Published on December 12, 2007
in Business.
Time has compiled a list of the top business deals of 2007:
- News Corp. Buys Dow Jones for $5 Billion
- Blackstone Buys Equity Office Properties Trust for $39 Billion
- Google Buys DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion
- RBS Consortium Wins Battle for ABN Amro for $101 Billion
- Rio Tinto Buys Alcan for $38.1 Billion
- Tata Steel Buys Corus for $11.3 Billion
- Nokia Buys Navteq for $8.1 Billion
- Citadel Buys 18% of E*Trade for $2.5 Billion
- Blackstone Buys Hilton Hotels for $26 Billion
- KKR Wangles Biggest LBO Ever of TXU for $45 Billion
The best deal on there probably has to be Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick for $3.1bn.
The worst, by far is Citadel buying 18% of E*Trade for $2.5bn. At the current share price of $4.04 that puts E*Trade’s market capitalization at $1.71bn, which means 18% is only worth $307.8 million as of right now. I’m surprised this even made it to this list.
Published on December 10, 2007
in Business.
Is the last quarter of the year and the first month of the new year a good time for investors to engage in some event-driven trading? The WSJ has a great article [subscription required] on how funds tend to drop their biggest losers by the end of October to enjoy the tax shield and acquire the year’s best performers before December 31st as a window dressing technique in order to impress investors.
According to the article, research shows that for the past six years if someone were to buy the years biggest losers at the end of October and were to sell them by the end of December, they would see gains that are larger than the S&P’s gains by 7% on average. Maybe I’ll conduct some research on my own during my free time to see how companies in the financial sector performed during this two month period, considering their huge decline in the past few months.
