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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Ah I see, I was in two minds about including the quote but decided against it. I was talking about "Microsoft structured its minority stake in OpenAI in part to avoid antitrust scrutiny, The Times has reported. Microsoft also reached a deal in March to hire most of the staff of Inflection AI, another A.I. start-up, and license its technology. Because the deal was not a standard acquisition, it may be harder for regulators to scrutinize.", not what you wrote. Obviously they structure the deal to involve scrutiny; they aren't going to structure it to invite scrutiny; the deal is designed to avoid anything that would allow a random regulator to get involved. The Times is insinuating without cause.

I don't think you're in a position to bully Microsoft. I doubt they care about your opinion.

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If you need to intentionally structure a deal to avoid scrutiny and have it described that way, it implies what you really wanted was much worse.

“We packed the goods in nondescript boxes to avoid scrutiny by the border guards…”

Scrutiny isn’t something you need to avoid as a big company if you’re not fucking around. The lawyers are there to handle the scrutiny, not to hide stuff from it.

> If you need to intentionally structure a deal to avoid scrutiny and have it described that way, it implies what you really wanted was much worse.

It doesn't. That is like saying that if someone structures their affairs to pay less taxes it implies that wanted to do something illegal. They had to choose some structure, they picked the safest and easiest one. In both the hypothetical tax case and the real MS case, I suspect.

The incentive is to choose structures that minimise regulatory engagement. The fact that MS is following incentives isn't a red flag. Not a green one either, it isn't interesting except as something that the NYTimes can hook insinuations on.

This is a funny discussion, because "structuring" has a very specific meaning when it comes to finance. It's about executing your financial transactions in a way that avoids regulatory scrutiny (for example sizing transactions such that they fall just under reporting thresholds).

Structuring is explicitly illegal in the US.

This is the point that vlovich123 was making, and given you totally missed it, it seems like you might not be familiar with what the term means in this context.

Sorry for being unclear on this, I should have quoted. But I'm not, and never was, talking about vlovich123's point in any comment in this thread. I didn't have an opinion on what vlovich123 said.

It does. You can't replace the X and Y in "Structuring X to avoid Y" and still end up with the same implication.

Structuring your business to avoid breaking the law is good.

Structuring your business to avoid some otherwise regular audits that would reveal whether you are breaking the law is obviously suspicious. One might think that there is a reason why getting audited might result in negative consequences for your business.

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