Foundry Networks, which first postponed a shareholder vote to approve its proposed sale to Brocade Communications from last Friday to Wednesday, and then postponed it a second time to Nov. 7, has postponed it once again. Probably.
In a release today, Foundry said that should the two companies reach a new “definitive”
agreement, the shareholder vote would be Read the rest of this entry »
We doubt there are many U.S. followers of Docu-Drama who aren’t invested in at least some Bay Area companies, if only through holdings in an S&P500 index fund. But if there were before today, there aren’t any now.
That’s because Wells Fargo, the San Francisco-based banking giant, announced Wednesday that it had issued to the U.S. Department of the Treasury 25,000 shares of its “Fixed Rate Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series D.” Price per share: Read the rest of this entry »
As the price tag for bailing out the world’s banks approaches $3 trillion, governments around the globe are cranking up the printing presses for their respective currencies to provide emergency liquidity. The explosion of government lending has raised the cost for those who’d like to hedge against losses on investments in government debt, according to a Bloomberg News story by Abigail Moses and Shannon D. Harrington,
The cost to hedge against losses on $10 million of Treasuries is about Read the rest of this entry »
Most of us have shared certain economic hardships recently — high gas prices, falling home values, diminished 401(k) balances. A subset of us have been dealing with foreclosures and job losses, problems that many of us can easily empathize with. Here’s one that may take a bit more of an imaginative leap: the margin call.
This week Howard Lester, the chief executive of Williams-Sonoma (ticker:WSM), the San Francisco-based retailer of deluxe goodies for our kitchens, living rooms, bath rooms and nurseries, was forced to sell Read the rest of this entry »
Now that the Justice Department is winding down criminal prosecutions related to the stock option pricing scandal (see colleague Chris O’Brien’s column today), the Feds can free up more resources to investigate a far more wide-reaching scandal — mortgage fraud.
We pass along this Read the rest of this entry »
New York Times business columnist Gretchen Morgenson will be speaking Tuesady at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Business ethics? What seemed a quaint notion just a few months ago now seems like a hot topic. Her talk, entitled “Fairness, Financial Markets and the Fallout From the Subprime Crisis,” will be held from noon to 1 p.m. in Room 126 at Lucas Hall, and is open to the public.
Ms. Morgenson was a stockbroker for Dean Witter Reynolds in New York from September 1981 to January 1984, after beginning her career at Read the rest of this entry »
A month after borrowing $25 million at a minimum of 12.5 percent, the parent company of the Jamba Juice franchise, said today that its board of directors has adopted a “Stock Purchase Rights Plan” that it says is “designed to enable all Jamba Inc. stockholders to realize the full value of their investment” and to provide them “fair and equal treatment” in the event that “an unsolicited attempt is made to acquire the company “without paying all stockholders full and fair value,” according to a press release the company issued this morning.
The market is pegging that value at Read the rest of this entry »
Franklin Resources, the investment management company whose San Mateo headquarters is pictured here, released its monthly update of its assets under management, a report we usually breeze by, but given the current, um, situation in the financial world, we thought we’d take a closer look. Turns out that BEN, to refer to the company by its ticker symbol, is managing 21 percent fewer assets as of the end of September than the same time last year.
Assets shrank 2 percent in July from June and 3 percent in August from July, before accelerating to a 10 percent drop during the month of September alone, which accounted for nearly half of the year-over-year decrease. Ouch.
Netgear, the San Jose supplier of networking gear targeted for use by consumers and small businesses, pulled back its guidance for sales in its recently completed third quarter by about 15 percent, but says its operating margin — adjusted for some special items — will actually be higher. Huh? Read the rest of this entry »
So the guy tapped by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to oversee — at least for now — the United States’ $700 billion effort to buy “distressed assets”, is no stranger to the Bay Area. He’s Neel Kashkari (pictured), an Indian American originally from Ohio who was, before becoming a Treasury assistant secretary for international affairs, a vice president for Goldman Sachs in its San Francisco office, where he was in charge of its IT Security Investment Banking Business.
Kashkari also sports a shaved Read the rest of this entry »
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