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Tech Billionaire Mark Cuban Argues Stock Regulators Hurt the Economy (sfgate.com)

Tech entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban denounced America's stock-regulating agency on CNBC this week, arguing that they're reducing the number of companies going public with vague rules that are open-ended. "[W]here there's no clarity and no certainty on what to do in response to the SEC, you get people doing nothing or people avoiding going public or doing anything to avoid dealing with the SEC," Cuban said on CNBC. "And that's a real problem for up and coming companies and it's a problem for the economy as well."

Mary Jo White, the head of America's SEC, had appeared earlier in the week near Silicon Valley, according to Bloomberg, telling an audience at Stanford Law school to be wary of billion-dollar valuation IPOs and warning that founders and startup advisors preparing for an IPO should watch their internal controls, reporting and certifications. "They are doing what the SEC always does," Cuban complained on CNBC. "100 degrees of gray."

20 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Lack of perspective by Kjella · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you're an honest business, you will see many regulations as an absolute hassle and cost. For every Enron there's a hundred relatively honest book-keepers who think the SOX laws as an unnecessary giant pain in the ass. Unfortunately they're needed to keep the market as a whole to function well, just like you need everything from health inspections for restaurants to safety inspections for construction workers. We know many would care anyway, but we also know some don't.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    1. Re:Lack of perspective by JBMcB · · Score: 4, Insightful

      He's not arguing against regulation - he's saying the regulations are too vague.

      For comparison, the FDA's regulations on medical device are insanely detailed. The terminology in the regulations have hyperlinks back to a thesaurus that explain exactly what each word means, and examples of it's usage in regulatory filings, so you know exactly what they mean. If something is due in 30 days, it's explained that it's 30 contiguous calendar days, starting from the day some event happened and ending at midnight on the day due.

      SEC regulations can be maddeningly vague. Lots of "as soon as possible" and "within reason" and "as needed." So if you suffer a data breach, you need to notify your stockholders "as soon as possible." Well how soon is that? Within an hour? When you have all the relevant information on the impact? A month? An hour? Even if you are completely honest and up-front, it's possible to run afoul of a regulation like this, simply because it's up to some bureaucrat to decide if you've broken a vague regulation or not.

      --
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    2. Re:Lack of perspective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      you missed his point entirely. it's not that there's regulations; it's that they are so vague and unevenly enforced. honest businesses try to exceed the vague requirements and still get burned. criminal businesses bend the rules as much as possible and get away with it for years until they are caught after millions are lost.

    3. Re:Lack of perspective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Well how soon is that?

      As soon as reasonably possible for the 51% of the well-meaning corporate publicists. That should clear thighs up. ;)

      You sure you didn't mean to post on the "drone vigilante vs prostitutes" story?

    4. Re:Lack of perspective by rtb61 · · Score: 2

      They are not vague by accident, they are vague on purpose. How does that work, easy, one group has millions to pay for lawyers and vague laws work for them in a corrupt interpretive dance and the rest, the 99% are persecuted and prosecuted by those same laws whilst they look at others who can afford get away with far worse crimes. The entitled rich paid to create an interpretive legal system they can readily abuse and even when finally prosecuted the interpretive penalties allow them to pay a smaller fine than the profits they generated.

      It is pretty much sharia laws for the high priest of capitalism to interpret in any way that suits them,"In God We Trust", where God is the funny money of US for private profit Federal Reserve.

      --
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    5. Re:Lack of perspective by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > SEC regulations can be maddeningly vague

      Many FDA regulations are *insanely* confusing. Try doing *anything* that involves human nervous systems, such as research into sensory nerves or artificial vision, and you run into incredible amounts of what one "cannot" do and no acknowledge of what one *can* do. It's even worse for anything politically sensitive, such as revolution on human/simian comparative physiology, which offends the anti-evolution lobbies in Florida, artificial hearing, which offends the sign language deaf community, or Yahoo-Wahoo forbid, anything that mentions "stem cells", whether fetal or adult stem cells, due to the scare mongering about baby harvesting by these twits http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

      You would also not *believe* the regulatory schizophrenia about homeopathy and Scientology. The FDA refuses, under lots of lobbying pressure, to call them outright frauds. But it also refuses to allow them to make medical claims, so practitioners of both frauds make the claims by implication or by "personal testimonial", not by official advertising, and the FDA continues to not act against them.

    6. Re: Lack of perspective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What an a$hole. Public companies are the ones really hurting the economy. They don't aim to employ, the don't aim to produce, they don't aim to create, they don't aim to have a long term strategy. Instead they aim to please an imaginary anonymous ugly gelatinous blob of all the "investors" which aren't investors but mere stock holders, and said ugly gelatinous blob does not really care if the company exists next quarter, the only thing they want is their earnings at the end of this quarter. That's right, they don't really care about this company next quarter, because the company may fire all the staff and sell all assets just to satisfy the anonymous ugly gelatinous blob desire for some profit this quarter, then the anonymous ugly gelatinous blob will just drop the stock and buy new one of a new company to parasite off.
        if anything public companies should be outlawed or reduced only to companies with named/preferred stock, and the shortest period a person should be allowed to hold a stock is 18 months. This is a real investor, not the speculants these days that don't really care which company and what with their high frequency trading.

    7. Re: Lack of perspective by tsotha · · Score: 2

      Instead they aim to please an imaginary anonymous ugly gelatinous blob of all the "investors" which aren't investors but mere stock holders, and said ugly gelatinous blob does not really care if the company exists next quarter, the only thing they want is their earnings at the end of this quarter.

