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23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

reuters.com

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Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#351

Post by paulddraper »

EGreg wrote: post #171
cloudbonsai wrote: post #48

23andMe has been in a deadlock for a while. - The CEO is effectively the control owner of the company, having 49% of the voting right. She has been trying to take the company private for some time. - Last August, she proposed to buy all the outstanding shares at $8 per share. The board rejected. She installed a new board, and submitted her proposal again at $2.53 per share. The board rejected. She tried it a third ti…

Wait, if they declare bankruptcy can’t they be bought at a fire sale by this CEO’s friends finally?

Yes. And that often happens.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#352

Post by paulddraper »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #8

Damn, on Friday, the California DoJ Attorney General issued a warning to consumers about their data: https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bont... This should've been a giveaway that the company was imminently going to go under.

The SEC filings were a giveaway

> The California-based company has publicly reported that it is in financial distress and stated in securities filings that there is substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#353

Post by deadbabe »

Symmetry wrote: post #301
deadbabe wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You live in a democracy until you don’t. It can disappear overnight with the stroke of pen from some populist leader who just ignores laws. Never think you are safe just because you’re in a democracy.

If a future totalitarian government wants to save money on medical treatments then they can just euthanize anyone who gets cancer rather than euthanizing anyone whose genes say that they have a 50%+ greater risk than average of getting cancer. Or collect genetic samples themselves and use that to cull the population rather than just do it for people who were 23andMe customers.

Killing people off after they get cancer saves money but it does nothing for the gene pool if they already reproduced. Individuals who represent high cancer risks can be forced into sterilization and can consider other options for children in the future, such as adoption or raising a genetic alternative child. Totalitarian regimes can take note here.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#354

Post by robertlagrant »

rwmj wrote: post #266
cloudbonsai wrote: post #48

23andMe has been in a deadlock for a while. - The CEO is effectively the control owner of the company, having 49% of the voting right. She has been trying to take the company private for some time. - Last August, she proposed to buy all the outstanding shares at $8 per share. The board rejected. She installed a new board, and submitted her proposal again at $2.53 per share. The board rejected. She tried it a third ti…

Couldn't she just buy 2% of the company at the market price?

It might not be possible if there are tagalong/dragalong agreements. And from the perspective of a shareholder, the shares might become a bit of a riskier proposition if you allow her to control the company, vs the current status quo.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#355

Post by oskarkk »

addicted wrote: post #233
phire wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not zero; In all bankruptcies, the shareholders get whatever is left over after liquidating all company assets and paying back all creditors. In most high-profile bankruptcies, there aren't enough assets to even finish paying creditors, yet alone creditors. However, this is a voluntary Bankruptcy, so there might actually be assets left over to pay out to shareholders.

Which is still gonna be significantly worse than the $8/share offered. If the value of assets after paying off debtors is > $8/share, then that’s the easiest arbitrage opportunity considering it’s currently trading at $1.80. Just buy the whole thing for $3/share (an irrefutable premium of 67%), shut down operations entirely, pay off the creditors, and pocket the net assets of > $8/share and more than double your mone…

> If the claim is the CEO ran it into the ground then the board messed up even worse by not replacing the CEO.

Can the board replace the CEO if the CEO has 49% of voting rights?

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#356

Post by belorn »

Spacecosmonaut wrote: post #202
shreezus wrote: post #113

Even if you haven't personally used their service, if any close relatives have, they already have a sizable amount of information on your genome. They maintain the equivalent of "shadow profiles" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile ) as part of their data model for "ancestry" modeling purposes - for example inferring a paternal haplogroup based on data uploaded by genetic relatives. I can only hope at the…

I'm a genetic engineer at a large pharma company. Genetic engineering of human model systems is my specialty. If I were a malicious actor, I could not do anything useful with the genome of any one person. Most peoples genomes are boring and at best sway the predisposition for disease by a modest degree. Exposing infidelity is honestly the best I can come up with.

The most malicious behavior I can directly think of is someone searching the data for a targeted purpose and not caring about false positives, like targeted advertisement for health treatments with non-zero risk of side effects. DNA has always had this air of being infallible proof.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#357

Post by crtasm »

trollbridge wrote: post #310
jvanderbot wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faking DNA test results would be sci-fi nightmare come true. You could frame someone before they were arrested which would be ... Frightening. But even worse is invalidation of all DNA evidence because it is now easy to fake. But that still seems like a minute possibility.

23andme doesn’t check your identity at all, so you could just put in someone else’s name and submit your own saliva, and then.. go on a crime spree?

Whose credit card details are being used in this scenario?

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#358

Post by ks2048 »

arduanika wrote: post #116
ks2048 wrote: post #35

There are troubling privacy issues, but it was able to tell me: "Toe Length Ratio : Likely second toe longer". I didn't even have to look down! Maybe it was a bad idea. But, I figured if we enter a dystopian future, evil health care companies or governments could easily get my DNA if they want to and/or simply require that information to get care. When you get blood drawn, do you see what they do with it? Hopefully,…

> I didn't even have to look down! Hilarious, I love it. Next you're gonna say they told you that you'll probably die of something that you can forestall a bit with good diet and exercise.

Looking at my "Reports Summary", it's all mundane stuff like the toe thing I mentioned. It seems all the medically relevant stuff require premium subscription.

Re: 23andMe files for bankruptcy to sell itself

#359

Post by masfuerte »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #342
masfuerte wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's completely different. Sure, someone can specifically target me and get my DNA, but they can't trawl for me in an existing database.

>but they can't trawl for me in an existing database. Sure they can. The government obviously can. Otherwise they just buy data from the decade of tracking data left behind. That's the relatively easier part in comparison to targeted DNA gathering.

They can't trawl my DNA in an existing database, because I'm not in it and, AFAIK, neither are my relatives.
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