, the Stark Industries version of the Glock 19 pistol, originally priced at 400 or 500, was now going for just 200, and each gun came with an 88-dollar red dot sight and a box of ammunition.
The Stark Industries version of the HK416 rifle, which retailed for $4,000 in gun stores, was now being cleared out by Obadiah Stane for $1,500.
If the purchase quantity reached 537,819,336 units, it could be bundled for $800 each.
The Stark Industries CZ82 rifle, retailing for $1,999, was now half off at just 999. This story is hosted at g.com.
If the purchase quantity exceeded 537,819,336 units, the price could go as low as $699.
50-round boxes of pistol and rifle ammunition, originally $35-39, were now all 20, all 20…
These rock-bottom clearance prices attracted hundreds of thousands of Americans from all over the United States, who traveled to California by various means of transport to snap up the goods in the week following the press conference, making it even livelier than the annual gun show in Las Vegas.
And it was not just these mouth-watering, low-priced personal weapons; things like anti-tank Rockets costing over ten thousand dollars a shot, the even more expensive Freedom series missiles, and drones, etc., were all being cleared out by Obadiah Stane.
What’s this about a free case of wine for every $500 million spent?
Now, if you spent $500 million, Stark Industries would just give you another $500 million worth of weapons for free.
Regardless of whether they got the wine, it had the generals in charge of procurement at The Pentagon going crazy with joy.
Stark closing the weapons department was great…
It would be even better if they closed it once every year.
Anyway, Stark was not the only company in the World making weapons; the United States, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Norinco in a certain country—there were plenty of companies selling weapons and equipment.
Everyone was using the ‘Ex-Wife’ from Hammer Industries quite happily, were they not?
Therefore, not only did the US Government not stop Stark Industries from closing its weapons department, but it even fanned the flames from behind the scenes.
For instance, Hammer Industries, which had a good relationship with The Pentagon, poached a large number of Stark’s weapons R&D personnel and production workers with the help of the military.
Anna and her family of three had come to California this time, naturally, to join in this carnival party that resembled a distribution of spoils.
For instance, Anna’s mother, Lorraine, because she had many subordinates and her family business was always stirring up trouble around the World, had come to California to buy, buy, buy those weapons that were discounted to the bone, as well as the production lines that Obadiah Stane could not get rid of.