Venture Capitalists Start to Regain Their Nerve

Twitter, others explore other revenue streams to avoid investors' raised demands

(NEWSER) - While Wall Street investors have taken advantage of the tanking economy to nab low-priced stocks, Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists have likewise enjoyed a buyer’s market, demanding larger ownership stakes in startup outfits in exchange for their coveted funds. Companies like Twitter—initially funded with $22 million in venture capital—are now looking for alternative revenue to avoid being devalued, Bloomberg reports. More»

Rejection of stimulus a big mistake: investor

(NEWSER) - Worry no longer about an impending double-dip recession—it’s already here, says George Soros. “I think we are in it already,” the billionaire investor told CNBC , citing Republicans’ rejection of fiscal stimulus as a key problem. “We have a slowdown and basically a conflict about whether the rich ought to pay taxes to create jobs or not,” he said. A scuttled deal in Washington “would have balanced the budget over the long term, but would have allowed short-term fiscal stimulus, which would have been the right policy,” he noted. More»

2008 investment slammed by financial crisis

(NEWSER) - Libya handed $1.3 billion in Goldman Sachs in 2008 for a range of investments—but as the financial crisis took hold, the money lost 98% of its value, a Wall Street Journal investigation finds. Goldman made a deal with Moammar Gadhafi’s sovereign-wealth fund as it sought “to join the major leagues” in investment banking, says a former Treasury official. Libya’s $1.3 billion went to options on currencies and stocks in Citigroup, Italy’s UniCredit, Banco Santander, and more. More»

Investors are not sold on financial recovery, it seems

(NEWSER) - Americans love the stock market—that is, they used to love the stock market. But shaken by the financial crisis, investors withdrew $33.12 billion dollars from domestic stock market mutual funds in the first seven months of this year, finds the New York Times . Instead, they're putting their money in options deemed safer, like bonds. “This is very unusual,” one economist says. More»

(USER SUBMITTED) - So much to choose from; such a short list. Weighing in as the heavyweight champion of all time among venture capitalist bombs—Webvan, the brain-dead effort to use the Internet and a series of high-tech warehouses to deliver low-margin groceries. But at least there was a there there. More»