From The Wall Street Journal: Key Investors Are Unhappy With SoftBank Tech-Investment Fund

Key Investors Are Unhappy With SoftBank Tech-Investment Fund — The Wall Street Journal

How much is a company worth? How much is anything worth?

Prices are the basis for all transactions; they make businesses succeed or fail; they favor some and exclude others; they are the basis for contractual agreements which provide capitalism with its fundamental morality and capacity to respect human dignity.

But prices can be nominal. Prices can be illusions as to real worth. Prices can be set out of stupidity or greed or fantasy.

There can be disagreement about prices – a nominal price has no truth to it, only the chance that someone else will accept it as reasonable or the basis for a deal.

For example, see story above.

Investors in the fund from Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi think that the Vision fund incorrectly valued companies in which it invested capital – over estimating their “real” worth.

Who’s to know?