211–220 of 413 posts
Oh, just run of the mill bribery. It's a classic government bureaucrat trick done at a private firm. Seems unnecessary. Netflix VPs are well compensated, but there is no boundary for greed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From my understanding, an LLC does help with _financial_ liability - if the company fails and goes bankrupt, your personal assets generally won't be on the line. Obviously, an LLC cannot shield you from criminal liability.
Not necessarily, see 'piercing the corporate veil'.
> generally courts have a strong presumption against piercing the corporate veil, and will only do so if there has been serious misconduct. Courts understand the benefits of limited liability... As such, courts typically require corporations to engage in fairly egregious actions in order to justify piercing the corporate veil
LLCs still protect personal assets in the general case.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We always check the corporate registries to see if any of the legal entities the execs of a company are related to are making substantial turnover from either the company we are looking at, or a subsidiary. In 200+ DDs this has happened a handful of times. So I would not say it is a common thing but it definitely does happen, and often enough that we feel the need to at least try to establish if it is the case during…
With so many DDs, do you have any pointers or directions for those looking to learn better DD?
https://jacquesmattheij.com/due-diligence-survival-guide/
and part II:
https://jacquesmattheij.com/due-diligence-survival-guide-par...
Note that these articles are now about a decade old, I probably should update them to reflect the experience gained since then and changes to the state of the art in tech.
If this is all illegal, the stories I was told by early Facebook employees about how Chamath made his money are more confusing than ever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not necessarily, see 'piercing the corporate veil'.
Sure, but this is the exception that proves the rule: > generally courts have a strong presumption against piercing the corporate veil, and will only do so if there has been serious misconduct. Courts understand the benefits of limited liability... As such, courts typically require corporations to engage in fairly egregious actions in order to justify piercing the corporate veil LLCs still protect personal assets in…
One item seems to have caused a lot of confusion in the comments so I will take a stab at clarifying: It is perfectly legal for Netflix to ask for options or any other consideration in exchange for the contract. Companies do this sort of thing frequently. They know that merely signing a large contract with a large firm will increase the value of the contractor. It is not legal for someone working for Netflix to ask f…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> one of those companies were charged (more's the pity). I understand the sentiment that "it takes two", but I'm of the opinion that it's the one accepting bribes that is the root cause of the problem. It is the people accepting bribes who are taking from their company, university, or government and creating a pay to play market.
If there are no repercussions for paying a bribe, then the optimal play is to indiscriminately offer bribes to get what you want while taking on none of the criminal liability.
Hey, I'm the author of the article -- just wanted to point out that what made this story interesting to me is the implication that this kind of conduct could be very widespread. Prosecutors definitely hinted at that. If anyone knows of any similar stories, I'd be very interested in hearing them. christie.smythe@businessofbusiness.com
The press release from the DoJ details how he structured his kickbacks without netflix's knowledge and set up a shell company to do so -- even lying directly to netflix leadership:
"When an inquiry from the Netflix CEO ensued, Kail falsely denied that he was formally working with Platfora."
Criticisms aside, thank you for helping to shine a light on corporate malfeasance.
I do not understand this. I mean, politicians do this all the time and do not go to jail (Spain). I do not mean people offer themselves for briving. But did anyone ever think what would happen if politicians did not have much power to regulate? Companies would not be able to lobby. That means there would not be nearly as much incentive to brive as there is today. Once a regulator is in the middle, the incentive for c…
There is less political corruption in the US than people think. Everything is so scrutinized these days, especially compared to the rest of the world. White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu's travel expenses scandal was a big deal at the time, and this was in 1992 (before social media) and the amount of $ was pretty small. I think insider trading is possible concern though, although that too has gotten considerabl…
So I think claim that "there is less political corruption in the US than people think" is going way too far. Most of the corruption is never even uncovered (just check how many government officials and congressmen became rich after they started selflessly serving the people, and how wondrously successful many of them are e.g. in stock trading), and the cases that are uncovered are rarely punished with anything but dismissal and maybe light monetary slap on the wrist. One must be exceptionally unlucky - which usually has more to do with political situation than anything - to land in jail for corruption, and unfortunately that's not because there's no corruption, but seems to be rather because there's so much of it than nobody wants to rock the boat too much. You'll need the funds for the next election campaign, won't you?
> although that too has gotten considerable scrutiny in the media.
And, that scrutiny amounted to exactly nothing.
>In his own memorandum to the court, requesting that he be sentenced to a year of house arrest, Kail, 49, described himself as a “global power leader, top dev ops influencer and a thought leader.” So very humble of him.
Sounds like Andrew Lee (of Freenode fame).