Billionaire Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, owns a stake in the blood-testing company Theranos — a one-time star of the biotech world that has been derailed by criminal and civil investigations.
In documents filed with the Office of Government Ethics, DeVos disclosed a share of Theranos that she said was worth more than $1 million. Federal regulations don’t require any more specificity than that, so the exact size of DeVos’ stake is unclear.
It’s unclear, too, how she came up with that valuation: The company’s worth has plummeted as its labs have failed government inspections and voided thousands of blood test results.
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Since Tom Price is going through the same kangaroo court, let’s be perfectly clear: these funds are not restricted to high end investors; like IPO’s the HNW mostly participate because they have the stash required to buy the minimum number of shares required by private equity, hedge funds or the public fund managers. They also get higher cost preferred stock as a reward for making a risky bets buying shares in startups. All about risk and reward. Ironically, most of the congressional panelists are millionaires themselves but choose the safer mom and pop investments or low yielding government bonds. So they don’t invest in Theranos, so what. Is going around the country making canned speeches to PACs or special interest groups to enrich your campaign coffers any better?