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I'm curious if going public would lead to more transparency about what they do and for whom. Enron was famously opaque to its own investors until it was too lat
by mwfunk 10y ago
I'm curious if going public would lead to more transparency about what they do and for whom. Enron was famously opaque to its own investors until it was too late, but I would hope that public companies have greater requirements for transparency nowadays.
- williamscales 10y agoI don't think that Palantir being a public company would necessarily give the kind of insight into what they do to satisfy our curiosity. As far as I understand, Palantir could be very financially transparent while still keeping mum about who their clients are and what they are doing for them. I think it's worth remembering that Enron was public.
- SapphireSun 10y agoI agree with you on the whole, but Enron was pre Sarbanes-Oxley which initiated a raft of reporting requirements on companies, so Enron is often a poor comparison to the present day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act
- bogomipz 10y agoCan you elaborate on: "financially transparent while still keeping mum about who their clients are" How would this work in practical terms?
- jlgaddis 10y agoIf you mean anything more specific than "we do stuff for the government we can't tell you about", probably not. Look at Boeing, Northop-Grumman, Booz Allen Hamilton, etc. Hell, for that matter, look at AT&T, Verizon, and Level3 -- the companies that we didn't really expect to be doing the kinds of things they were doing.
- bogomipz 10y agoThat was my response as well. Going public means filing 10K statements which will lay all their business dealings out. Something I wouldn't think they or their clients would be interested in.
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoBoeing and Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics are public companies. Being public doesn't mean publishising customer lists.
- jonathankoren 10y agoEveryone knows who is the Military Industrial Complex's customers are, and what contracts are up. The questions are more about capabilities.
- stevehawk 10y agoBut you don't know about the contracts, because a lot of the contracts are classified and never released publicly.