Gary Lawrence Murphy has highlighted this IT Business coverage of a decision by RBC:

Canada’s open source community is outraged over a decision by the Royal Bank of Canada to contribute towards a US$50-million investment in SCO Group. (SCO being the business desperately trying to gouge money out of the Open Source software by making claims to "intellectual property" in the source code.)

BayStar Capital, based in San Francisco, said last Friday it has closed a private placement of non-voting Series A Convertible Preferred Shares in SCO, with a large portion of the funds coming from RBC Capital Markets. SCO said it would use the money towards the development of software and to help pay its legal and licensing costs.

Gary comments:

When approached for comment, Royal Bank spokescreature Chris Pepper gave only the tacit, “We have a policy of not commenting on anything we do for clients”—which makes me wonder what other wholesome investments the RBC crew might be propping …

And I agree with Gary. It seems pretty bizarre that this corporation won't even comment on its investment strategy. What kind of stakeholder relationships do they think they're building? Surely any mature investor needs to take seriously the consquences of their investment on the wider world. Or does RBC really just think that Greed is Good? posted by Johnnie M, 10:21 AM  permalink