Fidelity Sends a Chill Through Silicon Valley

摘要

Dropbox's decision to raise funds privately last year was supposed to buy the cloud storage provider more time to grow while avoiding the constant scrutiny and daily stock-price fluctuations that come with being publicly traded. The round of financing valued the company at $10 billion. "Our investors are happy," Chief Executive Officer Drew Houston said in June. "Things have been going well." Dropbox had no plans to go public anytime soon, he said. But in some ways, it already has. Dropbox got a shock recently when money managers Fidelity Investments and BlackRock wrote down the value of their stakes in the company. Fidelity also marked down its holdings of Snapchat, Zenefits, and other technology companies that aren't publicly traded, according to data from research firm Morningstar. The disclosures, which were made in routine regulatory filings, surprised Silicon Valley. Many of the companies weren't aware that certain investors regularly adjust the value of their holdings and report the estimates publicly, say people with knowledge of the situation, who asked not to be identified.