Reuters: The Senate is near its first vote on healthcare.
Reuters: Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) is betting on corporate spending for its recovery.
Reuters: Time Warner’s (NYSE:TWX) AOL showed that the worst is not over for media job cuts.
Reuters: China cyber-spying against the US will probably grow. Read More
First Portfolio, the business magazine launched just two years ago by publishing giant Conde Nast, folded. Then, the largest business magazine in America, BusinessWeek, was sold by its parent company, McGraw-Hill (MHP), to Bloomberg for as little as $3 million plus its subscription liabilities. Now, Fortune, started by Time, Inc. founder Henry Luce, will cut its publishing frequency from 25 times a year to 18 times. According to several media reports, Time, Inc. will also cut several hundred jobs. Time, Inc. is part of media giant Time Warner (TWX).
Like BusinessWeek, Fortune began publishing during The Great Depression in 1930, when it came onto the market bearing the steep price tag of $1 an issue. It was printed on heavy paper and contained a sustained level of expensive photography and illustrations not found in other business magazines. Fortune published monthly until 1978, when it changed it frequency to fortnightly in order to match the publishing schedule of rival Forbes.
Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer may want to reconsider being part of an effort to buy BusinessWeek. A report fromPaidContent says “the multimedia business media giant is working as a strategic partner in the ZelnickMedia bid for BusinessWeek.” Rumors are that Bloomberg is also a bidder.
Whatever the track record of Zelnick Media may be with private transactions, Zelnick has been part of the management and/or boards at two public companies which has become disasters for shareholders. Read More
Reuters: The healthcare plan is about to take a step forward in Congress.
Reuters: The debt swap at CIT (NYSE:CIT) is in trouble and could cause bankruptcy.
Reuters: Summers says Obama policies saved economy. Read More
Updated throughout the day.
Updated 2:44 Dell Inc. (NYSE: DELL) will launch a branded Android smartphone thru AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and possibly other carriers next year. Source today is from WSJ, but ask this… How many phone and consumer electronics announcements have been rumored on Dell?
Updated 1.36 PM EST: Pimco left the bondholders steering committee at CIT (NYSE:CIT) last month (CNBC)
Updated 12.45 PM: Polycom (NSADAQ:PLCM) could be taken over by Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) or Dell (NASDAQ:DELL). Interdigital (NASDAQ: IDCC) could be bought by Nokia (NYSE:NOK) and ValueClick (NASDAQ:VCLK) could be taken over by any one of a number of companies. (Barron’s)
Updated 12.41 PM: GM head of American sales leaves amid talk that car company CFO may be next (CNNMoney)
Update 10.50 AM EST: Congress may pass a bill which will require that public companies split the roles of chairman and CEO. (MarketWatch)
Thomson Reuters (NYSE:TRI) may be involved in the bidding for McGraw-Hill’s (NYSE:MHP) BusinessWeek working jointly with Zelnick Media. Strauss Zelnick is on the boards of Blockbuster (NYSE:BBI) and Take-Two Interactive (NASDAQ:TTWO) (PaidContent).
Citigroup (NYSE:C) may sell it Philbro unit which is paying its chief $100 million this year. (CNBC)
Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) has narrowed its list of CEOs to two people (WSJ).
Foxconn has a deal to make 300,000 to 400,000 Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) tablet PCs to ship in Q1 (DigiTimes)
Collins Stewart believes that Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) are on the lookout for acquisitions. (The Deal).
Share sales by Steve Wynn, head of Wynn (NASDAQ:WYNN), and his COO may be” a canary in the coal mine to other investors to take some profits on the gains in this sector since the March lows.” That would include MGM (NYSE:MGM) and Las Vegas Sands (NYSE:LVS) (TheStreet.com)
Private equity firms Bain Capital and THL Partners are asking banks that supported their buy-out of Clear Channel Communications to help restructure the firm’s debt. Those banks include Citigroup (NYSE:C), Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS), Deutsche Bank (NYSE:DB), and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS). (NYPost)
News Corp (NYSE:NWS) CEO Rupert Murdoch is in Japan and South Korea and may be discussing partnerships to build a rival product to the Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Kindle. (Reuters)
Vivendi will discuss selling its 20% stake in GE’s (NYSE:GE) NBCU at its October 19 board meeting to allow a transaction with Comcast (NADSAQ:CMCSA) which would involve the cable company getting control of media firm. (BusinessWeek)
JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) executive Heidi Miller could be in the running for the CEO job at Bank of America. (The Big Money)
Douglas A. McIntyre
Bloomberg is, according to several reports, the most likely buyer of the largest business magazine in America. BusinessWeek is being sold by McGraw-Hill (MHP) Bloomberg has the balance sheet and editorial staff to support the publication’s $40 million in losses and probably bring them down sharply.
