View the San Francisco for Wednesday, August 14, 2024
Lina Khan, the nominee for Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission , speaks during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation confirmation hearing, April 21, 2021 on Capitol Hill in Washington.Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla, right, discusses public policy matters with Bloomberg executive producer Emily Chang at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco on May 9, 2024. Khosla has called for the ouster of FTC Chair Lina Khan.
Many inside and outside Silicon Valley have zeroed in on Lina Khan, who, as Federal Trade Commission chair, has moved to quash several high-profile mergers as part of an aggressive antitrust agenda.— which also extend to the U.S. Department of Justice — are discouraging acquisitions, according to venture, finance and legal experts who spoke with The Examiner. But that’s not the whole story behind the slowdown in the market, they said.
The decline in acquisitions and buyouts is important in part because of just how dependent the venture industry has become on such deals. Those companies have raised $28.4 billion by going public, an amount that’s on track to be well up from 2023’s full-year total of $29.3 billion, according to PitchBook.
When it works well, venture investing is something of a virtuous circle. The limited partners take some of the gains they’ve made from previous funds and invest them into the next round of funds that, in turn, invest in the next generation of startups. Antitrust scrutiny — or at least the perception of it — has particularly dissuaded the biggest tech businesses from pursuing acquisitions, experts said.
In 2020 and 2021, cash flooded into the venture industry after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates and tried to boost the economy in the immediate wake of the COVID-19-related recession. With so much cash on hand, venture firms invested record amounts of money and bid up startup valuations. As one example, the number of U.S. unicorns — venture-backed companies worth $1 billion or more —
that some companies might be holding off on making purchases until after the November election on the hopes the next presidential administration — whether headed by Trump or Harris — will be more accommodating to potential deals. Regardless of the cause, the slowdown in the acquisition market, coupled with the lack of IPOs, has put venture investors under the gun, Kline said.
Montejano is now a registered campaign consultant for Farrell, who is one of several candidates hoping to deny Mayor London Breed a second full term in office in November. Jay Cheng, Neighbors for a Better SF’s director, told The Examiner in an email that it has taken steps to avoid repeating the violations made in 2022 and is not managing or consulting Farrell’s campaign.
Cheng told Ethics Commission investigators that he participated in the recall committee’s organizing in order to protect Neighbors’ investment in the campaign, “including by weighing in on how the Recall Committee spent its resources.” Farrell has established his own independent expenditure committee to back the TogetherSF Action measure. He claims the committee is advocating for a measure that will carry out important reforms to government, but his opponents counter that it’s a vehicle for unlimited cash to benefit his mayoral candidacy, noting it has listed “shared expenses” with Farrell’s mayoral campaign committee.
Montejano and Margaux Kelly are registered campaign consultants for Farrell and for the primary committee to support TogetherSF’s government-reform ballot measure. The Ethics Commission did not have a quorum Friday and thus could not vote to finalize the proposed settlement, which was continued to its next meeting.
So typically, what that translates to is that if you come down with COVID, usually by day three or four, you’re starting to get better. And typically, if it’s been five days and you’re clearly getting better, you’ve not had any fever, then on day six, you can come out of isolation. But for the next five days, you should wear a mask when you’re around others indoors who might be at risk of a severe case of COVID.
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