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Private equity bought America's essential services

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Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#101

Post by nancyminusone »

amazingamazing wrote: post #86
palmotea wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How will that work - for example Y Combinator classes. They cannot be acquired? For the record: national economic policy shouldn't revolve around Y Combinator classes and similar startups. I'm totally fine if it turns out a sensible antitrust policy completely destroys the acquisition exit pathway for tech startups. I'm not saying one will, but I'm saying that's a cost I'm willing to pay.

YComb was just an example, though. Should companies be able to be bought and sold at all? My opinion is yes. Agree or disagree?

But "corporations are people" and those types of markets have closed since 1865 in the united states.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#102

Post by trollbridge »

palmotea wrote: post #81
amazingamazing wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will that work - for example Y Combinator classes. They cannot be acquired? What about acquihires? Cant stop that - employees have their own agency.

> How will that work - for example Y Combinator classes. They cannot be acquired? For the record: national economic policy shouldn't revolve around Y Combinator classes and similar startups. I'm totally fine if it turns out a sensible antitrust policy completely destroys the acquisition exit pathway for tech startups. I'm not saying one will, but I'm saying that's a cost I'm willing to pay.

YC startups could just become mature businesses. Nothing wrong with providing a good service, earning a good profit, and employees maturing into stable careers.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#103

Post by miltonlost »

amazingamazing wrote: post #63
toomuchtodo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the acquirer attempts to acquire a startup (regardless of investor) for anti trust reasons, or there are anti trust concerns, the M&A activity is disallowed by regulators. A recent example is Figma and Adobe. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Seems vague. What is an anti trust reason? Figma and Adobe id a great example. Both are doing very poorly.

Everything is vague to you. All you're doing is concern trolling for monopolists

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#104

Post by amazingamazing »

hilariously wrote: post #97
amazingamazing wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is vague and not actionable. Should Microsoft and Amazon have been able to buy Anthropic and OpenAI 5 years ago? People always give these vague guidelines (and even the guidelines in the 80s were) and wonder why they are easily circumvented.

This is actually how anti-trust works - if you decide a company gets too big you Ma Bell it and break it up, its very actionable, just hard.

People keep bringing up Bell as if the situation now is not just as bad.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#105

Post by [deleted] »

brainwad wrote: post #45
ses1984 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s compare two hypothetical companies. They are equal in every way except one has a $4.5b backlog and one has a $0 backlog. Which company would you rather own?

The way to get to a backlog is by not having made sales you could have made in prior years. So they shouldn't be equal in every way - the one with $0 backlog should have more cash, and that is probably preferable unless your business has diseconomies of scale.

[deleted]

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#106

Post by balderdash »

itake wrote: post #31
b3lvedere wrote: post #17

[flagged]

One thing I don't see is the other side of this story: the sellers. I don't get why sellers are selling to PE. Can these services not "IPO"? Why do these companies need to sell? When PE takes over medical practices, my understanding is there just isn't enough capital available for a dentist to "cash out". The options are either they find another dentist to buy it, the close the practice, or they sell the private equi…

why would you think a public traded company behaves any better than a privately owned one?

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#107

Post by amazingamazing »

miltonlost wrote: post #100
amazingamazing wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is vague and not actionable. Should Microsoft and Amazon have been able to buy Anthropic and OpenAI 5 years ago? People always give these vague guidelines (and even the guidelines in the 80s were) and wonder why they are easily circumvented.

How is going back to a policy that used to work "vague and unactionable"? It literally had been actionable.

It did not work though. Bell and Standard Oil are notable examples. What else?

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#108

Post by phkahler »

>> a structure where 50 to 90 percent of the purchase price is financed by debt, and that debt is loaded onto the balance sheet of the acquired company, not the firm making the acquisition.

This just seems wrong. The buyer takes out a loan, how does that become the responsibility of the company they purchased? I thought loans used to buy a business treated the business as collateral, like a home mortgage. What lender would participate in this? and why?

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#109

Post by spwa4 »

nicce wrote: post #93
palmotea wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How will that work - for example Y Combinator classes. They cannot be acquired? For the record: national economic policy shouldn't revolve around Y Combinator classes and similar startups. I'm totally fine if it turns out a sensible antitrust policy completely destroys the acquisition exit pathway for tech startups. I'm not saying one will, but I'm saying that's a cost I'm willing to pay.

> I'm totally fine if it turns out a sensible antitrust policy completely destroys the acquisition exit pathway for tech startups. And it should also prevent the acquihire.

I think the really important question is HOW this will happen. If you mean for the state to buy them at fair market value, nobody will object to that, not even if it closes the door to private equity.

But that's not what you're talking about, is it?

How about doing what America used to do? Provide seed funding for a new fire truck company in trade for condictions. Can we agree to do that? Fund 3 companies to make fire trucks, fast-track whatever certification and approvals they need. Create the companies we need, risking (and in fact expecting to lose) a bunch of the capital used for this.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#110

Post by CPLX »

amazingamazing wrote: post #92
asolove wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP explicitly answers this: go back to pre-80s antitrust policy. Companies can be bought and sold but not if it creates concentrations of economic power that allow them to dictate prices to vendors or customers.

This is vague and not actionable. Should Microsoft and Amazon have been able to buy Anthropic and OpenAI 5 years ago? People always give these vague guidelines (and even the guidelines in the 80s were) and wonder why they are easily circumvented.

There's nothing ambiguous about it at all. We had it as our public policy for generations and then bought-off politicians stopped enforcing it.

The information is captured the same way as most policy - via statute and precedent, and guidelines for enforcement agencies.

None of this is confusing, or even hard, except insofar as it's hard to fight against well funded opponents.

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