      This is grade-A bullshit. You know who "investors" are? They're people who've been slaving away in cubicles for 30 years putting money into their 401(k) plans hoping to spend a few years sleeping in before they die. Yes, they (meaning me) want good returns on their investments. Yes, stock holders are investors - why else would you buy a piece of a company?

  2. How quickly we forget the 90's by known_coward_69 · · Score: 4, Informative

    And all the junk ipo's and stocks of the time. Going ipo back then was a way to cash out on junk companies by suckering the idiot peons into giving up their money Just like gambling

    1. Re: How quickly we forget the 90's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The fewer public companies we have the better. Individual shareholders have no say in anything anyway thanks to institutional ownership, and it's mostly public companies that are responsible for consolidation, loss of employment, offshoring, etc.

      Most privately held businesses are not large (yes, there are exceptions). Small businesses don't outsource, they don't bring in H1-B Indian wage thieves to do their tech work, they employ more people on a percentage basis, and an awful lot of them are not interested in growth at all costs all the time either.

      The economy and almost all of us would be far better off with less publicly traded companies.

    2. Re: How quickly we forget the 90's by Daemonik · · Score: 2

      Nobody but suckers invests in an IPO anyway. By the time the IPO comes around, the VC's have already negotiated themselves all the profits. The IPO is just to rake in some bucks from the dumb bastards who think they're going to be instant millionaires. Sure they'll drive the stock up hundreds of points and then it'll sink like a rock and trade for under $1 a share for months once people figure out it's actual value.

      The only 'winners' are the people who staged the game but never played.

  3. Getting in the way by dbIII · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They are getting in the way of the good old American tradition of claim salting, but he doesn't understand that without them the good old American tradition of tarring, feathering or stringing up from the nearest tree becomes a viable solution to claim salters and other financial tricksters.

  4. Mark Cuban is a douchenozzle by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Mary Jo White, the head of America's SEC, had appeared earlier in the week near Silicon Valley, according to Bloomberg, telling an audience at Stanford Law school to be wary of billion-dollar valuation IPOs and warning that founders and startup advisors preparing for an IPO should watch their internal controls, reporting and certifications.

    Sounds like pretty sound advice to me.

    And Mark Cuban is a well-known douchebag who got lucky once and has been eating out on his good fortune ever since. And, he's one of the worst sports owners in the United States.

    http://bustedcoverage.com/2009...

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:Mark Cuban is a douchenozzle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Cuban's views are probably influenced by SEC allegations against him of insider trading, for which he was cleared. He's actually a pretty good owner based on his willingness to try to provide a good fan experience and to do what it takes to put a winning team on the court. Yes, he got lucky by selling broadcast.com at the right time, but let's not pretend there wasn't a lot of hard work to put him in a position to receive such good fortune. Also, I like Cuban and Kevin O'Leary the best on Shark Tank. He's arrogant as hell, but entertaining and personable.

    2. Re:Mark Cuban is a douchenozzle by blankinthefill · · Score: 2

      I started reading the story wanting to hate him and disagree with him, and while I still dislike him, he's right. A lot of traders and companies and agencies are getting away with murder because the regulations are vague, and they use that to their advantage, keeping others out by interpreting regulations one way for some people, and raking in the dough by interpreting them more favorably for themselves and their friends. The SEC DOES 100% need to tighten up their regulations and enforcement. Someone brought up the FDA regulations, and while there is still some level of regulatory capture, etc with the FDA, it is nowhere NEAR as bad as the SEC. SEC emulation of FDA regulation sounds like a good thing to me. Now, I feel like this is not what Cuban is meaning to say, but it's completely in line with what he did say, so he can suck it.

  5. Regulate the term of the investment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The problem with today's stock market is that you don't make money off of investing (committing resources in expectation of *long term* gain). Most people in the market are making their money off of high frequency trading or day trading. They could care less how a stock will perform over the next week, month or year. They're looking at potential gains that moment.

    And there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that approach but that's not "investing". That's pure trading and it's very hard for companies to do business when they know their stock valuation (and hence access to capital) has nothing to with their long term plans but is driven by whichever way the wind is blowing that day.
     
    How to fix it? Exchanges make trading fees based off of period of investment. If your in it for one day, they take a 50% cut of profits. One year, 25%. 2+ years 5%. etc. However, they won't because currently the make money per trade so they want people trading like mad instead of investing for the long haul.

  6. Head of the SEC has an interesting history by Beeftopia · · Score: 2

    Seems like there's a lot of conflicts of interest, kinda like Eric Holder: Mary Jo White, current head of the SEC

    Just because she's very good at defending financial sector firms doesn't mean she's a wise choice for regulating them. The regulatory agency heads are in federal service only briefly, taking large pay cuts to get into the position in order to make connections and understand how the government operates, before they go back to their industry.

  7. how do you define "hurt economy" by u19925 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Believe it or not, but his definition of "hurt economy" may not be same as yours. Suppose some regulation cuts down 10 billion from top billionaires (2% reduction in top 0.1% people) and increases by 5 billion for bottom 20% (> 10% increase), would you call it improvement or hurting economy? It has increased 5 times more income for 200 times more people but in absolute term, it has reduced total economy. People like Mark count hurting economy by checking if they (billionaires) benefits or not. Without the regulations, I would put all my money in CD and real estate. Even now, investing in anything other than index fund is not for normal people, but without regulations, even that won't work.

  8. Maybe swimming with sharks by future+assassin · · Score: 2

    was a bad idea.

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  9. By analogy... by Improv · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "How insulting can I be to someone in a bar without getting a fist in my face?"
    "Well, I can offer you advice, but you can't count on it if you make trouble"
    "Yes, but that's too vague. I want exact rules!"
    "That's not how it works, and trying to get right up to some limit is just asking for trouble"

    --
    For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.