111–120 of 213 posts
"We are pleased that Amazon and iRobot have abandoned their proposed transaction." https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/01/...
We know the FTC blocked the deal. What is this quote supposed to be showing us?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not let Amazon take a stab at turning things around, then? It's better that they fail? I don't get it.
According to the article, there is a defence invoking that exact sentiment if a merger is about to be blocked, bu iRobot decided not to invoke it (likely because it would have caused the price to be lower).
I now realized that I recently saw some old tweets from this guy where he first opposed this merger and then celebrated the cancellation of the deal. So it seems he's just grasping at straws to look less like an idiot.
This is such a bad faith, and frankly dishonest take on the situation. As you know, Khan’s FTC worried it wouldn’t be able to prevent Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot in court, so instead it dragged out approval, which it never granted, while continuously threatening to block. Simultaneously, her FTC openly worked with the EU to convince the EU to use its more expansive antitrust regime to get the EU to block the deal.…
The point is that "sold to Amazon" or "sold to chinese competitors" being the only options is a false narrative. There was also the "do a good job" option which is being conveniently omitted by people who want to blame the FTC.
This is Matt Stoller throwing a bunch of dust in the air because he wants to have been right when he was glad Khan shut down the merger, and then right again when the husk of iRobot sold out to the Chinese. Because Matt is always right, and “Wall Street” is always wrong.
A huge fraction of the knee-jerk reactions here seem to miss the key point that the post is trying to get across: > In the mid-2010s, during Furman’s tenure running economic policy under Obama, the company sold its defense business, offshored production, and slashed research, a result of pressure from financiers on Wall Street. > Mesdag engaged in a proxy fight to wrest control of the company from its engineering fou…
This is what's wrong with investing overall: 1Q future blindness. We'd have almost nothing if it weren't for university partnerships and corporate R&D way back when. There's no way to accomplish this now except to stay private.
https://media.irobot.com/2016-02-04-iRobot-Announces-Sale-of...
This is such a bad faith, and frankly dishonest take on the situation. As you know, Khan’s FTC worried it wouldn’t be able to prevent Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot in court, so instead it dragged out approval, which it never granted, while continuously threatening to block. Simultaneously, her FTC openly worked with the EU to convince the EU to use its more expansive antitrust regime to get the EU to block the deal.…
The point is that "sold to Amazon" or "sold to chinese competitors" being the only options is a false narrative. There was also the "do a good job" option which is being conveniently omitted by people who want to blame the FTC.
The article makes the case that iRobot mismanaged their business at the behest of investors. Suppose one grants that this mismanagement occurred[0]. Then years into the mismanagement, Amazon offers to buy them. At this point, whatever path the company has been doomed to by mismanagement has already been taken. In 2022, one cannot go back to the 2010s and repair whatever bad business decisions have been made. So the F…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the author's thesis is that if they had invested in innovation over a couple decades, the product probably would have sucked less.
The innovation being shutdown wasn't innovation towards making robot vacuum cleaners better. It was innovation direct towards military applications like building robotic hands.
Hard for me to understand how the consumer was protected by preventing Amazon from acquiring them. Only for Chinese firm to get for cheap in bankruptcy. But maybe I’m not educated enough in socialism to understand the nuances
Socialism is when the government owns businesses or entire industries.
Regulation is when the government has rules that companies have to play by.
The FTC is involved in regulation, not socialism.
Not all anti-capitalist actions are socialism. Not all socialism is anticapitalist.
You can disagree with a lot of things that the US government did under Biden. None of them were socialism. The closest recent example we have of socialism is the US government taking a 10% ownership stake in Intel. Which happened under Trump.
The previous best examples were all during the fall-out of the great financial crisis as part of TARP.
In retrospect, I think TARP was ultimately a pretty capitalist-friendly form of socialism. I am less sure about the Intel stake.
A huge fraction of the knee-jerk reactions here seem to miss the key point that the post is trying to get across: > In the mid-2010s, during Furman’s tenure running economic policy under Obama, the company sold its defense business, offshored production, and slashed research, a result of pressure from financiers on Wall Street. > Mesdag engaged in a proxy fight to wrest control of the company from its engineering fou…
The article makes the case that iRobot mismanaged their business at the behest of investors. Suppose one grants that this mismanagement occurred[0]. Then years into the mismanagement, Amazon offers to buy them. At this point, whatever path the company has been doomed to by mismanagement has already been taken. In 2022, one cannot go back to the 2010s and repair whatever bad business decisions have been made. So the F…
He does address the issue. He said there are provisions that allowed the merger if iRobot had admitted they were on the verge of bankruptcy. They didn't because the purchase price would be lower, hence less for shareholders and the CEO, etc wouldn't have big payoffs. In a word, greed.
He said that alright, but what's his source of that information?