China Is Killing its Tech Industry

July 5, 2021 tremendousblog 1 Comment

Major news over the holiday weekend as the Chinese government required all app stores in China to remove the Didi Chuxing app. Didi is the Chinese equivalent to Uber, and dominates shared rides in the country, along with a major presence abroad:

China has ordered app-store operators to remove the app of Didi from their stores, the latest as tension escalates between the nation’s largest ride-hailing giant and local regulators. The app has disappeared from several stores including Apple’s App Store in China, TechCrunch can confirm.
The nation’s cyberspace administration, which unveiled the order on Sunday, said Didi was illegally collecting users’ personal data.

Existing users can continue the use the app for now, but new signups are blocked. This comes just days after Didi raised billions in an IPO in New York, perhaps angering the Chinese government.

The claim of data violations seems specious. Didi’s CEO, Li Min, denies that any data is handled improperly or passed to the US.

This is part of a broader crackdown on China’s technology industry:

Alibaba Group fined $2.8 billion shortly after CEO Jack Ma criticizes the Communist Party
Fintech giant Ant Group, also founded by Jack Ma, has IPO cancelled
Bitcoin miners forced to shut down and are racing to move their servers elsewhere, including the US, as the Chinese government prepares to launch its own competing digital currency
A Chinese billionaire, many of whom are in the technology industry, dies every 40 days on average, often in suspicious “accidents” and “suicides.” Some are simply executed.

What is this doing to China’s technology industry? The damage is reflected in a massive decline in the number of “unicorns,” or startups reaching $1 billion valuation, in China. Meanwhile, the number of unicorns in the US is skyrocketing and the tech industry as a whole is hotter than ever.

China’s overall economy has also trended sharply downwards in recent years:

The Communist Party doesn’t want any competing power centers, and the Chinese tech industry, with its wealth and control of information, is perhaps the biggest alternative power center left.

But the industry needs freedom to experiment and exchange ideas, and a stable climate without the constant threat of fines, shutdowns and imprisonment. Entrepreneurs can find that here in the US, along with abundant funding. And I think you’ll see more and more of them making that jump.

Hoffa Murder Suspect Tony Pro’s Union Hall

July 2, 2021 tremendousblog Leave a comment

On July 30, 1975, James R. Hoffa, President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, disappeared without a trace. In 1982, he was declared dead. No body has ever been found.

A prime suspect in that disappearance was Teamsters Local 560 President Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano. In fact, Hoffa was actually on the way to meet Tony Pro when he disappeared.

A member of the Genovese crime family, Tony Pro ruled Local 560 with an iron fist. Anyone who opposed him had a way of winding up dead.

Hoffa and Provenzano’s beef seems to date from prison. Whether Tony Pro had other reasons for wanting Hoffa dead isn’t known.

Today, I went in search of the remains of this history. Tony Pro’s Local 560 Union Hall is in Union City, NJ, a town that was once heavily Italian but is now mostly Hispanic. Though it has changed since Tony Pro’s day, its working class roots are very much intact. Nearby are Tonnelle Avenue and the Lincoln Tunnel, where many of Local 560’s members drive their trucks every day.

Looking at the door to the union hall, I imagined a small, bespectacled man leaving at the end of the day with a sheaf of papers. Who would think he had the power that he did?

Tony Pro’s habit of disappearing anyone who got in his way eventually caught up with him when he had the local’s treasurer, Anthony Castellito, murdered at his country home in the Catskills. Like Hoffa’s, his body was never found. But years later, an informant tipped the FBI to Tony Pro’s involvement, and Tony went to federal prison, where he died in 1988 of heart failure.

AMC’s S-3 Withdrawal: What Does It Mean?

July 1, 2021 tremendousblog Leave a comment

There is a lot of talk lately on Twitter and Reddit about AMC’s withdrawal Tuesday of an obscure SEC form called an S-3. Form S-3 is a filing that registers securities. In this case, the securities were convertible bonds, or bonds that can convert into stock when the holder chooses.

Many on social media conclude that this withdrawal is somehow part of a plan by AMC to kneecap short sellers. I’m not quite clear on how that would work, but removing the possibility of a lot of new share issuance does keep a tighter market in the shares, making a short squeeze somewhat more likely.

But I think the key part of the S-3 withdrawal is this:

The Registrant confirms that no securities have been issued or sold under the Registration Statement.

It appears to me that AMC is simply withdrawing an SEC filing that no longer reflected reality, thus keeping their regulatory filings current. They didn’t issue shares under the agreement, so
the shares couldn’t have been sold short. In all, there doesn’t seem to be a clear connection between the withdrawal of the S-3 and short selling in AMC.

This excellent video explains the situation well:

I won’t pretend to be an expert on S-3’s. Is it possible I’m missing something? Absolutely, and I’m curious to hear your perspective in the comments at the bottom of the page.

That said, we don’t need to draw any conclusion from the S-3 withdrawal to have strong evidence of illegal activity by short sellers in AMC. As I covered yesterday, repeated fail-to-delivers in a heavily traded stock like this, along with serious short interest, powerfully suggest illegal naked short selling.

Whatever the S-3 means, there’s more than enough evidence of misconduct already.

Tremendous

Monthly Archives: July 2021

China Is Killing its Tech Industry

Hoffa Murder Suspect Tony Pro’s Union Hall

AMC’s S-3 Withdrawal: What Does It Mean?

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