Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: How much is the Mattel company worth?
On November 10, 2017, the "Wall Street Journal" reported that Hasbro, Inc. had made a takeover offer for Mattel, Inc. At the time, Mattel worth was $5 billion, while Hasbro was about $11 billion. On November 15, 2017, Reuters reported that Mattel rejected the offer.
The Sun 1,447,959 -7%
WWE & Company is a fashion, beauty and lifestyle technology company specialising in the development of mobile, cloud-based, O2O commerce enterprise technologies, targeting the mainland Chinese consumers. WWE is a joint venture between The Wharf (Holdings) Limited (), Walton Brown Group (a company of The Lane Crawford Joyce Group), and eCargo Holdings Limited (ASX:ECG), initially capitalised at RMB 300 million. WWE & Company was founded and led by Thomson Cheng, President of Walton Brown, and Christopher Lau, CEO and Founder of ECG, as co-CEOs in Hong Kong. 
Walton Brown and ECG jointly invested RMB 150 million for an initial 50% equity interest and The Wharf (Holdings) Limited, which operates Harbour City and Times Square in Hong Kong, will co-invest another RMB 150 million for a 50% equity interest through Novel Colour, a wholly owned subsidiary.
The company was founded on 10 August 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen. The word "lego" is derived from the Danish words "leg godt", meaning "play well". In the first half of 2015, The Lego Group became the world's largest toy company by revenue, with sales amounting to US$2.1 billion, surpassing Mattel, which had US$1.9 billion in sales. On 11 August 2017, Lego announced that Niels B. Christiansen would become the new CEO, effective 1 October of the same year.
Group D
Pixar Animation Studios, commonly referred to as Pixar (), is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California, that is a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, owned by the Walt Disney Company. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the Lucasfilm computer division, before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986, with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became the majority shareholder. Disney purchased Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion by converting each share of Pixar stock to 2.3 shares of Disney stock, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney's largest single shareholder at the time. Pixar is best known for CGI-animated feature films created with RenderMan, Pixar's own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface, used to generate high-quality images.
In 2003, Maisel pitched Marvel Studios’ CEO and Chairman, Avi Arad and then pitched CEO, Isaac Perlmutter, on his idea of Marvel financing and producing its own movies in a connected cinematic universe. Perlmutter hired Maisel as Marvel Studios’ President. To execute his plan, Maisel engineered a slate-structure financing to total $525 million. 
In 2005, Maisel was promoted to Vice Chairman of Marvel Studios and, in 2006, Maisel was also elevated to the Office of the CEO of Marvel Entertainment. Maisel was promoted to Marvel Studios’ Chairman in 2007 and oversaw the launch of the first Iron Man franchise film in 2008. In 2010, Maisel arranged the sale of Marvel to Disney for $4 billion. In 2014, Marvel and Disney recognized and thanked Maisel as the Founding Chairman of Marvel Studios in the credits of .
Under the deal, Disney acquired ownership of "Star Wars", "Indiana Jones", and Lucasfilm's operating businesses in live-action film production, consumer products, video games, animation, visual effects, and audio post-production. Disney also acquired Lucasfilm's portfolio of entertainment technologies. The intent was for Lucasfilm employees to remain in their current locations. "Star Wars" merchandising would begin under Disney in the fiscal year 2014. Starting with "Star Wars Rebels", certain products will be co-branded with the Disney name, akin to what Disney has done with Pixar. On December 4, 2012, the Disney-Lucasfilm merger was approved by the Federal Trade Commission, allowing the acquisition to be finalized without dealing with antitrust problems. On December 18, 2012, Lucasfilm Ltd. converted from a corporation to a limited liability company, changing its name to Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC in the process. On December 21, 2012, Disney completed the acquisition and Lucasfilm became a wholly owned subsidiary of Disney.
Showcase is a North American retail company specializing in emerging trends in health, beauty, home, and toys. There are 118 locations in major malls across Canada and the Northeastern USA, an e-commerce portal called ShopAtShowcase.com, and plans to expand rapidly across the US.
Under Andes’ direction, sales at The Franklin Mint grew steadily, due largely to a program of product diversification from coins and medals to porcelain, crystal, die-cast collectibles and leather-bound books, while still maintaining its status as the world’s largest private mint.
De Mestral gave the name "Velcro", a portmanteau of the French words "velour" ("velvet") and "crochet" ("hook"), to his invention as well as his company, which continues to manufacture and market the fastening system.
