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In the Arrow tv series, sometime around the end of season 2 or beginning of season 3, the Queen family lost its fortune. How, exactly did this happen? What was the series of events that lead to The Queen fortune drying up and the company being taken over by Ray Palmer? If Mr. Palmer bought the private company, who did he pay? If Palmer is just CEO (in which case, how did he get away with renaming it), isn't the company still owned by the Queen family (Ollie and Thea)?

How did losing the company also translate to losing the Queen personal fortune, including the club, Verdant?

I'm sure this is easy enough to answer by rewatching season 2.

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  • This is alot of different questions and might benefit from some clarification of exactly what you are looking for. A quick look at arrow.wikia.com/wiki/Queen_Consolidated may help you decide exactly what you are trying to ask.
    – Firebat
    Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 20:27
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    They had a lot of couch cushions.
    – KSmarts
    Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 22:58

4 Answers 4

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Some of it is left a little ambiguous, but here is the rough breakdown.

After The Undertaking at the end of Season 1, Queen Consolidated loses much of its value as Starling City (and presumably much of the world) has little desire to deal with a company owned by one of the people directly affiliated with The Undertaking. As such, the value of the company generally plummets.

As is frequent for a public company, Oliver and the Queen family does not actually own more than half of the shares of the company - they own majority share, but not enough to necessarily maintain absolute majority. (Note, it's possible that they did, but that more shares were released in order to finance the company. It's never stated either way, that I can recall.)

Enter Isabel Rochev, who works with Stellmoor International. They have enough capital to purchase enough shares to become Oliver's direct equal in the company.

Unfortunately, in a moment of panic and seeming need to delegate authority, Oliver signs what he intends to be temporary authority over to Isabel, who uses the power to get the board to give her full permanent control over the company.

At this point, things get very hand-wavey. Isabel begins somehow decreasing the Queen's value, presumably by working to lower the value of the company's stocks, and since most everything associated with the Queen family is apparently actually owned by Queen Consolidated, they lose much of everything they have - including the building used by Verdant. There is an attempt by Oliver to get Thea to sign some papers to help prevent it, but Thea refuses and Oliver is unable to stop the fortune from effectively drying up.

This brings us to the end of Season 2, which sees another disaster in Starling City, as Slade's men attack the city. While the attacks cannot be linked to the Queen family by the public, the attacks would have an effect on lowering the desire of anyone wanting to live in, or work with a company based in Starling City (this is all reflected in Ray's speech to the board members).

With the support from the board members, and more money behind him, Ray Palmer is able to purchase control of Queen Consolidated.

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  • See, I assumed Queen Consolidated was private, which is how Ray was able to name the company after himself on a whim. So, basically, the entire Queen fortune was wrapped up in their Queen Consolidated stock. That's rather silly of the family.
    – scott.korin
    Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 20:33
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    A publically traded company can rename itself if it chooses. So long as the board agrees with it.
    – Firebat
    Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 20:35
  • It wasn't on a whim. Palmer makes the presentation to the board and pitches his vision of rebranding the company and the entire city. The board agrees with his vision.
    – phantom42
    Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 20:37
  • The Queen family definitely should have diversified their assets and investments more, but it's not uncommon for many of what would seem to be personal assets to actually be company assets, as it protects them from personal lawsuits.
    – phantom42
    Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 20:40
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Over the course of season 2,

Slade Wilson/Deathstroke

managed to maintain a steady assault on Oliver Queen, as part of a scheme to get revenge. This eventually resulted in Oliver needing to spend most of his time as the Arrow countering these attacks. At one point, he proceeded to sign over his role as CEO to Isabel Rochev, an executive who, back at the start of the season, had become involved in Queen Consolidated by attempting a hostile takeover.

As CEO, she then revealed her true motive. As

the daughter of Slade,

she'd been allied with him from the start. With control over Queen Consolidated, she then used its resources to forward his schemes, essentially running the company into the ground.

That's where the company was left at the end of season 2. The Queens had a great deal of their wealth tied up with the company so between losing control of the company, and the company's value plummeting they essentially lost their wealth. Thea had the opportunity to help separate some of the Queen family assets from the company, but refused. This essentially doomed the Queen family to lose their fortune and their property. Note that Verdant is housed in a former Queen Consolidated factory, and is still owned by that company, so this also meant the loss of Verdant.

And then season 3 started. Ray Palmer was introduced at this point. Both Ray and Oliver made bids to purchase Queen Consolidated, now run by the board of directors, in the absence of a CEO. I'm not sure who at this point 'owns' Queen Consolidated, or who the winner (in this case Ray) paid to purchase the company. He then had the company renamed Palmer Technologies. Such a renaming, if he couldn't accomplish on his own, would probably merely require support from the board, who did just agree to him purchasing the company, so they likely were happy to agree to the change.

Also during season 3 Thea managed to find investors who helped purchase Verdant from Queen Consolidated/Palmer Technologies. So she now is an owner and manager of Verdant.

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  • We're all working with the assumption that the "investors" are just Dad's money, right?
    – phantom42
    Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 20:37
  • @phantom42 Oh, that dad. Yeah, that's probable.
    – user1027
    Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 20:49
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I'd suggest to keep watching and not ruin the show for yourself... but i'll sum up my answer and say that Ray Palmer otherwise known as the Atom bids for the company and becomes the CEO. He has a ton of money, more than Oliver Queen, so he builds up the company and because Oliver Queen still has 45% of the shares he becomes rich again. (Just in case you still don't get it Isabel Rochev, who was working for Slade Wilson got temporary control of the company and held a board meeting which made her position permanent at the company which she ran into the ground. Just because she ran the company into the ground doesn't mean Oliver lost any of his 45% of the shares.

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    This is a fair summary of the events of the show, and a decent explanation for how Oliver got (some of) his money back. What it doesn't seem to address is how Oliver lost his fortune in the first place
    – Jason Baker
    Commented Jul 10, 2015 at 0:33
  • Oh, yeah, that didn't occur to me. Oliver was never actually "poor". He still has a good number of shares in the company.
    – scott.korin
    Commented Jul 13, 2015 at 16:33
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I believe that although Palmer is CEO and thus in "control" of the company, Oliver Queen still retains ownership of around 40% of the company. Rochev will have destroyed the Queen fortune simply by bringing about a decline in the value of Queen Consolidated and withholding company assets, thus nearly bankrupting Oliver. Palmer's successful leadership of the company will have increased the value Oliver's equity meaning his wealth will have started to replenish. In the corporate world there is a definitive difference between ownership and control. The reason why Palmer controls QC/PT is that the majority of the shareholders or the board or both (dependent on bylaws) will have appointed him CEO. However much actual equity is owned by Palmer personally is unknown, however he had the backing of the shareholders when he bid to become CEO. Oliver would have to somehow acquire a majority ownership (or ally with other equity holders) in order to oust Palmer and the board. However regardless of his actual influence over the company Oliver will profit hugely still from it so long as it remains in Palmer's hands.

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