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Supreme Court sides with Slack, putting direct listings in jeopardy

axios.com

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Re: Supreme Court sides with Slack, putting direct listings in jeopardy

#81

Post by miley_cyrus »

wolverine876 wrote: post #62

> "... Our only function lies in discerning and applying the law as we find it." The judiciary has other essential roles, including adapting laws to new circumstances, justice, fairness, and mercy. The judiciary fails when it hurts people or causes injustice simply because Congress didn't anticipate some circumstance (and obviously Congress can't anticipate every circumtance). They pull out the claim above when it su…

"The judiciary fails when it hurts people or causes injustice ..."

Totally disagree. The judiciary should not make up law. They are 9 people who have not been elected, have life terms, and have zero accountability to the people. If there needs to be new law, that responsibility should fall on our elected representatives, in other words Congress.

Re: Supreme Court sides with Slack, putting direct listings in jeopardy

#82

Post by refurb »

jquery wrote: post #44
rkunde wrote: post #14

Unless something on the regulatory side changes, nothing will happen to direct listings. People want to own stocks that they believe will go up. That’s the long and short of it. Retail investors don’t read IPO prospectuses. Institutional investors will be more hesitant, naturally, but they have the resources and expertise to asses the risks, and any public company still has to comply with disclosure requirements, IPO…

A bit of an aside, but dual class shares should have a mandatory sunset clause no longer than 5 years. That way companies still can get public money via IPO for risky initiatives without fear of a quick takeover, but you avoid a situation where a company becomes little more than a slush fund for the obsessions of a wayward CEO (Facebook).

But why?

Buying a class of stock with no or minimal voting rights is known upfront. You don’t have to buy them and presumably they are price to take into account the lack of voting power.

Re: Supreme Court sides with Slack, putting direct listings in jeopardy

#83

Post by [deleted] »

lolinder wrote: post #16
puzzledobserver wrote: post #6

Is it just me, or are newspaper articles surprisingly difficult to read? From what I understand: 1. Instead of a traditional IPO, Slack went public through an alternative process called a direct listing. 2. As part of its direct listing, Slack sold some million "registered" and some million "unregistered" shares. 3. What are registered and unregistered shares? I could not find an explanation on Wikipedia. 4. Fiyyaz P…

I think the problem with this article is the subject doesn't lend itself well to Axios's bullet points style. Their thing is to get to the point with as little ceremony as possible, but that doesn't work very well when there is so much context needed to understand the story.

[deleted]

Re: Supreme Court sides with Slack, putting direct listings in jeopardy

#84

Post by refurb »

JediWing wrote: post #60
yieldcrv wrote: post #10

> "Naturally, Congress remains free to revise the securities laws at any time, whether to address the rise of direct listings or any other development. Our only function lies in discerning and applying the law as we find it." I really don't see how anyone that actually reads Supreme Court decisions calls this court illegitimate. They are very consistent about not being a super legislature, no matter how disruptive th…

What I don't understand is how anyone who has read the Dobbs decision sees it as even handed and reasonable. Ignoring stare decisis with the flimsy "history and tradition" argument is farcical, considering the jurisprudence it was overturning was in place for about 1/5 of the nation's history. The legitimacy of the court is in question because the court is at this point another political branch . This is because the…

“stare decisis” is not a black and white rule where prior decisions can never be overturned.

I’m not sure I’d want Supreme Court decisions about slaves not being US citizens to stand simply because it’s precedent.

The original Roe V. wade decision was a weak one, something admitted even by supporters of abortion rights.

The court simply threw out the weakly supported argument and returned the decision to the legislature.

Re: Supreme Court sides with Slack, putting direct listings in jeopardy

#85

Post by zdragnar »

wolverine876 wrote: post #78
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the judiciary also fails, and arguably fails worse, when they make people believe that the law is a game of Calvinball and there are no rules beyond "most sympathetic party wins".

Who here or anywhere has advocated decisions based on 'most sympathetic'?

Your earlier criteria of "fairness" and "mercy" certainly apply.

Re: Supreme Court sides with Slack, putting direct listings in jeopardy

#86

Post by dmurray »

I don't agree with the conclusion in the headline that this "puts direct listings in jeopardy". It should make them more likely.

It makes them more attractive to companies, and less attractive to investors. And the companies are the ones making the decisions!

Investors grumble about investor-unfriendly structures from public companies all the time: dual class stock, staggered boards, executive pay. But they suck it up and buy the companies at the same prices anyway. And it's not like this ruling gives companies carte blanche to defraud investors - in fact it's specifically about protecting companies that make a good faith mistake.

So investors can't make direct listings unpalatable. Who can? An act of Congress, or perhaps the SEC finding a way to make these companies' lives really miserable. Or major index providers deciding they won't include companies that went public via direct listing - but even then they'll likely have to cave to investor pressure.

Re: Supreme Court sides with Slack, putting direct listings in jeopardy

#87

Post by grt_thr »

wolverine876 wrote: post #62

> "... Our only function lies in discerning and applying the law as we find it." The judiciary has other essential roles, including adapting laws to new circumstances, justice, fairness, and mercy. The judiciary fails when it hurts people or causes injustice simply because Congress didn't anticipate some circumstance (and obviously Congress can't anticipate every circumtance). They pull out the claim above when it su…

[dead]

Re: Supreme Court sides with Slack, putting direct listings in jeopardy

#88

Post by vkou »

jquery wrote: post #44
rkunde wrote: post #14

Unless something on the regulatory side changes, nothing will happen to direct listings. People want to own stocks that they believe will go up. That’s the long and short of it. Retail investors don’t read IPO prospectuses. Institutional investors will be more hesitant, naturally, but they have the resources and expertise to asses the risks, and any public company still has to comply with disclosure requirements, IPO…

A bit of an aside, but dual class shares should have a mandatory sunset clause no longer than 5 years. That way companies still can get public money via IPO for risky initiatives without fear of a quick takeover, but you avoid a situation where a company becomes little more than a slush fund for the obsessions of a wayward CEO (Facebook).

Why should we protect FB's investors from themselves?

And given the tiny spread in how voting versus non-voting shares trade, it doesn't seem that investors value voting rights very much.

Re: Supreme Court sides with Slack, putting direct listings in jeopardy

#89

Post by teddyh »

suprjami wrote: post #73
rr808 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is clickbait and too long now. It used to be a good newspaper told you everything you needed to know if the heading and/or the first few paragraphs. Now you have to skim read a whole article to find the only sentence that has useful information. That is even if there is any.

Wow, you're right! From being on the school newspaper (nerd) with a ruthless English teacher as editor, I learnt the older style you just described. Actually I learnt it by having large swathes of my text highlighted and deleted with an instruction "rewrite this". I didn't realise how bad modern news is at this until you pointed it out. It's fairly common these days for me to start reading an article but still have l…

Incentives have changed. The old style wanted to make the reader feel informed about many issues quickly when reading through most of the newspaper, making people want to buy the next newspaper. The new style wants people to go to, and then spend as much time as possible in, every individual article, in order to maximize retention numbers for ad revenue for that article.
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