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by intvocoder 956 days ago
It’s odd, but he convinced Vision Fund to go along with this. It’s a clever grift, if it’s legal.
1 comments

It’s not self dealing if you really love the building I guess. To be fair it was a matter of time before somebody loaded them up with debt and wiped equity. Might as well do it yourself.
> It’s not self dealing if you really love the building

It’s not self dealing if everyone is on the same page. Neumann didn’t hide any of this. From SoftBank. From the public.

If a company tanks right after being listed on the public markets -- that is, right after insiders got an opportunity to dump their shares on less informed investors -- most likely a serious financial crime has taken place. A real business doesn't go from a 47bn market cap to zero in ~2 years. It's not sufficient to make generic disclosures to investors that there are substantial risks and that you have an unproven business model and such. If it looks, talks, and walks like a pump & dump scheme it probably is.
It's totally still self dealing. It just avoids being fraud.