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Comment by bernardom | Hacker News Reader

You think the VC investors of a brokerage get access to individual customer transaction data?

I'm sure it's happened before, but I have to imagine such a thing is incredibly rare and illegal if violating the stated privacy policy (due to GLB law).

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VC that have equity, yes. Because if they got equity and they own part of that business they sure as hell will siphon the data and nobody and nothing can stop them. It is like telling me that a Holdings company does not have access to a Subsidiary's client data.

I can go out and buy Schwab equity tomorrow. Will they turn over their data to me?

I recognise that's reductio ad absurdum, and I'm not saying it's impossible that data is misused. But the idea that equity holders of regulated financial institutions can just get whatever data they want out of that institution is... not true.

I have seen this happening in every Bank I've ever worked in/with that was big enough to expand or small enough to be M&A-ed. When a bank buys out a significant part of an Insurance, Factoring, Securities, etc. company, the next day the clients get a nice letter (or email nowadays) about the news and that is that. And a few weeks later the vertical sales begin. All banks that grow through M&A (mostly As) do exactly that. I will assume RH to be Securities since they don't seem to be doing something else (give out loans, hold deposits). So, again, if those fine people that have £€¥$ to RH are JUST VCs the above is not happening. But if they DO have equity, and that would be north of 5-10%, and they BDO have some management over RH (BYOCommitees) it is naive (not mean to insult you or anyone) to think that they don't siphon data. It is like saying that MS didn't get a copy of LinkedIn the very next day, or that FB didn't get their hands on WhatsApp's phone numbers, or that a BANK who just bought a Securities company for which they are NOW LIABLE in the eyes of SEC did not get ALL the data to run KYC/AML/OFAC etc. That company has a $1.7bn valuation where own funds where...? And three big players may own 60-70% of that?

I have seen this happening so many times.

And there are myriad ways to get the data. The easy ones is through their DWH where suddenly (with the correct mapping) all reports etc work on day1 with the new data.

If you know this from experience (ran due diligence pre M&A, worked with the DWH post M&A) or have some other experience on the matter, feel free to share names. I will only share two SocGen and BofA and leave it at that.

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