Business Insider's Aaron Holmes he says that three of the lawmakers tasked with conducting an antitrust investigation into the activities of Amazon, Apple, the Facebook and Google own over $100.000 in shares of these tech companies.
Of course it is not the best way to conduct research.
In his post, Holmes states that board member Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin owns more than $ 98.000 in shares in all four companies combined. California-based Zoe Lofgren owns $ 15.000 worth of shares in Facebook, Apple and Alphabet, though she recently sold some of them. Steve Chabot of Ohio has $ 50.000 in stock on Facebook.
It should be noted that researchers are not illegal if they own shares in the companies they are researching, but there could certainly be a conflict of interest.
Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Apple's Tim Cook, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet will testify before the House Antitrust Committee on Monday, July 27. However, Axios reports that this could be delayed until August 3 to allow Washington to mourn former civil rights leader John Lewis, who died earlier this week.
The research aspires to find out whether these companies are using their enormous influence on markets to stifle competition from smallers opponents. It will be conducted under the supervision of the United States Department of Justice and the House Judiciary Committee.
