Comment by sonnyblarney
8 years ago
"Corporate mission statements are meaningless, except to an even smaller group of people."
They are point blank different companies.
Different CEO, HR, contracts, locations, resources.
The only thing they have are common ownership.
There might be some hints in strategic overlap.
They are more like 'different companies' than they are 'the same company'.
They could be peeled off from their parent owner and much would be the same.
> The only thing they have are common ownership.
Companies that are actually independent besides common ownership don't share a stock symbol and they don't comingle revenues.
Any company that owns 51% or more of another company has to put the owned company on their balance sheet.
It's legally a subsidiary and must have 'co mingled' accounting.
Also there's no reason for Alpha to break out revenues in their reports if they don't want to.
The whole point of Alpha was to in fact treat the sub companies as effectively independent, which is mostly what is going on.
> It's legally a subsidiary and must have 'co mingled' accounting.
Which is the point. They have much more in common than being simply owned by the same owners. They're a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet. And when Verily needs to raise money to cover losses, they don't go to the bank, they don't sell shares, they go to Alphabet.
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Do you happen to work for Google/Alphabet or have you in the past? I imagine that the distinction is actually pretty meaningful and important for people who work there, but pretty meaningless to everyone else in the world who doesn't.