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Financial success of ride share is extracted from public infrastructure like roads, electricity grids. Uber et al also rely on public services to prop up exploited labour. But who are the financial vampires gorging on misery of others? Meet Goldman Sachs' Matteo Botto Poala 1/
Matteo Botto Poala scour the world looking for distressed public assets they can pick up on the cheap, spin them around a bit and then making a killing selling them later. For example, cue 15:35 where he talks about GS buying Spanish gas utility Redexis. https://pelaidbare.com/podcast/infrastructure-investment-valuations-laid-bare/
Botto Poala describes how Goldman Sachs swooped in in 2010 at the height of the financial crisis to pick up the company for half nothing. Within 7 months they kicked out the CEO because he was an 'engineer' and they wanted a CEO with a 'value creation hindsight'.
Matteo Botto Poala and the Goldman Sachs team complained that the old CEO installed pipelines of 'too high quality, too gold plated but we needed a CEO with more of a 'value creation mindset'. How or if GS balanced safety v profitability is not explained. 3/
Within a few years, Matteo Botto Poala and the vampires at Goldman Sachs had 'created' enough value from what is really public infrastructure to trouser a 75% margin before flogging the company to investors who presumably had even more of a 'value creation' mindset than GS! 4/
What's all this to do w Uber, Ola et al? Goldman Sachs was an early investor in Uber and sold out at just the right time before the pandemic to make an absolute killing. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/15/goldman-sachs-dumped-its-entire-stake-in-uber-late-last-year.html
Ola just appointed another Goldman Sachs MD to its board to help Ola figure out how to go all electric. And key to electric mobility is, you guessed it, infrastructure. Can Matteo Botto Poala be far behind? 6/
While lads like Matteo Botto Poala are good at spending other people's money (BTW who knows he may even be a committed socialist at weekends!) he doesn't come cheap. According to NYT in 2012 he was making $500k base & thats before bonus & 'incentives' 7/ https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/11/15/goldman-sachs-names-266-managing-directors/
All this to say, the axiom 'follow the money' applies. BAME Uber drivers are exploited & even sued into poverty while the likes of Matteo Botto Paola & GS make a private killing on public goods such as infrastructure, welfare, education & influence. 8/
At ADCU we stand up for workers. That means we stand against Goldman Sachs, Matteo Botto Paola, their hypocrisy, their greed and everything else they represent and stand for. 9/
@mtaibbi is right: Goldman Sachs "is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.". END
PS. How would Matteo Botto Poala & his genius colleagues at Goldman Sachs 'fix' Uber? Screw drivers more of course by ending the 'sugar rush' of the alleged current high pay, flood the market with yet more drivers & eventually switch to AVs. Brilliant!