Bloomberg today announced that it will set up a joint venture with The Washington Post (WPO). The Post had a news partnership with the LA Times. The 47-year-old deal was killed earlier this week, perhaps because the huge layoffs that the Times have crippled the paper’s ability to produce good stories.
The new Post deal with Bloomberg will lead to the paper distributing stories on Bloomberg’s terminals and creating a joint online business section. The Post is losing huge amounts of money. Having a rich business partner with substantial news gathering ability could be critical to it keeping its financial pages among the most important in the US. It will also help the Post compete with the rival New York Times (NYT) and Wall Street Journal in covering global business and economic stories.
Bloomberg is quickly becoming one of the most important media companies in the nation. Its Bloomberg TV operation is beginning to challenge CNBC. It has broadened it programming with shows including the Charlie Rose interview show, underscoring Bloomberg’s aspirations to move beyond business news.
Bloomberg now has more than 1,500 editors and writers around the world. That puts it makes it almost as large as the Associated Press. There is no reason Bloomberg cannot go head-to-head as a supplier of content to major newspapers, cable and TV companies, and Internet properties.
Bloomberg’s advantage is that the company is privately held and has revenue of $4 billion from its trading terminal business. The firm is highly profitable according to most analysts. Bloomberg can afford expanding its news operations in a way that no other organization in the world can.
Bloomberg is quickly becoming one of the most powerful media companies in the US and that status is likely to grow.
Douglas A. McIntyre
Strauss Zelnick, former record exec, and former WSJ publisher Gordon Crovitz will buy BusinessWeek, (MHP) which was yesterday rumored to be closing. (BW)
Nokia (NOK) will buy travel social network Dopplr for $20 million. (TechCrunch)
CBS (CBS) is not a bankruptcy candidate. (SAI)
A Financial Accounting Standards Board ruling will help Apple (AAPL) earnings, but then again, it won’t. (WSJ)(Barron’s).
Goldman Sachs (GS) may alter compensation packages for PR reasons. (NYPost)
A new and powerful argument for why Nokia would buy Palm (PALM) (Forbes).
Autonomy, the UK search software firm, will be bought by Microsoft (MSFT). (Reuters).
Twitter could raise about $100 million at a valuation of $1 billion with the money coming from T. Rowe Price and private-equity firm Insight Venture Partners. (WSJ).
Douglas A. McIntyre
BusinessWeek is losing money, over $40 million last year by some accounts, and more if the publication’s corporate overhead is included. There have been questions about whether BusinessWeek is financially viable for some time. McGraw-Hill (MGP) is trying to sell the magazine it launched in 1929 as “The Business Week”. Most analysts would agree that the publication has made McGraw-Hill hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. But, Harold McGraw III, who is the firm’s CEO due to his membership in the firm’s founding family, knows that his shareholders don’t want to be in money-losing operations, so BusinessWeek is for sale. Read More
These are this Wednesday morning’s top pre-market analyst downgrades and cautious research calls we have seen from Wall Street:
Cameco (CCJ) Cut to Sector Perform at Scotia.
Check Point Software (CHKP) Cut to Market Perform at FBR Capital.
Dish Network (DISH) Cut to Sell at Goldman Sachs.
DuPont (DD) Cut to Neutral at Goldman Sachs.
Kraft Foods (KFT) Cut to Hold at Argus.
McGraw-Hill (MHP) Cut to Hold at Argus.
Palm (PALM) Cut to Neutral at Credit Suisse.
Rosetta Genomics (ROSG) Cut to Hold at Cantor Fitzgerald.
UBS (UBS) Cut to Neutral at JPMorgan.
JON C. OGG
It is the weekend, albeit a long three-day weekend for Labor Day. Earnings season is done, gone, bye-bye, but this coming week there are going to be some key events and key stocks to watch including American Apparel Inc. (AMEX:APP), Campbell Soup Co. (NYSE: CPB), Matrixx Initiatives Inc. (NASDAQ: MTXX), Moody’s Corp. (NYSE: MCO), McGraw-Hill (NYSE: MHP), Rambus, Inc. (NASDAQ: RMBS). On bigger market pundit calls, we want to watch the key ETF and ETN products of PowerShares QQQ (NASDAQ: QQQQ), the Semiconductor HOLDRS (NYSE: SMH), and Technology Select Sector SPDR (NYSE: XLK), SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE: GLD), the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (NYSE: GDX), and the Ultra Gold ProShares (NYSE: UGL). Elsewhere, there is the death of the PowerShares DB Crude Oil Double Long ETN (DXO). Sears Holdings Corporation (NASDAQ: SHLD) will also be key to watch because of a response to a nasty Barron’s article.
Reuters: The sell-off in Chinese stocks may be overdone based on earnings.
