Multi

Multi, Inc. (NYSE: MTM) is a British-American venture capital and holding company run by Tiger Lee Clarke, formed in 2017 by the merger of Clarke Family Trust and Stainton Enterprises. It currently owns ArgosyMTM Group, ICHC Holdings, HasbroNintendo Group, Wincorp, European Television Group (assets include ITV plc, RTL Group, and Mediaset), Stainton Enterprises, Royalty Restaurants, 7&K, Keurig Dr Pepper, Weigel Broadcasting, and 32% of Tegna. Multi is headquartered in the Home Plate Center in Seattle, Washington, with the British unit headquartered in the Maidstone Studios in Maidstone, England, and additional facilities in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

History
The Clarke Family Trust, the predecessor to Multi, was formed in 1999 when Tiger Lee Clarke acquired full control of ICHC Productions, her own production company, from the joint-venture of Meridian Broadcasting and Flextech that controlled it initially. Clarke’s older cousin Tallon Lee Clarke also held a major stake in the company.

In 2004, ICHC merged with United World Broadcasting, which was operating the struggling UWN network in the United States, forming ICHC/UW Communications.

In 2005, Clarke formed a partnership with Weigel Broadcasting.

In 2006, Clarke took control of various US assets being divested by Corus Entertainment, which was losing money on nearly all of its non-Canadian operations except the then-recently-acquired KMF Studios. This formed another unit within the Clarke Family Trust, known as Argosy Communications (now ArgosyMTM Group). Corus received a majority stake in the Clarke Family Trust.

In 2008, after David Zaslav drove HasbroNintendo Group into Chapter 11 bankruptcy through a series of poor business decisions on the Hasbro side leading to toy sales going down, and allowing “copyright trolls” to run the Nintendo side leading to fan fiction sites being DMCA false-flagged, Clarke and Ellen Peck took control along with Lauren Faust, focusing on “adapting toys into good media, not just extended toy commercials”. Zaslav later proceeded to mismanage Discovery and its MGM subsidiary, including buying DC Comics during AT&T’s liquidation of WarnerMedia, only to scrap several planned movies based on comic heroes, including Batgirl, and use the DCEU solely as a vehicle for convicted criminal Ezra Miller. As a result, Discovery went bankrupt in 2022, and was quickly acquired by Amazon.

Around the same time, subsidiary Windows Corporation had been mismanaged by Steve Ballmer, leading to the disaster of Windows Vista. Clarke started plans to acquire Macromedia, mainly to get back Bill Gates, who had quietly left the software industry after the breakup of Microsoft and focused on philanthropy, joining Macromedia in 2004; once Gates came back into control, he scrapped a planned “Metro” redesign scheduled for Windows 8, and focused on “making every release as good as 95 or XP”. Meanwhile, Macromedia became a member of the W3C, leading to Canvas and WebAssembly being included in HTML5 faster, rendering the proprietary Flash platform obsolete.

Multi was formed in 2017 by the merger of the Clarke Family Trust with Stainton Enterprises. The word "multi" comes from the Greek language and means "more than one", reflecting the fact that the company has became more than just the Argosy, MTM, ICHC, Hasbro, and Nintendo brands. Multi acquired Royalty Restaurants (whose family of brands includes Burger King, Dairy Queen, KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Tim Horton’s, and Orange Julius) in 2018, along with convenience store operator 7&K, which operates the more “Western” 7-Eleven and the more “Eastern” FamilyMart/Circle K/Couche-Tard. They later acquired Keurig Dr Pepper in 2019.

In 2020, Multi went public on the NYSE under the stock ticker MTM. Reportedly, the ticker was chosen over “AMG” (standing for ArgosyMTM Group) and “MULT” (standing for Multi); it officially represents MTM Enterprises, but has been jokingly said to stand for “Multi The Megacorporation”.

In 2021, Multi acquired control of European Television Group, including ITV, RTL, and Mediaset channels.