Friday, February 01, 2008

Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- OPEC decided to keep oil production targets unchanged at its meeting in Vienna today.
- Crude oil is falling $2.50/bbl., despite OPEC saying it will not increase output, on a rise in the US dollar, less speculation by investment funds, decelerating global demand and record global production.
- Microsoft’s(MSFT) $44.6 billion unsolicited bid to buy Yahoo!(YHOO) signals a revival of mergers and acquisitions as corporate buyers exploit falling stock prices and fill a void left by private-equity firms.

- NY Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo is trying to organize a bank-led rescue of Ambac Financial(ABK) to prevent downgrades of the bond insurer that may roil credit markets. Ambac is soaring 16% on the news.
- Deutsche Bank AG, Germany’s largest bank, said it purchased US hedge fund administrator HedgeWorks, LLC.
- Republic of Iraq 1/15/2028 government bonds have risen from a low of 56.18 in August of last year to 69.75 today.
- Exxon Mobil(XOM), the world’s largest oil company, said fourth-quarter profit rose 14% amid the biggest increase in crude prices in the 148-year history of the petroleum industry.

Wall Street Journal:
- Societe Generale SA has stopped paying Jerome Kerviel, the trader whose unauthorized bets led to the biggest trading loss in history, yet it hasn’t been able to fire him.
- A Chicago-based hedge fund plans to launch a proxy fight Friday designed to force apartment real-estate investment trust Post Properties(PPS) to consider offers to sell itself.
- Anheuser-Busch(BUD) and InBev NV, the world’s largest brewer by volume, have talked about merging and may do so this year.
- Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has amassed “a big stake” in JC Penney(JCP), the third-largest US dept.-store chain. Icahn’s stake may be among his top five holdings and be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

NY Times:
- Law Firm Helped Bundle Home Loans Into Securities.
- Having failed in recent year to impeach President Bush and stop the war in Afghanistan, members of the Berkeley, California City Council approved a resolution that encourages people to nonviolently “impede, passively or actively,” the work of military recruiters.

USA Today:
- State and local government workers are enjoying major gains in compensation, pushing the value of their average wages and benefits far ahead of private workers, a survey shows.

NY Daily News:
- The laptop Apple’s(AAPL) billion as the “world’s thinnest” could be in stores as early as today.

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