It’s been all over the tech press and blogosphere for the past 2 days (catch up with everything via this great Techmeme listing for example), but nobody I’ve read so far is saying the following:
1. BAD: this may put the brakes on some great visionary European entrepreneurial activity (see for example Saul Klein’s great posting “Y Europe can seed growth of its new stars”.
2. GOOD: OK, so consider it a sanity check, and a healthy way to avoid crazy valuation bubbles for now.
3. CURIOUS: Ever since I was a kid, I have thought “Gee, I wish I could lose billions of dollars in some deal, and walk away with a phat handshake (or should I say drive away in my Rolls-Royce)”. Pretty interesting: ok, some shareholders are down a few bucks each (oh wait, they’re actually UP as of yesterday… add another notch to the ‘curiosity’ levels), and the key people in the chain are laughing all the way to the bank. “Re-structuring”, “earn-outs”, “taking a charge for this quarter”. Bah. Hey, I’m not knocking capitalism – but this ain’t capitalism, it’s voodoo. To me, anyway: obviously if I understood it better, I’d be laughing too.
