Daily Archives: February 17, 2008

Northern Rock Nationalized

According to The Wall Street Journal troubled British mortgage company Northern Rock wil be taken over by the British government.

The newspaper writes "The U.K. Treasury has decided to nationalize troubled mortgage lender Northern Rock PLC in a surprise move that makes the government and British taxpayer the new owner of a financial institution that fell victim to the global credit crisis"

In the US, it should be interesting to see if the Treasury will step forward with any similar rescue for firms like bond insurers Ambac (ABK) and MBIA (MBI)

Douglas A. McIntyre

Posted on: February 17, 2008 – 12:38 pm in Financial Stocks, ,

Toshiba May Well Exit HD DVD, Handing Big Win To Sony (SNE)

It appears that Sony (NYSE: SNE) has finally won the battle for high-definition DVDs. Last week, Wal-Mat (WMT), Best Buy (BBY), and NetFlix (NFX) dropped the Toshiba HD DVD format in favor Sony’s Blu-ray format.

According to The Wall Street Journal "Toshiba Corp. is highly likely to pull out of the HD DVD business early this week."

Douglas A. McIntyre

Posted on: February 17, 2008 – 8:14 am in Consumer Electronics, , , ,

Barclays (BCS) To Raise Dividend

In an effort to calm its investors, Barclay’s (NYSE: BCS) will raise its dividend this week

According to The Times:

"In its results on Tuesday, Barclays will admit to write-offs from its exposure to the sub-prime crisis totalling about £1.5 billion. But its pretax profits, which have been audited by Price Waterhouse Coopers and seen by the Financial Services Authority, will still nearly match record results from last year, which topped £7.1 billion. As a result the dividend will be lifted by 10%."

Douglas A. McIntyre

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Posted on: February 17, 2008 – 7:31 am in Dividend,

Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL Takes Run At Yahoo! (YHOO)

Joining the contest to see who will own Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), Time Warner’s (NYE: TWX) AOL has entered the fray competing with News Corp (NYSE: NWS) as a company which is intense talks to see if it can win a deal with the No.2 search company. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has already offered $44 billion for Yahoo!

According to The Telegraph "AOL’s determination to present itself as the most attractive of the white knights available to Yahoo! follows the formal rejection last week of Microsoft’s $31-a-share offer for Yahoo!."

With a market cap of $60 billion, Time Warner could not buy Yahoo! outright because the portal company already has an offer for $44 billion from Microsoft. But, like News Corp, it could offer to put AOL into Yahoo! to take a piece of the firm. With AOL currently valued at about $20 billion, this stake might be as big as 33%.

In a consolidation AOL and Yahoo! could cut large numbers of staff and Yahoo!’s search could be the de facto product for all of AOL greatly expanding it reach. Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has this franchise now, but might give up its arrangement to block Microsoft.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Posted on: February 17, 2008 – 7:13 am in Mergers and Buy Outs, , , ,