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A comment on Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight Apple Music. Parent comment

Re:Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight A... by chvid on Tuesday March 29, 2016 @09:43PM (#11386392)
Would it not be possible for an employee to hedge/short-sell the stock using i.e an option?
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Re:Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight A... by knoble on Tuesday March 29, 2016 @10:28PM (#11386567)
Mark Cuban did this when selling broadcast.com to Yahoo. It's a pretty amazing hedge: http://investmentxyz.blogspot.com/2006/05/cubans-collar-anat...
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Re:Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight A... by jsjohnst on Tuesday March 29, 2016 @09:53PM (#11386418)
I'm not familiar with Spotify's terms with employees, but it's not uncommon for this to be expressly forbidden in the stock option / Rsu grant agreement.
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Re:Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight A... by jperras on Tuesday March 29, 2016 @11:02PM (#11386672)
They could perhaps buy call options against their direct competitors (Apple and Pandora, even though the latter is doing terribly) in the event that the IPO goes poorly, but that would essentially require that Spotify losses be countered by gains in the competitors, which is of course not a guarantee.

Basically: they're kinda fucked if it goes south.

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Re:Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight A... by brisance on Tuesday March 29, 2016 @11:18PM (#11386727)
Spotify isn't listed so any form of derivative contract is not standardized and is thus subject to liquidity and counterparty risks.
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