24/7 Wall St.

The Bait Shop is all about potential takeover candidates.  A call for a change in management speaks for itself, and sometimes leads to a Bait Shop situation.

Is it fair to put Citigroup (C-NYSE) as a BAIT SHOP name? No, not entirely.  Chuck Prince is perhaps more on the way out than other CEO’s, if not then he is truly made of body armor.  They are too big on their own; but if Chuck Prince will finally leave the company could be broken up.  But then will the real Prince be able to own enough of anything substantial as this?  We will be sending out a ‘perceived break-up value’ in the next day or two.

Triad (TRI-NYSE) finally got the buyout bid, and right in the middle of the buyout range we estimated.

Equity Office (EOP)…when will the sage end? Probably soon.  It’s getting to price levels where pride might be part of the "Goodwill" and "other" in the assets half of the balance sheet.

Western Digital (WDC) may be back close to that point where the other half we said could be romoved from the position can be added back in.  Let the few big technology earnings this week get out of the way and we’ll evaluate it then without the event risk.

Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) still close to the $28.35 price indicated by options last week; perhaps they were wrong and the price could be hihger but it doesn’t look like much.  We’ll see, but it isn’t trading as though a huge premium is expected from current prices.  It’s up 40% from the 2006 lows.

One of my regulatory contacts says Bank of America (BAC) and Countrywide (CFC) would have issues  ‘potentially’ even on just a partnership; but we’ll see.  Neither side gave the street the feeling it was as real as the media frenzy came in as two Friday’s ago.

Here is the full List of 10 CEO’s where the stocks might rise simply on a new CEO or corporate leader; keep in mind that 3 have already gone.

Jon C. Ogg
February 5, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he is a partner in 24/7 Wall St., LLC and he does not hold securities in the companies he covers.  If you wish to subscribe to a free private email newsletter for the Bait Shop, calls for management change, and other special situation equity events then please send an email and label it Subscribe.  We value privacy and do not share our private email list with third parties.  This is not all of our content but some of the content in the email is not posted on our site.  Thank you for visiting 24/7 Wall St.