[email protected] (Bill Johnson) writes: > Bankruptcies are rarely a good thing. I've been through one.
trivia ... stockman goes into some detail about stock buybacks (including IBM's) and characterizes them as mini-form of LBO. http://www.amazon.com/Great-Deformation-Corruption-Capitalism-ebook/dp/B00B3M3UK6/ because of bad rep from the S&L crisis, the industry changed its name to "private equity" and "junk bonds" become "high-yield bonds". industry has been borrowing money for LBO and has been characterized as similar to house flipping. Difference is that the loan goes on the bought company's books and goes with it after flipping (rather than paid off; private equity can sell for less than they paid and still walk away with boat loads of money ... totally aside from what they loot might from the company). the enormous (LBO) debt load has over half corporate defaults involving companies currently or formally in private equity clutches. ... ref http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmons.html?_r=0 AMEX was in competition with KKR for LBO of RJR ... and KKR wins. the president of AMEX had been in competition to be the next CEO and wins. However, KKR is then having some problems with RJR and hires the president of AMEX away to turn it around. Then IBM has gone into the red and is in the process of being broken up into the 13 "baby blues". The board hires the former AMEX president away to resurrect IBM and reverse the breakup ... and then begins to apply some of the same techniques used at RJR (also start to see big upswing in stock buybacks) http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
