What we’re reading (12/12)
“Daily Crunch: Thoma Bravo Buys Coupa Software For $8B, But Will That Price Satisfy Shareholders?” (TechCrunch). “Ron and Alex wrote last week about Coupa’s investors warning that a sale to private equity would not be good for the company. Well, today we learned that Thoma Bravo is acquiring Coupa as the private equity firm continues its M&A rampage. It should make for some interesting investor opinion: Ron reports that the company is being acquired for $81 a share, or $8 billion. Some investors were pushing for $95 a share.”
“The Party Animal And The Island-Hopping Hermit” (Insider). “Sometimes in the course of human events, two people join forces to bring forth something greater than the sum of their parts. Lennon and McCartney. Ben and Jerry. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. But, perhaps, never have two partners created as much wealth, or so radically transformed the global flow of information, as Page and Brin. Like their predecessors — Bill Gates and Paul Allen at Microsoft, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at Apple — the Google visionaries were once the most iconic duo in tech. But they stayed together far longer — almost two decades — and managed to end their partnership without an acrimonious split.”
“Pop Goes The Antitrust Bubble” (The Hill). “[S]harp declines in the stock prices and revenues of many leading platforms cast doubt on the worldwide regulatory consensus that favors “moving fast and breaking things” in antitrust enforcement. Those market shifts have identified cracks in the purportedly invincible armor of network effects and switching costs that had appeared to shield some platforms against competitive threats.”
“Microsoft Buys Near 4% Stake In London Stock Exchange Group As Part Of 10-Year Cloud Deal” (CNBC). “U.S. tech giant Microsoft on Monday announced a 10-year partnership with the London Stock Exchange Group and took a near 4% stake in the U.K. bourse operator. The partnership involves next-generation data and analytics, as well as cloud computing products, according to a statement by the LSEG. It includes a new data infrastructure for the London exchange and analytics and modelling solutions with Microsoft Azure, AI, and Microsoft Teams.”
“Investors Are Losing Faith In Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation” (Wall Street Journal). “Shares of the fund, a pandemic-era favorite largely made up of unprofitable, growth-oriented technology companies, are down 63% this year. While the S&P 500 index has rallied 12% since mid-October to cut its 2022 losses to 16%, Ms. Wood’s flagship fund is hovering near a five-year low.”
