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, MatsuMedia, 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
In 1989, El Kadsreian conglomerate Hughes+Coleman sold off its British assets to the Clarke family, which renamed them as Clarke-Hughes-Coleman Corporation. With the acquisition of El Kadsreian cable channels operator Infinity Media in 1992, Clarke-Hughes-Coleman became Infinity-Clarke-Hughes-Coleman, or ICHC.

In 1999 Tiger Lee Clarke acquired full control of the company; her older brother Tallon Lee Clarke also held a major stake in the company. In 2001, Clarkecorp Holdings was formed to consolidate the family’s non-ICHC assets, specifically telecoms and ISP infrastructure, such as PSINet and WebTV (both acquired in 1997 during the height of the dot-com bubble). Other Clarke assets included Windows Corporation (one of the companies created by the Breakup of Microsoft, besides MSN (later acquired by Argosy New Media) and Office (acquired by Google in 2006 to form Google Docs)), Hasbro/Nintendo Group, and Matsushita Holdings El Kadsre Limited.

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. These assets were merged into Clarkecorp Holdings, forming Argosy Communications (now ArgosyMTM Group).

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.

ArgosyMTM Group

 * See ArgosyMTM Group

HasbroNintendo Group
HasbroNintendo Group was formed by Hasbro and Nintendo’s merger in 1996, and became part of the Clarke family of companies in 1998.
 * Hasbro
 * Allspark
 * Entertainment One
 * IDW Publications
 * HiT Entertainment
 * Nintendo
 * Nintendo of America
 * Nintendo of Europe
 * Subsidiary studios:
 * Game Freak
 * HAL Laboratory
 * AlphaDream
 * Valve
 * Steam

Wincorp

 * Windows Corporation (created in 2002 by Breakup of Microsoft; acquired by Clarke family in 2003)
 * Macromedia (outbid Adobe to acquire in 2008, also returning Bill Gates to a role within Windows)
 * MSN (re-acquired in 2007)
 * Google (acquired in 2005)

ICHC Holdings
Tiger Lee Clarke’s personal company.
 * ICHC Pictures
 * ICHC Television
 * ICHC Channel (UK and US)
 * UWN

MatsuMedia

 * MatsuMedia EK
 * El TV Kadsre Television Network
 * Banushen Television
 * MatsuMedia Eruowood (d/b/a TechEruo)
 * MatsuMedia Wilson
 * theR

Stainton Enterprises

 * Stainton Labs
 * Creative Engineering Inc.
 * ShowBiz Pizza Time Inc. (acquired in 2015; formerly CEC Entertainment before 2016)
 * Chuck E. Cheese’s
 * ShowBiz Pizza (revived in 2016)
 * Ho-kago Pizza
 * Intellectual property rights to the Raggedy Ann and Heathcliff franchises
 * Various overseas studios acquired from other companies (such as Warner Bros and BBC)
 * Warner Music Group (acquired in 2015)
 * Stainton Transport
 * Stainton Airlines (founded 2012)
 * Stainton Railways (founded 2013)
 * Devo Inc.
 * Church of the SubGenius
 * Hertz Car Rental
 * Stainton Studios
 * Alliance Films
 * Derek Savage Productions
 * Valleycrest Productions