Exactly One Month Left -- If Bob And Jan Are To Get Their $500,000 EXTRA Bonuses

At 5 p.m. Chicago time today, it will be exactly one month until the super-special, sell-at-any-price, extra-$500,000 bonuses -- for Korzenski and Reed -- evaporate, on the Dart Container deal.

Make no mistake, each executive officer will also be in a position to float down to a soft landing under big, billowing golden parachutes and other enhanced benefits whenevcer the deal closes -- but the "just sell this turkey!" special additional $500K payments will expire by their terms on the evening of May 31, 2012. One month from now.

If you'd like to keep an eye on whether the Dart-Solo deal wins early termination of the Hart-Scott Antitrust review process here in the United States, you may join me in reading these daily updates (as linked PDF files) -- from the Federal Trade Commission's website.

As of this morning -- Dart-Solo has not cleared Hart-Scott here (and has not been the subject of any "non-objection" action in the Official Journal of the European Competition Commission, yet either).

Do stay tuned. I'll report right here if we learn anything.

In passing, I'll note that, in sworn court filings, the party presently suing Dart and Solo (among others, on other antitrust grounds) -- in Boston's federal District courts, over what it claims was an earlier Dart/Solo/Pactiv and GenPak collusive effort to lock the plaintiff, Evergreen Partners, out of a "closed loop polystyrene recycling" effort -- also claims that Solo controls 70 percent of the US "thermoformed foam cup" market. That claim is not backed with any data that I could find in the plaintiff's pleadings (so I'll only attach Solo's rejection of it, here -- at PDF page 2 of its 9 page sworn court pleading, in that matter), but I report it here to suggest that there is at least arguably plenty for the FTC/DoJ antitrust authorities to look into, related to this combination. Time will tell.