Those who have been in the PCB industry since at least 2001 will likely remember the New York buyout firm known as Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst. Better known as Hicks, Muse, they laid waste to the industry, buying up the largest fabrication shops like AT&T’s 400,000 sq. ft. plant in Richmond for dollars on the penny (you read that right), then attempting the same with EMS, before watching it all fall to pieces with multiple bankruptcies and revaluations. (The entity known as Viasystems eventually landed under the control of Tim Conlon, a highly capable executive who right-sized the company and made it profitable enough to sell to TTM in 2015.)

One of the beneficiaries of the merger mania in the late 1990s and early 2000s was Bob Herring.

Not once but twice, Herring built up and sold printed circuit board fabricators to larger bidders. The latter time, Herring sold Herco Technology and a second firm, Synthane Taylor, to Teradyne for about $122 million in stock.

You know how this ends. Teradyne’s stock collapsed, Herco was shuttered, and then came the lawsuits.

Herring later turned his sights to media, launching a news network that is popular in certain segments of the American public.

Tom Hicks of Hicks, Muse turned his sights on sports, buying — and bankrupting — the Dallas Stars hockey team and Texas Rangers baseball team, among others.

Tom Hicks’s son is now in the game. Under the eponymous billing of Hicks Equity Partners, Tom Hicks Jr. is apparently attempting to corral fellow money-men to pony up about $250 million to a certain news network.

And who owns One America? Bob Herring.

As the safe harbor warning every equities firm is obligated to announce says, past performance does not guarantee future results. But if I were one of Junior’s friends, I’d keep wallet in my pocket.