ECJ: Airbnb Is a Tech Company Not a Direct Service Provider
Are you waiting for the family to arrive? Are you hanging up your stockings on the wall? Okay, we promise that this article won’t entirely be lyrics from a popular Christmas song! But it is an important time of year for traders, because it’s when many markets go to sleep. We’re still here and raring to go and today, we’re going to take a look at Airbnb, before giving you our usual roundup of the week’s most important market events to pop in your calendar (HINT: there won’t be many!).
Airbnb is a Tech Company
A lot of companies have raised a LOT of money by selling themselves as tech unicorns, as opposed to just being another firm within a traditional business sense. Regulators have been a bit harder on taxi companies, for example. But now, popular home rental app, Airbnb, has managed to establish that they are, in fact, a tech company, not a real estate agent.
The European Court of Justice has already been on the case in this existential dilemma. In 2017, it decided that Uber Technologies Inc. was a taxi company. For Uber, this meant the end of its attempts to use drivers without taxi or limo licences in Europe and it is now regulated under European Union member state transportation rules, not e-commerce laws.
Conversely, Airbnb has just been recognised as a legitimate electronic intermediary, rather than the direct provider of a service. Good news for them.
While Airbnb is not yet a publicly traded company, rumour has it that they are planning to launch an IPO as a tech unicorn in 2020. This declaration obviously goes a long way to making that an actual possibility. This will definitely be something to look out for in 2020!
What events should be on your trading radar this week?
It’s Christmas, so we wanted to point out the fact that the market will mostly be sleeping, possibly due to mulled wine excess! Here are the only major events due this week:
Monday 23rd December: Nondefense Capital Goods Orders ex Aircraft (Nov) (USD), BoJ Monetary Policy Meeting Minutes (JPY).
Thursday 26th December: BoJ’s Governor Kuroda speech (JPY), Tokyo CPI ex Fresh Food (YoY) (Dec) (JPY).
That’s it — the markets are pretty much closed for Christmas! Clink, clink!
Eat, drink and be merry. No, seriously, you really should take this opportunity to take time away from your computer screen (after finishing this article, of course!). Enjoy spending time with your loved ones, take a step back and relax. If you do that, you’ll be ready and raring to go when the markets open back up after the holidays.
If you’re looking to supply your traders and investors with a short, snappy, light-hearted preview of the week ahead, a review of the week behind, or (quite literally) any kind of finance-related content, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us and we’ll tailor a solution just for you. Don’t be shy!
Happy holidays!
The Contentworks team
