Friday, January 23, 2009

Companies start their "yard" sales

A-B InBev, (Budweiser) sold their stake in TsingTao Brewery for $666 million, and next on the blocks is the theme park business. The most logical buyer for that is Disney, but Six Flags asked for a sales memorandum? For what? Why pretend? Does Six Flags need a memorandum for their own yard sale and they need to cut of the lawyers?

GE came out with decent earnings, and vowed again to keep the dividend. Capital Finance earned $2 billion less this quarter than the 4th quarter of last year, but the rest of GE compared quite well to Q4 of last year. Add in debt, and GE's enterprise value is still $666 billion, but they are deleveraging, so the 12 print the last couple of days will probably prove to be the bottom. Unlike the banks, GE tried do a yard sale with both it's appliance division and private label credit cards, but that came off the market as there were no buyers. For more on GE's dividend click the link. Compare Immelt's statements versus what John Thain said!
http://aaronandmoses.blogspot.com/2008/12/immelts-statements-on-ges-dividend.html

Tribune sells the Cubs, for $900 million, and the NY Times, after paying 14% vig for $250 million of Carlos Slim's money, did a sale-leaseback of it's building with W. P. Carey & Co.

Yesterday, we found out that for the first time in eBay's history, revenues were down for the quarter, and earnings took a 10% hit. Which means the the public has already held their yard sale.

So when are the banks going to hold theirs?

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