It is merger season in Silicon Valley. More than $100bn in technology deals were done in the first half of this year alone, according to Mergermarket. The numbers for the second half will probably be even bigger. The year-end tally will include Facebook’s $19bn acquisition of WhatsApp, Oracle’s $5.3bn purchase of Micros Systems and a significant entry from normally deal-shy Apple, which has agreed to buy headphone maker Beats for $3bn.

现在是硅谷的并购季。Mergermarket的数据显示，仅今年上半年完成的科技公司并购交易总值就超过1千亿美元。下半年完成的交易额可能还会增加。今年的交易包括Facebook以190亿美元收购WhatsApp，甲骨文(Oracle)以53亿美元收购Micros Systems，通常不涉足此类交易的苹果(Apple)也大举进入并购市场，同意以30亿美元的价格收购耳机制造商Beats。

Amid all of this, one element is missing: bankers. Investment banks are used to earning big fees when corporate clients absorb other companies. But many big deals are being completed without the buyer using any investment bank at all.

所有这些交易缺失了一个因素：银行家。投资银行习惯了在企业客户收购其他公司时，从中赚取丰厚的佣金。但现在许多买方完成大额交易的时候完全没有求助任何投行。

This is heartening news for all of us who think that financial services companies in general, and investment banks in particular, are too big and too important. No longer is being an investment banker seen as the best way for a young, talented graduate to make lots of money and achieve great worldly success. Smart kids are moving to San Francisco rather than New York or London. They fund their start-ups with west coast money, build their companies with west coast talent and see multibillion-dollar deals being done between members of their west coast peer group. It makes little sense to turn to an east coast investment banker for “expert” advice on career-defining strategic decisions when there is no reason to believe that expert has a deeper understanding of your industry than you do.

对我们一些人来说这是一个令人振奋的消息——我们本来以为总的来说金融服务公司规模太大、太重要，特别是投行。成为投资银行家不再被视为年轻、有才华的毕业生赚取高收入、取得重大世俗成功的最好出路。聪明的年轻人到旧金山而不是纽约或者伦敦发展。他们用西海岸的钱开初创公司，与西海岸的人才共同壮大他们的公司，目睹他们西海岸的同侪之间完成数十亿美元的交易。在做出决定职业生涯的战略决策时，向一个东海岸的投资银行家寻求“专家”意见没什么意义，因为没有理由相信专家对你的行业的理解比你还深。

It is no coincidence that the rise of the self-advised mega-merger has coincided with the rise of the California-based venture capital industry as the most important single funding source for technology companies. There are still initial public offerings, of course, and gigantic public companies: Google and Apple have a combined market capitalisation of $1tn. But Silicon Valley, as a rule, does not fund itself in the stock market any more. The flotation of Apple in 1980 and of Microsoft in 1986 came at a time when those companies were investing heavily in developing the Macintosh and Windows systems.

自我咨询的大型并购的兴起，和位于加州的风险投资业作为科技公司最重要的单一投资来源的崛起，发生在同一时间，这并非巧合。当然，首次公开募股(IPO)的融资模式依然存在，也存在规模庞大的上市公司：谷歌(Google)和苹果二者的市值加起来为1万亿美元。但在通常情况下，硅谷已经不再从股票市场上进行融资。苹果在1980年上市、微软(Microsoft)在1986年上市的时候，两家公司分别因为开发Macintosh系统和Windows系统投入了大量的资金。

But the 2004 and 2012 IPOs of Google and Facebook did not give those companies money they needed for anything. They already had big cash piles, and have made much more money since. Going public was a way to allow shareholders to cash out, not a means of investing for the future. These days, if a technology company wants to raise money to invest in generating growth, it will call on well-connected venture capitalists who provide more than just cash. Silicon Valley has more than enough money to fund itself in-house. Bankers and capital markets are not the only game in town.

