FeedPosted Feb 5th 2010 10:10AM by Zac Bissonnette (RSS feed)
Filed under: Management

Last week, Borders Group Inc. (
BGP) announced that CEO
Ron Marshall was resigning as CEO, effective immediately, to go run A&P.
Executive Vice President and Chief Merchandising Officer
Michael J. Edwards was promoted to CEO in the wake of poor results and rumors of a possible bankruptcy on the horizon. On Wednesday, the company's stock got a nice boost when Bill Ackman -- a major shareholder and major creditor of the company --
suggested that he would not push the company into bankruptcy.
Continue reading Borders' New CEO Gets Pay Bump
Posted Feb 4th 2010 5:20PM by Connie Madon (RSS feed)
Filed under: International Markets, Products and Services, Management, Indices, Market Matters, Money and Finance Today, Economic Data, Personal Finance, Commodities, Oil, Headline News, DJIA, Recession
This morning the big news of the day was the drubbing of European stock markets as fear spread throughout the region. Fear was generated by concern that some European countries could default on their sovereign debt. Among them are Greece, Spain, and Portugal.
Greece's budget gap is 12.7% of GDP Greece has to slash spending and may need IMF assistance.
Investors sold investment deemed risky such as commodities, gold and stocks and moved their money into bonds. This started a selling frenzy in commodities with oil falling $3.14 per barrel to $73.14 per barrel. Brent crude fell $3.79 per barrel to $72.13 per barrel.
Continue reading Oil Plunges 5% on Fears That European Economies May Falter
Posted Feb 3rd 2010 12:20PM by Connie Madon (RSS feed)
Filed under: Management, Employees, Bank of America (BAC)
At the height of the financial crisis, Bank of America (BAC) acquired Merrill Lynch for $50 billion. Over the past year, Merrill's ranks have thinned from 18,000 down to 15,000.
Merrill's "thundering herd," as it was once known, was a powerhouse dealing largely with retail customers. Interestingly enough, even with the advent of electronic trading, many wealthy clients prefer to deal directly with a broker. B of A has a big book of 17 million "mass affluent" customers who need advice and services. "Mass affluent" customers are those whose income is between $100,000 and $1 million in investable assets.
Continue reading Job Openings: Bank of America Needs 2,000 More Retail Brokers
Posted Feb 1st 2010 10:50AM by Zac Bissonnette (RSS feed)
Filed under: Management, Blogs

The following story is overflowing with irony. The reason is partly because of one man's lack of irony: Hugh "Skip" McGee, the former head of investment banking at Lehman Brothers, sent a five-page screed to the board of trustees at his son's private Texas high school after a teacher referred to bankers as "sleazeballs".
DealBreaker has
published the letter in its entirety. If you have a lot of time on your hands, read and look for Skip's complaints about the lack of cross-dressing at the pep rally, among other things.
His demands? The teacher, the upper school principal, and the headmaster should all resign over the injustice. That's right: a former executive at Lehman Bros. is demanding accountability.
Continue reading Former Lehman Executive Calls for Ouster of High School Teacher
Posted Jan 27th 2010 3:20PM by Sheldon Liber (RSS feed)
Filed under: Management, Wal-Mart (WMT), Sears Holdings (SHLD), Wells Fargo (WFC), Chasing Value, Stocks to Buy, AOL (AOL)

If I was making my
2010 picks list today, I might have found a spot for Ross Stores (
ROST), the holding company for Ross Dress for Less. Analysts have a hold or market perform rating on the stock, but that is meaningless to me. What does have meaning is 20% sales growth in a dismal year, contributing to a PEG ratio of .75 and an under market P/E of 12.66 (averaging trailing and future figures).
These are very good numbers, however, in reviewing some of the data points with Raphael P., a helpful broker in the Pleasant Hill, CA Wells Fargo (
WFC) office, I was reminded that different financial sites have varying numbers. They usually vary by small fractions, as did the Wells data compared to the Aol (
AOL) Money and Finance site, so I would encourage investors to check multiple sources.
Continue reading Chasing Value: Ross Stores Discounting More Than Fashion
Posted Jan 25th 2010 3:20PM by Zac Bissonnette (RSS feed)
Filed under: Management

The
New York Times reports that "General Motors ended its search for a chief executive on Monday by naming Edward E. Whitacre Jr., its chairman and interim chief, to the job permanently, a person with knowledge of the decision said Monday."
And with that, GM's chairman will now be the company's permanent CEO. None of this is to cast stones at Whitacre's ethics or competence, or the work he's done at GM so far, but here's the truth: it is a pretty universally held principle of corporate governance that separating the chairmanship from the CEO is a good idea.
Continue reading GM Returns to Its Roots: Lousy Corporate Governance
Posted Jan 19th 2010 2:20PM by Connie Madon (RSS feed)
Filed under: International Markets, Management, Industry, Market Matters, Japan, Politics, Headline News, Recession
As background information, Japan Airlines Corp. has been bailed out four times by the Japanese government in the past ten years. JAL's 2.3 trillion yen bankruptcy is the fourth largest in Japan and the largest non financial bankruptcy.
The fact that JAL has been allowed to fail, marks a shift in government policy. The four month old Democratic Party led by Prime Minister Yuko Hatoyama, has refused to bail out JAL. However, Hatoyama's government said it would provide the necessary support for JAL.
Continue reading Japan Airlines Corp. Files for Bankruptcy Protection
Posted Jan 19th 2010 1:40PM by Brent Archer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Major Movement, International Markets, Bad News, Management, China, Options, Technical Analysis

Baidu.com (
BIDU -
option chain) stock is trading lower today after
the company's chief technology officer, Yinan Li, has resigned for undisclosed personal reasons. With this departure less than two weeks after Chief Operating Officer Peng Ye's resignation, analysts and traders alike are speculating that Li's resignation is related to the rollout of a new advertising tool that has given the company trouble. The WSJ (
supscription required) also speculates today that BIDU shares may have over-reacted to the recent Google (
GOOG) - China showdown. If you think this stock won't be rising too far in the coming months, then it could be a good time to look at a bearish hedged play on BIDU.
This morning, BIDU opened at $450.00. So far today the stock has hit a high of $452.02 and a low of $429.09. As of 11:55, BIDU is trading at $435.50, down $32.18 (-6.9%). The chart for BIDU looks neutral while
S&P gives BIDU a 3 STARS (out of 5) hold ranking.
Continue reading Baidu.com Chief Technology Officer Resigns
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