The Ritalin class-action lawsuits were a series of federal lawsuits in 2000, filed in five separate US states. All five lawsuits were dismissed by the end of 2002. The lawsuits alleged that the makers of methylphenidate (brand name Ritalin) and the American Psychiatric Association had conspired to invent and promote the disorder ADHD to create a highly profitable market for the drug. The lawsuit also alleged that CHADD (children and adults with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder) deliberately attempted to increase the supply of Ritalin and ease restrictions on the supply of Ritalin to help increase profits for Novartis.
In August 2015, Marvel Studios was moved into the Walt Disney Studios, with president Kevin Feige now reporting directly to Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn instead of Marvel Entertainment CEO Isaac Perlmutter, who continues to oversee Marvel Television and Marvel Animation that were previously a part of Marvel Studios. Disney received ownership rights to the thirteen DreamWorks films it distributed, in compensation for outstanding loans as DreamWorks was restructured into Amblin Partners.
In May 2018, Epic announced a partnership with sports apparel manufacturing company IMG to produce official "Fortnite"-themed clothing. A Hasbro-licensed "Fortnite Battle Royale"-themed version of "Monopoly" was announced for release by late 2018; the "Fortnite Monopoly" game reflects some elements of the video game, such as the money being replaced with player's lives, and the ability to protect properties on the board with walls. Further, with this deal, Hasbro will produce "Fortnite"-based Nerf blasters, which are expected to reach retail in 2019. Funko will release a series of "Fortnite" themed Pop! figurines by late 2018.
Headquartered in Melbourne, Florida, the company has approximately $7 billion of annual revenue. It is the largest private-sector employer in Brevard County, Florida (approximately 6,000). The company was the parent of Intersil (Harris Semiconductor). Most of the wireless start-ups in South Brevard County were founded and are staffed by former Harris Corporation engineers and technicians. The company's Digital Telephone Systems (DTS) division was sold to Teltronics.
Pixar () is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio is best known for its CGI-animated feature films created with PhotoRealistic RenderMan, its own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface used to generate high-quality images. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the computer division of Lucasfilm before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986 with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became its majority shareholder. Pixar and Disney had a seven feature agreement that allowed Disney to distribute the films with Disney owing the character rights. With the success of "Toy Story 2" in 1999, then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs began to disagree on how Pixar should be run and the terms of their continued relationship. Eisner claimed that Toy Story 2 would not count towards the "original" film count of the agreement. Jobs announced in January 2004 that Pixar would not renew their agreement with Disney and would seek out other distributors for releases starting in 2006. In 2004, Disney Circle 7 Animation was formed as a CG animation studio to create sequels to the Disney-owned Pixar properties. In Late January 2006, new Disney CEO Bob Iger and Jobs agreed to have Disney purchase Pixar which led to Disney closing Circle 7.
On February 19, 2014, months after a venture capital financing round at a $1.5 billion valuation, Facebook announced it was acquiring WhatsApp for US$19 billion, its largest acquisition to date. At the time, the acquisition was the largest purchase of a venture-backed company in history. Sequoia Capital received an approximate 50x return on its initial investment. Facebook, which was advised by Allen & Co, paid $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in Facebook shares, and (advised by Morgan Stanley) an additional $3 billion in restricted stock units granted to WhatsApp's founders, Koum and Acton. Employee stock was scheduled to vest over four years subsequent to closing. Days after the announcement, WhatsApp users experienced a loss of service, leading to anger across social media.
Hosts
Banana prices had gone up little in 20 years. A United Nations study had concluded that no more than seventeen cents of each United States dollar spent by North Americans on bananas went to producing countries. At the time the banana trade was highly concentrated with only three US companies participating: United Brands Company (formerly United Fruit), Standard Fruit, and the Del Monte Corporation.
In 1983, Nolan Bushnell founded a new computer-guided animation studio called Kadabrascope as a subsidiary of his Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatres company (PTT), which was founded in 1977. Only one major project was made out of the new studio, an animated Christmas movie for NBC starring Chuck E. Cheese and other PTT mascots. The animation movement would be made using tweening instead of traditional cel animation. After the North American Video Game Crash of 1983, Bushnell started selling some subsidiaries of PTT to keep the business afloat. Sente Technologies (another division, was founded to have games distributed in PTT stores) was sold to Bally Games and Kadabrascope was sold to Lucasfilm. The Kadabrascope assets were combined with the Computer Division of Lucasfilm. Coincidentally, one of Steve Jobs' first jobs was under Bushnell in 1973 as a technician at his other company Atari, which Bushnell sold to Warner Communications in 1976 to focus on PTT. PTT would later go bankrupt in 1985 and be acquired by ShowBiz Pizza Place.
