VC Investors Go Activists In Uber; Amazon's Acquisition Of Whole Foods

This week’s newsletter really ought to start with a mea culpa. Like most others, I didn’t see Amazon’s $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market coming. In reporting the web giant’s initial interest, Bloomberg gave the impression that the plans had been dropped. After all, Amazon’s reasons are still far from clear.

Now that the deal has been announced, there is a good deal of thinking to be done about what this means for the market as a whole. Clearly, this is seen as a very good thing for activist investors – even if Amazon is limiting its new impulse to splurge to this one instance, the inference that there are plenty of cash-rich firms willing to buy...