
Billionaire Peter Thiel makes fortune after sweetheart deal with [NZ] government - lancewiggs
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11794020
======
kiwidrew
Personally, I think that the part of this deal that stinks is that the
Valar/NZVIF partnership only invested in TWO companies; the majority of funds
were just used to buy Xero shares on the public market (yes, they were already
listed on the NZX sharemarket by this point).

That's kind of like how Chinese investors could game the system and get
permanent residency in Canada by "investing" the minimum amount of $1,000,000
into the Vancouver property market (a.k.a. buying a house). And as an added
bonus, they'd leave the house empty, messing up the rental market and making
it harder for Canadians to find somewhere to live.

I have absolutely nothing against residency in return for bona fide business
investments, but there's gotta be some element of risk involved for the
investor. Getting a sweetheart deal from the government and then investing in
the public sharemarket is in no way a benefit to the country.

It'd be a very different story had Thiel actually continued to make
investments in the local startup community after getting his citizenship. But
it sure looks to me like he made a few "investments" for show, got his
citizenship (without even setting foot in the country!) and then promptly put
his NZ passport into his bug-out bag and moved on to other things.

------
ag56
Isn't this kind of the point? The NZ governments goal was to increase private
investment, not make a return. They succeeded -- Thiel put $6.8m to work in NZ
that he may not have otherwise.

Many countries do this. For example in the UK the British Business Bank will
become an LP in a VC fund acting as a multiplier on capital raised.

You may not agree with the government's decision, but you can hardly blame
Thiel for making use of it.

~~~
kiwidrew
Thiel put the vast majority of this money towards buying Xero shares on the
public sharemarket. Hard to call that a bold investment strategy. As if that
wasn't low-risk enough, he then managed to buy these shares on 50% margin
(that's the NZVIF portion) and double his potential profit AT NO ADDITIONAL
RISK.

~~~
boznz
Agree, Nobody likes to see their government whoring out citizenship's (there's
no other word for it!) but if they do they they should be be honest and sell
the passport for cold hard cash to use in infrastructure or social projects,
NOT for investing in real estate (which fucks up the local market) nor stock
market investments where there is more chance of actually gaining money in the
deal.

------
angry_napkin
It appears that was the point. It's not like he sailed in and viciously took
advantage of everyone. I suspect this is on HN for a very specific reason.

------
trome
Is this terribly surprising? Public/Private partnerships usually do not pan
out unless you have competent administrators ready to fight for the best deal
on your orgs behalf.

I do wish we could eject people who actively want to destroy America from the
country, but rather we seem to have endless tolerance for Peter Thiel (German)
and Milo Yiannopoulos (British) to come here and spread hate speech, plot ways
to recreate slavery, etc.

~~~
api
Peter is much more complex but Milo is pretty transparently a professional
troll. I'm sure he's overjoyed to get crazy protests at Berkeley and to get
banned from Twitter. The more attention he gets the better it is for his
brand. He intentionally picks targets that are the most likely to over-react
and uses the most inflammatory language he can.

I mean this has to be the trolliest trollmobile that has ever trolled:
[http://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/09/img_4893_1024-640x4...](http://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/09/img_4893_1024-640x480.jpg)

People need to learn to not feed the troll. The worst possible thing you can
do to Milo is ignore him.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _Peter is much more complex but Milo is pretty transparently a professional
> troll._

Peter is a slice of bread with honey on one side and some sort of putrid
matter on the other.

Milo does not have the honey-tinged side.

~~~
anigbrowl
I think he's a bit more complex than that and we should avoid overly
simplistic metaphors. I am not a fan of Thiel but I have listened to him
explain his worldview at length in person and while I dispute many of his
assumptions I feel he holds them in good faith and is persuadable.

Milo, on the other hand, acts as if he aspires to be the Ernst Roehm of the
internet age and I have little tolerance for him.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
When things go from bad to worse, the time for complexity is gone.

~~~
anigbrowl
Agreed. I just didn't form the impression that he was actively malicious so
much as callously indifferent.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _callously indifferent_

I actually agree on that one. But he has tremendous amounts of money and
power.

In the current small, interdependent world, callous indifference can do a heck
of a lot of damage.

