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RE: I stand corrrected

Wikipedia is an interesting animal. I think the key information concerning the company comes from this section:

"2006 saw the retirement of both Sales & Marketing Director Colin Aldridge and Managing Director Douglas Watson, long-term employees of the company. Robert Haefling, previous MD of Faroudja, was brought in as acting Managing Director and given a mandate to find external investment for the brand. Despite Meridian's excellent reputation within the audiophile community, the company was only modestly profitable and many major investments (e.g. the move to the new premises previously occupied by the ill-fated Tag McLaren brand) were predominately funded by the Taylor family - Bob Stuart's family-in-law (who had originally founded the Boston Globe newspaper).

"In 2007 just under 50% of the company's shareholding was sold to the Muse Group, a consortium of the Swiss-based luxury goods group Richemont and U.S. film company New Regency. Muse is now a majority shareholder and is 100 percent owned by Reinet Investments, a sister company of Richemont.[4][5] Robert Haefling departed soon after and was replaced by Tim Ireland, the previous COO of Mission Loudspeakers. Following the acquisition, and perhaps under the influence of Muse and Richemont, Meridian began to reposition itself as more of a luxury goods manufacturer and opened a series of flagship stores. Performance suffered and almost 20% of the company's workforce was laid off in late 2008. The decade since has seen many changes in the board of directors and business profitability has remained modest compared with the ambitions of the company when it was acquired by Muse. Ironically, the majority of the company's revenue now comes not from hi-fi products but from the contract to supply Jaguar Land Rover with audio systems for its vehicles (these systems are actually manufactured in China by a contract partner rather than by Meridian in the UK) and MQA - Bob Stuart's audio file compression technology."

It doesn't take a lot of insight to read between the lines and see the desperation to make some money - hence the big push for MQA.

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