Moscow Times: Putin Signs Off on Sanctioned Tycoons’ Shared Yandex Stake – Reports. “President Vladimir Putin has agreed on the sale of a majority stake in the Russian side of splintered tech giant Yandex to three sanctioned billionaires and the state-owned VTB Bank, the news websites The Bell and Meduza reported Sunday, citing four unnamed sources close to the company.”
Bloomberg: UK Probing TikTok’s Ownership, Security Minister Tugendhat Says. “The UK is carrying out an ‘important’ investigation into Chinese social media app TikTok, Security Minister Tom Tugendhat said, but he refused to be drawn on whether it would be banned from UK government mobile devices.”
San Francisco Examiner: New tool for housing organizers aims to reveal landlord webs in S.F.. “The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, a data-visualization and multimedia resource collective, has released a tool to uncover connections between properties, landlords and corporations. The tool, entitled Evictorbook, aims to support tenants and housing organizers in San Francisco. Oakland data is expected to be available on the tool soon as well.”
HHS: Biden-Harris Administration Makes More Medicare Nursing Home Ownership Data Publicly Available, Improving Identification of Multiple Facilities Under Common Ownership. “Today, in another effort to improve nursing home transparency, safety and quality, and accountability, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), is making additional data publicly available that provide more information about the ownership of all Medicare-certified nursing homes. This data will, for the first time, give state licensing officials, state and federal law enforcement, researchers, and the public an enhanced ability to identify common owners of nursing homes across nursing home locations.”
WIRED: Who Owns 4chan?. “Even as the imageboard continues to rise in infamy, a question lingers: Who actually owns 4chan? For years, its ownership has been murky: Invented by an American, sold to a Japanese businessman in 2015, its corporate structure is largely unknown, beyond a pair of Delaware-registered corporations. New information, shared exclusively with WIRED, provides greater detail into 4chan’s largely unpublicized relationship with a major Japanese toy firm called the Good Smile Company.”
WIRED: You—Yes, You!—Would Be a Better Owner for Twitter Than Elon Musk. “Twitter’s ownership problem began long before Musk’s machinations. The conversations and communities that Twitter hosts have always been, legally at least, commodities to be bought and sold. The prospect of handing this essential piece of democratic infrastructure to the world’s richest man is a symptom of that underlying design.”
CNBC: Twitter board adopts ‘poison pill’ after Musk’s $43 billion bid to buy company. “Under the new structure, if any person or group acquires beneficial ownership of at least 15% of Twitter’s outstanding common stock without the board’s approval, other shareholders will be allowed to purchase additional shares at a discount. The plan is set to expire on April 14, 2023.”
The Verge: The Twitter board is reportedly not interested in Elon’s takeover offer. “Twitter’s board is also reportedly considering using a ‘poison pill’ strategy to make it more difficult for Elon to acquire a large stake in the company and avoid a hostile takeover. Poison pills can, as one example, flood the market with shares once an investor acquires stock above a certain limit, making them easier to acquire for others (and costly for a single investor to buy up) when someone attempts a takeover.”
CNBC: Twitter shares soar more than 25% after Elon Musk takes 9% stake in social media company . “Musk owns 73,486,938 shares of Twitter, which represents a 9.2% passive stake in the company, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission 13G filing released Monday. The stake is worth $2.89 billion, based Twitter’s closing price on Friday.”
ABC News: Google co-founders step down as execs of parent Alphabet. “Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are stepping down from their roles within the parent company, Alphabet. Sundar Pichai, who has been leading Google as CEO for more than four years, will stay in his role and also become CEO of Alphabet.” Ten years ago this would have been a huge deal. Now? Meh.
Quartz: This Saudi prince now owns more of Twitter than Jack Dorsey does. “A Saudi prince has increased his holdings in Twitter, making him the company’s second largest shareholder. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, who in 2011 invested $300 million in the social network, now owns 34.9 million shares of Twitter’s common stock, according to a new regulatory filing (pdf).” That’s almost 5.2% of the company. Dorsey owns 3.2% of the company. Ev Williams owns more than either of them.
Transparency International: Taking a step back: Why do we care so much about public registers of beneficial ownership?. “You might have seen us celebrating the UK government’s decision last week to require British overseas territories to introduce public registers of beneficial ownership. This means that companies based in places like Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos and the British Virgin Islands will soon have to reveal the identity of the real individuals behind companies — the beneficial owners. We’ve called this ‘a major victory in the fight against cross-border corruption’. You might be wondering: why do we care so much about registers of beneficial ownership?”
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