[theoracle101]

From an accounting standpoint yes, but in reality they paid about $1B. Half was directly for the company, the other half was golden handcuffs. They are choosing to allocate the second to operating expenses and not acquisitions. To the employees of Cruise, still feels like a sweet billion. For once investors got less and employees got more, which is a refreshing change

[argonaut]

Do you have inside knowledge we're unaware of? Otherwise it's hard to say "in reality...." $1B is plausible, but much more questionable given this article.

[mikeyouse]

Dan Primack wrote a clarifying article yesterday: https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2016/07/2...

The key part:

because GM GM is being very narrow in how it describes the deal value. The $581 million (or $600 million, whichever you prefer) is the cash and stock that actually went out the Detroit doors during GM’s second fiscal quarter. Not included were a variety of other things, including cash still being held in escrow, expected earn-out payments, employee retention packages and other expected employee compensation (particularly for those with unvested shares at the time of acquisition).

[gumby]

That seems unlikely, as GAAP would require reserving that amount on the balance sheet and typing it to the acquisition.

What Primack describes would be like buying a house and claiming its price is what you paid as the down payment.

[argonaut]

Yes, but I find a $400M retention package to be highly implausible. We're talking the kind of compensation that Google/Facebook would spend to retain 40 top executives.

[ttam]

Justin Kan [x], who's brother Dan is the co-founder that's unnamed in the picture of the BI article, snapchatted several times the Cruise deal being $1B / unicorn

I consider this article to be pretty poor, if they wanted to actually find the real price, they could've investigated some more instead of trying to infer from the earnings' reports.

[x] I believe he was also an investor in Cruise

[theoracle101]

In reality was a reference to the difference between why an acquisition price is reported as so high in the press yet appears on the financial statements as much less. This isn't unique to Cruise. Not a slight at this article.

[abannin]

Surely $500M of retention incentives would be considered 'material' and require disclosure

[Aelinsaar]

It would also be a lunatic number for this deal.