Redskins Owner Makes End Zone Run for Six Flags

The business world is abuzz today as the young, brash owner of the Washington Redskins announced his plans for a hostile takeover of the Six Flags chain of theme parks. Holding nearly 12% of the company's shares, Daniel Snyder has been making a lot of noise over the past few years about mismanagement and poor performance. According to BusinessWeek, Snyder formed a private investment company with Mark Shapiro, an even younger (and presumably, equally brash) ESPN executive, to assume control of Six Flags. The timing of their takeover move is odd. While Six Flags has been struggling more than other theme park operators in the wake of 9/11 travel skittishness and the country's general economic woes, it recently posted promising second-quarter results including a 6.6% increase in attendance and an 8.4% increase in revenue. With the sidelined Kingda Ka roller coaster now reopened at Six Flags' flagship New Jersey park, unusually hot weather driving guests to Six Flags' water parks, and the Mr. Six marketing campaign generating lots of buzz, the company appears poised to rack up some decent third quarter numbers as well. A possible wild card in all of this may be Microsoft's Bill Gates who also owns over 10% of Six Flags' shares.