
Lyft's IPO was a little awkward - xrd
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-07/lyft-s-ipo-was-a-little-awkward
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Hansenq
This is a really interesting read! This gives me a much better sense of how
investment banks are actually involved in IPOs, and how you can essentially
require banks to support certain prices of your IPO using legal agreements.

Also really emphasizes the role of having personal relationships with
directors (not just a corporate relationship):

> The first lesson is that the only way for a bank to develop a relationship
> with a client is for human bankers to develop a relationship with human
> client executives and directors.

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spaceflunky
I still don't understand what Soros and Icahn did. Can someone give me a more
basic understand or some kind of metaphor?

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tanderson92
The loophole that Soros and Icahn used is like being able to say you never
cheated on your wife because you did so (cheated on your girlfriend) before
the wedding ceremony and not since.

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spaceflunky
I got that part, but I don't understand why Soros bought shorts on a stock
that he just bought.

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likpok
One possibility: he didn’t care about buying the stock, but instead wanted to
get paid for making the transaction happen.

So he buys at 60 knowing he’s already sold at 70. Whereas Icahn sells at 60
because he can sell _today_ rather than at whatever price it will be in 6
months.

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tanderson92
Exactly. And as for why Icahn wants to sell -- well, he's a pre-IPO investor
and might not want to stick around to settle for a public market price in 6
months when there is also possibly demand for Uber shares.

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techslave
should be noted, this is an opinion piece not bloomberg per se

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zwily
Levine is Bloomberg’s best writer, by far. Most entertaining, at least.