Reuters: A report blamed the SEC for not doing its job investigating Madoff.
Reuters: The Fed says the risks to the American economy have dropped.
Reuters: A Pfizer (PFE) whistleblower made more than $51 million. Read More
Reuters: Obama says healthcare reform is essential to the recovery.
Reuters: CIT (CIT) bond advisers will push for Chapter 11.
Reuters: Democrats will fight with banks on consumer agency.
Reuters: Amazon (AMZN) bought Zappos for $829 million.
Reuters: Porsche approved Qatar talks and fired its CEO.
Reuters: Bristol-Myers (BMY) bought Medarx (MEDX) for $2.4 billon. Read More
24/7 Wall St. completed an analysis of newspapers websites for the years 2008 and 2009. We have added magazines to this analysis because print media clearly faces potential extinction if it cannot move most of its content to the Internet in a way that brings in very substantial revenue. The attempts to do this have proven unsuccessful so far. There are reasons for this. The most important may be that most on-line versions of print products compare poorly to the largest and most successful websites. The 2009 analysis of the newspaper websites was received with interest and provoked the kind of debate that the article was created to do. Editor and Publisher said that the analysis of the newspaper websites was “in great depth and newspapers should take note.” This statement is not included here to be self congratulatory but to point out that the industry understands that this debate is necessary and urgent. Read More
Reuters: California declared a financial emergency.
Reuters: An SEC attorney raised concern about a Madoff report in 2004.
Reuters: Auto parts supplier Lear filed for bankruptcy.
Reuters: NYC apartment sales are down more than 50%.
Reuters: Beijing Automotive will bid for Opel.
Reuters: GM told a judge asset sales was its only option. Read More
Reuters: Obama proposed sweeping reform for financial industry.
Reuters: A number of large banks repaid TARP. (JPM)(GS)(BBT)(COP)(STT)(AXP)(USB)
Reuters: Consumer prices show inflation is in check.
Reuters: China could still be a big buyer of US debt.
Reuters: NYSE will create a derivatives clearing house. Read More
No one should have to tell the US government that it has the highest possible credit rating. It is the government of the world’s largest economy, the world’s most voracious consumers, and its debt, the world’s investment of last resort. Read More
The May 11 issue of Fortune Magazine is a perfect demonstration of what the three largest business magazines have done for decades. Its cover story, “How Bernie Did It’ is the culmination of a four-month investigation into the details of Bernie Madoff’s life and business operations written and reported by three of Fortune’s best editorial staff members, one of whom is a Pulitzer Prize winner. This issue of Fortune is also an example of why the magazine and its competitors Forbes and BusinessWeek, will soon no longer be able to publish these kinds of stories. The May 11 issue has 92 printed pages and covers. There are only 21 pages of paid advertising compared with more than a hundred pages in a spring issue 20 years ago. Read More
There are not so many brokerage calls this morning for it being earnings season, but these are the top 10 analyst calls of upgrades and downgrades from Wall Street we have seen early this Friday morning:
AmerisourceBergen (ABC) Raised to Buy at Deutsche Bank.
Borg Warner (BWA) Cut to Market Perform at Wachovia.
DryShips (DRYS) Raised to Outperfom at Oppenheimer.
Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) Raised to Outperfom at Oppenheimer.
Illinois Tool (ITW) Cut to Market Perform at Wachovia.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Cut to In-Line at Foxx-Pitt.
McGraw-Hill (MHP) Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan.
Nokia (NOK) Raised to Neutral at JPMorgan.
Sohu.com (SOHU) Cut to Sell at Deutsche Bank.
Zumiez (ZUMZ) Raised to Buy at KeyBanc.
Jon C. Ogg
According to Reuters, Goldman Sachs (GS) would like to return to its old businesses and compensation practices, but it may not be able to.
Reuters reports that the US is planning to reveal the “stress test” data on top banks.
Reuters writes that Fiat could abandon the Chrysler deal because of union issues.
Reuters writes that UBS (UBS) is cutting 8,700 jobs.
Reuters reports that the Fed is considering press conferences to keep the public up to speed.
Reuters reports that China has felt first quarter pain but is now on the mend.
Reuters writes that Intel (INTC) says PC sales have hit bottom but its shares dropped.
If you have read us for a long period of time, you know exactly how we feel about the ratings agencies. We attribute much of the blame of the current financial crisis to their practices and the inherent conflicts of interest in their business models. So far, they have avoided the hangman of the government and the backlash against all of their business drying up. The top agencies are Moody’s Corp. (NYSE: MCO) and The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (NYSE: MHP) for its Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, with Fitch being the number three player. On top of unjustly avoiding the hangman, they appear to be getting some of the bailout money on at least an indirect basis. This outrages us about as much as some executive compensation outrages much of the public.
Read More
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