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Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

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Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#131

Post by patthebunny »

braythwayt wrote: post #40
paulie_a wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: is that legal? That seems incredibly shady.

Imagine you are a bank or investment firm or hedge fund or VC. You want to do business with person A, I shall call them “Alice.” Alice says to you, right up front, “I need to make one billion dollars, or I look for a different partner.” Are you going to accuse Alice of being greedy, when your entire business consists of making money? You don’t cure the sick, or bring the Internet to rural communities, or manufacture…

Maybe you should tell Alice to work for her billion instead of running scams and treating the company like a piggy bank.

Maybe we should just not have anyone worth a billion dollars.

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#132

Post by patthebunny »

braythwayt wrote: post #58
dnadler wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what the point is here besides a vague loathing of the financial industry...

What loathing? Finance serves an important purpose. But its purpose is NOT to police self-dealing. And the people putting the money in are exactly the people who are directly responsible for governance. Likewise, due to regulatory capture, the people who put money into businesses are closely related to the people who write laws about what is or isn’t legal, and enforce those laws. So if Adam’s choices are ok with his…

> Finance serves an important purpose.

Does it?

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#133

Post by NeedMoreTea »

briandear wrote: post #92
calcifer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite right, like this [1] 100% factual not at all bullshit scientifically sound article on climate change. Thought provoking indeed. [1] https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-09-05/5-surprising-scien...

It seems like anything even remotely threatening the climate change gospel is treated just as the Catholic Church treated heretics centuries ago. AGW has ascended (descended?) into religious territory where even the slightest criticism of the “truth” is treated as blasphemous. It’s like many of the climate alarmists have turned into old school evangelicals that avoid wine and dancing out of fear it’ll rile up the dev…

11 years or we miss the stated target. A target the IPCC has assessed as important for preserving a manageable and comfortable way of life as we know it. Not 11 years and game over scrolls up the screen.

Al Gore didn't say we would be underwater by now either.

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#134

Post by r00fus »

mikestew wrote: post #104
dboreham wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to post the opposite: cancellation of frothy IPOs is a good sign of a coming downturn, isn't it?

The market currently appears to be saying, “ya know, if we were in a bubble, I might buy your stinky shit. But because we’re not in a bubble, and I have no great FOMO, I’m going to take a pass on your stinky turd of an IPO.” Another way of looking at it, anyway. I have no insight one way or the other.

That's because WeWork is obviously bad. But what about other, not so obvious bad-bets?

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#135

Post by kasey_junk »

vonmoltke wrote: post #112
kasey_junk wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WeWork is offering its customers something of value, that while not unique, was rare. That it has to do largely with changing the normal contracts in their industry doesn’t matter much. The issue is not with what they are selling it’s with how they are funding it. I think this story says a lot less about We than it does about SoftBank.

Rare? Regus was widespread in this space before WeWork was a twinkle in Adam Neumann's eye.

1 vendor in a space is rare.

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#136

Post by prepend »

mrfredward wrote: post #88
buttcoinslol wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can create a synthetic short with options, no need to borrow any stock at all.

With so many people wanting to bet against it though, those put options would end up mighty expensive.

That’s the whole point. Shorting at the right time is similar to buying puts while still compatible with your model.

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#138

Post by antoniuschan99 »

onion2k wrote: post #38
goatinaboat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SoftBank business model: make an investment at valuation X. Make another investment at valuation 2X. Declare that the value of the first investment has doubled! The wheels come off when anyone else gets to value the investment. That’s happening now. I wonder how other SoftBank businesses like ARM will be impacted.

I wonder how other SoftBank businesses like ARM will be impacted. I don't think many investors dispute the ~$28b valuation that Softbank paid for ARM.

ARM might be king now, but looking into RiSC-V and the Made In China 2025 initiative, I wonder what the landscape will be like in the future

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20838030

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#139

Post by prepend »

patthebunny wrote: post #127
setr wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..? I’m not seeing anything on that page that isn’t based on “facts”, and none of it seems obviously incorrect..

> Polar Bears and Other Species Are Not Dying But Flourishing Lets base it on reports of a couple of big name species and declare everything is fine. Facts! if you read zerohedge you have long since decided that facts do not at all matter to you.

Does it make a claim that everything is fine? I find it curious how remarking that polar bears aren’t dying out should mean that there’s not lots of other species in trouble, not to mention tons of other things that have problems. Despite polar bears improving.

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#140

Post by tomatocracy »

heymijo wrote: post #74
navigatesol wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Worth them pouring a few $bn more in instead of an IPO, if only to shore up faith in the rest of their portfolio? I'd love to know how throwing good money after bad would shore up the faith in the rest of the portfolio? "No one else wants this, but we can't afford to mark-to-market, so we're going to throw more money in with the hopes of maintaining an illusory valuation." At the end of the day, it's a bad business…

Softbank has over $10 billion of its $100 billion Vision Fund invested in WeWork. That's a hell of a big bet. It's not hard to imagine Softbank will do whatever it can, rational or not, to try to get WeWork to a point where they can cash out.

Yes. It’s a pretty common conflict of interest between the manager of the fund (which has a strong incentive to raise new fund while they can as quickly as possible so will want to prop up any losers until the current round of fundraising is complete) and the investors in the fund (who may or may not also be invested in the manager itself).
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