The slippery slope never fails. Go back to the 1979 Chrysler bailout and we can find the roots of the US government’s current predilection for getting involved in stocks and bonds.
The Chrysler headline grabber of yesteryear seems quaint by today’s standards: a $1.5 billion federal loan guarantee for one of the country’s largest employers. Twenty-nine years later, Chrysler went back to the trough, this time hand-in-hand with General Motors during the Global Financial Crisis. But unlike the 1979 backstop, the government took things to the next level, restructuring Chrysler but taking a controlling interest in GM and its financing arm, GMAC (subsequently rebranded Ally). Down the line Washington went, scooping up mega insurer AIG and preferred stock in hundreds of banks.
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Back then it was about saving dying corporations, while today the goal is staying ahead of China.
To wit, in May, the Department of Commerce put $2bn of CHIPS Act money into “a non-controlling equity stake” in 9 quantum computing companies, eight of which are alien to most readers. The ninth isn’t: IBM.
The government’s deal with IBM is for equity in a joint venture for a quantum chipmaking subsidiary, not the IBM parent itself. The stock likes it. IBM has rallied 8.2% since the announcement, in a tape that has seen the S&P 500 slip 1%. So far, so good for Big Blue.
How about Intel? In a push to secure chip manufacturing on US soil, Washington took a 9.9% chunk of the company’s equity, plus a pile of warrants that expire in 2030. The government’s ROI has been stratospheric, as the stock is nearly a 5-bagger.
A chunk of MP Materials was also bought. The company produces obscure rare earths including neodymium and praseodymium, among other multisyllabic magnetic elements that are used in robots and drones. MP has been a winner too. Investors who bought after the pop have made 25% over 11 months, outperforming the S&P 500 by seven percent.
But yikes, Trilogy Metals has left investors wanting. The newly-named Department of War bought its equity stake in the Arctic mineral explorer for $2.17 per share last year. Anyone who came in after the stock jumped on the news had to pay $6.31 for the microcap on the next day’s close. Today it wavers at $3.80.
There are so many more on the government’s list. For example, Washington owns 8% of Westinghouse. It also has a strong hand over Nippon Steel’s US operations, after the Japanese company purchased US Steel.
We are generally calling these firms “maybe-State-Owned Enterprises.” In emerging markets, where SOEs tend to populate, our in-house definition of undue government influence has always been any company with more than 20% of the equity owned by the political machine. But maybe a 9.9% government stake in a company like Intel is enough to call it state-owned.
But these are all small potatoes compared to the big conversation that has entered the fray. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders wants a sovereign wealth fund to own slugs of Anthropic, OpenAI and hyperscalers like Meta. He would seemingly expropriate. Donald Trump has been saying similar things as Sanders, though we imagine his modus operandi would be a purchase. Either way, if these two guys keep getting the itch, the prospect of the “maybe-State-Owned Enterprise” concept applying to the Silicon Valley giants is a plot twist. We would spend the summer paying keen attention to Trump’s AI remarks.
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