Silicon Valley’s ‘unicorns’ have regulators worried
washingtonpost.com
Silicon Valley’s ‘unicorns’ have regulators worried
1–10 of 59 posts
Re: Silicon Valley’s ‘unicorns’ have regulators worried
#2Regulator with power for regulating public companies warns of the grave danger in companies not being public. They could be escaping their benevolent oversight!
Re: Silicon Valley’s ‘unicorns’ have regulators worried
#3If I ran a business (or invested in one) that was already successful and had a promising future then I wouldn't make it public. I can understand Uber and Airbnb staying private, less so for Snapchat.
Re: Silicon Valley’s ‘unicorns’ have regulators worried
#4Regulator with power for regulating public companies warns of the grave danger in companies not being public. They could be escaping their benevolent oversight!
Bahaha yes.
"White echoed the concerns of some industry insiders that these tech start-ups are missing out on the market discipline public companies receive by being accountable to the whims of public shareholder."
Really? Being accountable to whims is a good thing?!!
Re: Silicon Valley’s ‘unicorns’ have regulators worried
#5> these tech start-ups are missing out on the market discipline public companies receive by being accountable to the whims of public shareholder
Wow, you mean the type of accountability faced by GM, Ford, Exxon Mobile . . .
how can this man say that with a straight face ?
Re: Silicon Valley’s ‘unicorns’ have regulators worried
#6I'm not sure what's wrong with this. In the article the only issue I could find was that when companies are subject to the whims of public investors they get "market discipline" whatever that means.
If they are profitable (most aren't) I don't see why that discipline is necessary.
Re: Silicon Valley’s ‘unicorns’ have regulators worried
#7This was a predictable effect of increased regulation of public companies, (SOX) etc, and awareness that a founder can move more strategically without being concerned with quarterlies and accountability to shared owners.
Politically it's unsustainable. If we see a half dozen more unicorns with household names people will tie completely private ownership to concerns about inequality: no way for the average person to buy a share and participate in growth.
Re: Silicon Valley’s ‘unicorns’ have regulators worried
#8This was a predictable effect of increased regulation of public companies, (SOX) etc, and awareness that a founder can move more strategically without being concerned with quarterlies and accountability to shared owners. Politically it's unsustainable. If we see a half dozen more unicorns with household names people will tie completely private ownership to concerns about inequality: no way for the average person to b…
You could buy shares in GS or any other public company investing in private companies and/or underwriting IPOs, so there's that. That said, the idea that public capital markets are widely considered to be a way to increase equality, of all things, is stunning to me. I thought/think that people supporting capital markets view them as a method for companies to raise capital in exchange for a share of future profits, and that people opposing capital markets view them as casinos, pyramid schemes, etc., and that the point of extra regulation for public companies is to protect investors, while the point of having less-regulated private companies is to lower the cost of raising capital for those ventures that can make do with a small number of rich investors.
Even if people widely consider the stock market to be an "equalizer", it doesn't seem obvious that adding more early-stage small-cap stocks to the market serves that purpose, because these companies are more likely to go bust, with a small fraction of them capturing most of the growth, and an index with a share in all those companies is not unlikely to underperform a large-cap index. (Incidentally, this is related to the reason that widespread stock ownership seems to me more likely to increase rather than decrease inequality - the prices of these things have a high variance; taxing and redistributing wealth and/or capital gains sounds like a surer path to equality, if that's what you want.)
Re: Silicon Valley’s ‘unicorns’ have regulators worried
#9Be at the whims of activist shareholders who demand short-term profits over long-term strategy, and in exchange you get "discipline and oversight." Oooh where do I sign up?
Re: Silicon Valley’s ‘unicorns’ have regulators worried
#10What natural right do these regulatory agencies (or group of thugs known as government) have to regulate free people who choose to associate freely? What they are doing is deeply immoral.