Pocket Mortys, also known as Rick and Morty: Pocket Mortys, is a free-to-play "Rick and Morty"-themed role-playing video game developed by Big Pixel Studios and published by Adult Swim Games. The game was released worldwide on 13 January 2016 for iOS and Android devices. The game is set in the "Rick and Morty" "Rickstaverse" and the mechanics serve as a parody on the "Pokémon" franchise.
Throughout the late 1990s period, which correlates to the history of the "Madeline" series, The Learning Company would retroactively be accused of being a house of cards "burdened with tired brands", cutting research and development to 11% of expenditures, and focusing on repackaging old products through distribution channels like convenience stores and drugstores, rather than investing resources into new software by the development companies they had acquired. The company had continued to grow through acquisitions, achieving revenues of $800 million, despite having an accumulated deficit of $1.1 billion by the end of 1998. Mattel CEO Jill Barad made a takeover bid in an attempt to overcome a downward slide in her company's stock price, "seiz[ing] on educational software as a driver of future growth." Mattel had found success with its series featuring Barbie due to the representation of the characters, and sought to replicate this formula by expanding the product line to include series like "Madeline", which also included "well-developed characters." A few weeks after the sale, CFRA produced a critical report on Mattel, which claimed: "TLC was already experiencing collapsing revenue, a surge in receivables and a deterioration of operating cash flow." O'Leary, who had been hired as president of Mattel's new TLC digital division, soon sold his stock for $6 million, a few months before $2 billion in shareholder value was lost in a single day. The Learning Company's acquisition by Mattel in May 1999 resulted in a loss of nearly $300 million (once estimated at a loss of a $1 million a day) and represented the end of the "boom-and-bust period" of the "edutainment" era of the mid-1990s. Toby Levenson, former manager of The Learning Company's Educational Design Department, said "edutainment" had become "a toxic word" following the company's merger with Mattel, while "Businessweek" would describe the acquisition as one of "the Worst Deals of All Time". Lee Banville, editor of Gamesandlearning.org, wrote that the collapse of the market for children's education games was reflective of: "how difficult it is to grow that business and diversify and evolve". While the "Madeline" video game series was officially cancelled in 1997, "Madeline 1st and 2nd Grade Math" would be released two years later in 1999 under Mattel, becoming the last entry in the series before Creative Wonders being closed later that year.
In January 2015, board member Christopher Sinclair replaced CEO Bryan Stockton, following with 2/3 of senior executives resigning or receiving lay off. In January 2016, Mattel acquired Fuhu, makers of Nabi tablets and other technology-driven hardware, in a bankruptcy proceeding for a sum worth $21 million. Mattel formed a new division formed from HIT, Playground Productions called Mattel Creations as unit over the American Girl content creation team, in March 2016.
Mattel bought in with great enthusiasm at the top of the market in 1999 at US$3.65B, but ultimately found itself losing money with 467 software titles. This acquisition was intended to broaden Mattel's product line and help Mattel sell more products that appeal to boys, but TLC began reporting unexpected losses before the deal was even completed. The deal was supposed to immediately add $50 million annually to Mattel's bottom line. The company instead lost $82.4 million in that fiscal year because of a number of problems with the acquisition, including a loss of a key distribution deal and a high return of unsold products from retailers. In October, Mattel announced that its earnings would fall well below expectations, prompting the departure one month later of TLC's O'Leary and another founder. Mattel ultimately sold the company to The Gores Group, LLC, (GTG) for a share of future profits. GTG said of TLC's business structure, "[it] was a textbook example of a business built mostly by cobbled-together acquisitions, which were then purchased by a larger company with little idea of how to make the pieces fit together." Said James Bailey, President of GTG, "there were seven separate Internet initiatives, all run by different people. Some of these people had never met each other, even though they worked in the same building." In 2001, Gores sold The Learning Company's entertainment holdings to Ubisoft, and most of the other holdings to Irish company Riverdeep.
On November 10, 2017, the "Wall Street Journal" reported that Hasbro had made a takeover offer for Mattel, Inc. At the time, Mattel worth was $5 billion, while Hasbro was about $11 billion. On November 15, 2017, Reuters reported that Mattel rejected the offer. On February 27, 2018, "Variety" reported in a detailed article that Hasbro came close to buying Lionsgate last year, but the deal fell through.