但谷歌和Facebook在2004年和2012年分别进行IPO的目的并非获取它们需要的资金。它们当时已经有庞大的现金储备，并且此后还赚取了更多的钱。上市是让其股东能够变现自己的股票，而不是为了未来发展进行投资。近来，如果一个科技公司希望募集资金以进行增长性投资，该公司会召集一些人脉颇广的风投人士，他们能提供的不止是资金。硅谷有足够的资金进行内部融资。银行家和资本市场不是硅谷唯一的玩法。

In fact, many technology companies are finding that banks are not even necessary, as The New York Times has reported this week. A Morgan Stanley analyst armed with a beautifully formatted, discounted cash flow projection would not be able to help Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive, work out whether Snapchat was worth $1bn or $10bn, or whether WhatsApp was worth $2bn or $20bn. After all, Mr Zuckerberg knows better than anyone how a transaction that looks optimistic today can look like the bargain of the century tomorrow.

事实上，就像《纽约时报》(The New York Times)最近报道的那样，许多科技公司发现它们根本就不需要银行。一个能够用优美的格式进行贴现现金流预测的摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)分析师无法帮助Facebook的首席执行官马克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)算出Snapchat是值10亿美元还是100亿美元，或者WhatsApp是值20亿美元还是200亿美元。毕竟，扎克伯格比任何人都清楚一笔今天看起来过于乐观的交易可能明天就会变成本世纪最超值的交易。

Today’s big Silicon Valley deals are not based on corporate synergies, or the amount that earnings per share will increase after the deal closes. They are not, therefore, based on the sort of thing that bankers can model. (Very few of the acquired companies have any earnings at all; some even lack revenues.)

现在硅谷的大型交易并不基于企业协同效应，或者交易完成后每股收益的增值。因此，它们的交易基础并不是银行家能够建模的。（被收购的公司很少是有盈利的；有的甚至连收入都没有。）

Instead, they are based on attributes that are much harder to quantify. Will this company’s product change the way that billions of people interact? Is it run by the kind of visionary who could prove to be a lethal competitor if she is not brought into the fold today?

这些交易是基于一些难以量化得多的因素。这家公司的产品是否会改变数十亿人互动的方式？是否由一个有远见的人来运营，如果不现在将其纳入旗下，将来可能会成为一个致命的竞争者？

In situations such as these, it matters little if the acquiring company overpays. After all, big tech companies have never had more cash than they have today, and they are finding it just as hard to put their money to work as everybody else is. The logic behind Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp, a smartphone messaging platform that is more or less free to use, is simple: capturing a slice of the time people spend on their mobiles matters more than money. It wants to become the dominant technology company of the mobile age. That is not an area where bankers can help. Indeed, they would be harmful, adding an extra layer of meetings and spreadsheets that only serve to dispirit a potential target. Founders do not want to negotiate with bankers: they want to negotiate with fellow founders, such as Larry Page or Mr Zuckerberg.

在这样的情况下，收购方支付的价格过高也无关紧要。毕竟，大型科技公司从来没像今天这样拥有如此多的资金，而且它们发现同其他所有人一样难以有效利用资金。Facebook收购WhatsApp（一款或多或少算是免费的智能手机通讯应用）的逻辑很简单：抓住人们花在移动设备上的一部分时间比钱更重要。Facebook想要成为移动时代的主导科技公司。这个领域银行家帮不上忙。事实上，银行家可能带来害处，增加额外的会议和表格环节只会使潜在目标感到沮丧。创始人不想和银行家沟通：他们想和别的创始人沟通，比如拉里•佩奇(Larry page)或者扎克伯格。

A banker with gold cufflinks and an expensive suit might be useful if you are interested in buying a public company run by a board of grandees and a hired chief executive. But such deals are now few and far between. In a Silicon Valley devoted to transforming the way we live, bankers have been disrupted: they have gone from being a necessary evil to an unnecessary one. And no one is shedding any tears.

如果你有意购买一家上市公司，而运营它的是显赫人物组成的董事会和雇来的首席执行官，那么一位身着配着金袖扣的昂贵西装的银行家可能很有用。但是这种交易现在很少见了。在致力于改变我们生活方式的硅谷，银行家的存在意义不复存在：他们已经从“必要的恶”变成了不必要的。而且没人为此掉眼泪。