It's a little difficult to parse meaning out of this article... a hit piece by a candidate for municipal office attempting to smear an incumbent with willful distortions.
If GE made $1B here (which I think is a total guess, stemming from American Industrial Partner's self-described focus on the middle market), it was from selling "corporation" not "data". "Wall St" in this case means PE not HF. There's a hand-wavy attempt to link this transaction to California DMV's sale of data, but the two cases aren't remotely similar.
The interesting part is actually the PDF of the San Diego "intelligent lighting" contract embedded in the article; they've highlighted the main points. Section 7 of the contract says that San Diego owns the raw data, while the vendor owns the processed data free & clear to do with as they please.
So this in no sense represents San Diego selling "footfall data" to HF, but it is somewhat eyebrow raising.
If GE made $1B here (which I think is a total guess, stemming from American Industrial Partner's self-described focus on the middle market), it was from selling "corporation" not "data". "Wall St" in this case means PE not HF. There's a hand-wavy attempt to link this transaction to California DMV's sale of data, but the two cases aren't remotely similar.
The interesting part is actually the PDF of the San Diego "intelligent lighting" contract embedded in the article; they've highlighted the main points. Section 7 of the contract says that San Diego owns the raw data, while the vendor owns the processed data free & clear to do with as they please.
So this in no sense represents San Diego selling "footfall data" to HF, but it is somewhat eyebrow raising.