Comments on: How Facebook could stay private after all

By: Moopheus

Moopheus — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 20:30:42 +0000

On the other other hand, being a public company isn’t necessarily all that great either–they tend to be managed in a very short-sighted way, to maximize the next quarter’s share price. And let’s face it–most investors are plutocrats already, or institutional investors. Individual “retail” investors don’t make the market. A well-managed private company is better off not subjecting itself to the whims and pressures of Wall Street vultures.

By: WaltFrench

WaltFrench — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 18:37:59 +0000

Gosh, won’t it be great when investors don’t have to worry about poring over firms’ audited and attested-as-accurate financial statements! Shoeshine boys and barbers will have to claim a net worth of > $1MM but will be able to pass on their insights inexpensively and efficiently.

By: mwwaters

mwwaters — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 21:58:46 +0000

My gut feeling is that it smacks of the defenses for the shadow banking sector and the boom in asset-backed securities. We assumed that banks and sophisticated investors would not need the traditional transparency in their transactions. However, it turned out that short-term incentives misaligned the interests of market actors and created a bubble in structured assets.

On the other hand, the issue with the structured assets was not their losses. They created a banking crisis because they were hard/impossible to value and there were a lot of them bank balance sheets.

As long as these risky shares with lower disclosure, like Facebook, do not find their way onto bank balance sheets, then it should be fine.

By: GRRR

GRRR — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 21:40:38 +0000

Transparency. Or a lack thereof.