We may not know how and when the cleansing of market excess will play out in specific terms, but cleansed it shall be.
This crowd of seasoned pros, who’d all lived through several economic cycles, feel a slowdown coming on like a cold, damp rain.
Hybrids now offer the corporate finance holy grail: a lower cost of capital and lower tax burden.
Now we see what happens when the environment turns hostile; when blockbusters get some competition; and when growth doesn’t materialize: a slow, agonizing surrender of market value. Indeed, they’ve been grinding their stockholders to death for the past 5 or 6 years.
J&J may have lost this battle, but I’ll bet they’ll win the war. They stayed cool and retreated when they knew that prices were heading into Silly Land.
The rats that can swim are the first ones to abandon a sinking ship.
The Refco situation is not just going to hell in a handbasket, but on the express track. Yesterday, the NYSE halted trading in its stock; its bonds and traded debt have fallen at least as low as 30 cents on the dollar (down from 108 before the news broke); and the company suspended operations […]
It seems that more than a few got taken on this one. And while it’s too early (and unfair) to render guilty verdicts, there is no doubt that many were at least asleep at the switch, if not driving the train toward disaster.
There’s no doubt that losing one’s pension or health insurance is a problem of epic proportions, but this is like quite like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. We’ve all seen this coming for a long, long time and we ignored it.