This angle makes sense if they wanted regulators to more closely examine the acquisition target.

Could be attempting a balance of convincing shareholders and not come out as just eating the upstart.

It would seem a CEO would have other, less public, tools to torpedo a deal if they wanted to, no?

Maybe not if the board was forcing him?

Maybe he wanted to tank the deal once they figured out Plaid scrapes financial portals instead of integrates with them.

because you sign a 5b deal and then do due diligence

not exactly the same situation but it happened with NKLA and GM, insufficient due diligence on what was vaporware. mistakes like that can happen.

That’s not the same at all. GM wasn’t losing anything in their original NKLA deal. While Visa would have spent billions.

Hubris enables people, especially "smart" people, to do things that look really stupid in hindsight.

But is it securities fraud?

Everything is securities fraud.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...