FeedPosted Nov 6th 2009 12:00PM by Mark Fightmaster (RSS feed)
Filed under: Deals, Columns, NIKE, Inc'B' (NKE), Business of sports
An interesting situation developed this week in Florida, where Heir Jordan (Michael's son Marcus) cost the University of Central Florida (UCF) its $3 million sponsorship with Adidas. Marcus felt it necessary to wear Nike (NYSE: NKE) basketball shoes, since they were his father's Nike Air Jordans.
Jordan took to the court in an all-white pair of Nike Air Jordans, which differed from the school's normal black-and-white Adidas basketball shoes. Jordan wore ankle braces with the Adidas logo displayed, but this was a cursory move made to placate Adidas. In fact, the move may have been made so he could say that he was wearing Adidas, just not the shoes. Quite honestly, there is a little soap opera surrounding the situation, so let's take a deeper look.
Continue reading JockStocks: Some thoughts on the Marcus Jordan/Central Florida/Adidas situation
Posted Nov 6th 2009 9:40AM by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Deals, NYSE Euronext (NYX), News Corp'B' (NWS), Initial public offerings
The IPO market has been pretty slow for the past two years due to the effects of a subprime mortgage crisis that turned into a credit crisis that turned into a worldwide financial crisis and recession. Nonetheless, two companies made their debuts Thursday -- one on the NYSE (NYSE: NYX), the other on the NASDAQ -- and they nailed it. Hyatt Hotels (NYSE: H) gave its investors a 12% gain on its first Big Board trading day, and Ancestry.com (NASDAQ: ACOM) switched those digits, jumping 21% in its first day of trading.
Hyatt Hotels overcame two major concerns. The worldwide travel market slump has been tough on hotel companies, and Hyatt has been subject to the same forces as everyone else. Also, investors may have been worried about infighting among the founder's heirs (the Pritzker family), but the double-digit price increase suggests that investors don't foresee Bancroft-style squabbles screwing investors -- or, if you don't like Dow Jones, now a part of News Corp (NASDAQ: NWS), Playboy (NYSE: PLA) makes the same point.
Continue reading Hyatt and Ancestry.com IPOs: Beginners' luck?
Posted Nov 6th 2009 9:00AM by Joseph Lazzaro (RSS feed)
Filed under: Deals, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNI)

Warren Buffett's (NYSE:
BRK.A)
decision to buy the 77.4% shares of Burlington Northern Santa Fe (NYSE:
BNI) that he did not already own, for $100 each in cash and stock, is like an early holiday present for BNI shareholders.
And first recommended
on April 30, 2009 at a price of $67.81, that means BNI shareholders will earn a cool 47% for their April-bought shares. Not bad for a six-month investment. I would say BNI probably was worth 10-15% more, but BNI shareholders will take the immediate pay-off, just the same.
Buffett's move also reflects his stance toward U.S. railroads, a sector I like, too.
Continue reading Buffett's railroad move: A win for BNI shareholders
Posted Nov 3rd 2009 3:20PM by Joseph Lazzaro (RSS feed)
Filed under: Deals, Black and Decker (BDK), Stocks to Buy

A double win: I'm Reiterating by Buy rating for New Britain,Conn.-based tool maker
Stanley Works (NYSE:
SWK) after the company
announced Monday it will buy
Black & Decker Corp. (NYSE:
BDK) for $4.5 billion in an all-stock deal.
Stanley, first recommended
on February 10, 2009 at a price of $32.88, sees the deal as $1 accretive to earnings per share within three years.
Meanwhile, shareholders of Black & Decker, first recommended
on April 17, 2009 at a price of $33.53, will receive a 22.1% premium to BDK's closing price as of Friday, October 30, 2009 of $47.22, or about $57.65 per share. Hence, if you bought BDK in April, that represents a 71.9% gain for owning the stock about six months. Not bad.
Continue reading Stanley Works buys Black & Decker: A win/win for shareholders
Posted Oct 28th 2009 3:30PM by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Deals, Rumors, Internet, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), Technology
Unless you already have a major foothold in the search engine market – or an amazing, disruptive technology that can make the world take notice – there isn't much point in staying. Competing with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is hard enough, even when you're Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) or Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) ... and, apparently, when you're IAC/InterActive Corp (NASDAQ: IACI). Barry Diller is ready to give up Jeeves, but only if asked nicely.
Diller's presence in the search space is Ask.com, ranked #4 behind Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing. With a substantial gap between first and second, fourth barely registers at all. Ask.com has only a 2% U.S. market share, according to Hitwise, more than 60 percentage points behind the industry leader.
Continue reading Would anybody buy Jeeves? Ask might go on block
Posted Oct 19th 2009 12:00PM by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Deals, Products and services, Internet, Yahoo! (YHOO), Apple Inc (AAPL), Mutual funds, Personal finance
KaChing! KaChing!
It only makes sense to call a company a sound you like to hear. This is exactly what CEO and co-founder Andy Rachleff must have had in mind. His new company -- kaChing, of course -- is backed by Marc Andreesen (a name often associated with that sound) and Jeff Jordan, the CEO of OpenTable (NASDAQ: OPEN), two guys who usually do a solid job of backing winners. But, they've taken on a challenge by backing a company in the financial services industry.
Continue reading KaChing hopes to be the sound of success
Posted Oct 19th 2009 9:00AM by Connie Madon (RSS feed)
Filed under: Deals, Market matters
What are dark pools and how do they work? The words "dark" and "pool" are used to identify large pools of stock that are traded "off exchanges," or in private, and are not shown to the general public. There is no transparency.
Years ago, all stock trades were made on listed exchanges. Expert stock traders would "read the tape" and follow the price changes in large blocks of stocks. Whether they were done on an uptick or down tick would give the trader a hint as to whether the trade was done on the buy or sell side. Every trade on the tape had an equal number of shares on the buy and on the sell side, so if the tape showed a trade of 10,000 shares of a stock, it meant that there was a buyer of 10,000 shares matched with a seller of 10,000 shares.
Continue reading Dark pools: Why are regulators concerned about them?
Posted Oct 13th 2009 12:50PM by Tom Taulli (RSS feed)
Filed under: Deals, Cisco Systems (CSCO)
Lately, it's been hard to keep track of the dealmaking at Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO). But with a huge pile of cash and a need to find growth, the company is going back to its M&A roots -- in a big way.
The latest deal came Tuesday; that is, Cisco agreed to pay $2.9 billion for Starent Networks (NASDAQ: STAR), which develops infrastructure solutions to deliver multimedia on mobile devices. Keep in mind that a couple weeks ago Cisco purchased for $3 billion another multimedia operator, Tandberg (videoconferencing). And back in March, there was the $590 million deal for Pure Digital (which develops flip video cameras).
Continue reading Cisco goes mobile in a $2.9 billion deal
Posted Oct 11th 2009 3:10PM by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Deals, Rumors, Newspapers, Private equity, New York Times'A' (NYT)
The next step remains uncertain for what will go down in history as among the worst newspaper acquisitions.
On Friday, the deadline for submitting bids for the Boston Globe, which is owned by The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), passed. Two major contenders were expected to write figures on slips of paper and slide them across the proverbial desk: Platinum Equity, a Beverly Hills-based private equity firm and owner of the San Diego Union-Tribune, and Stephen E. Taylor, whose family sold the Globe in 1993.
Continue reading Boston Globe's future remains uncertain
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