Commentaries
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from Rolfe Winkler:
Gerry Levin’s mea culpa
Finally got around to watching this video. Kudos to Gerry Levin for taking responsibility for the worst merger in history. His comments about banks being malls instead of supermarkets is very true, but it's not his, it's Chris Whalen's, who provided a helpful counterpoint in NYT's non-mea-culpa from Sandy Weill. Their point is that the synergy Sandy Weill claimed for Citigroup -- combining insurance with commercial banking with investing banking with retail brokerage, etc. -- was bogus from the start.
Of course Sandy doesn't have it in him to admit he was wrong. Instead he blames his successor Chuck Prince. Another CEO who got away with blowing up a company was Merrill's Stan O'Neal. John Thain has taken heat for his time there, much of it he probably deserves for his ridiculous office redesign and for extracting bailout money to fund Merrill's bonus pool. But O'Neal is the guy that deserves the blame for Merrill's collapse. He got his golden parachute and disappeared.
Saying boo to Micro-hoo: Eric Auchard
LONDON, July 29 (Reuters) – There’s been a bonfire of shareholder value at Yahoo and the blaze is not out yet, even after the agreement to a long-delayed deal with Microsoft.
Eighteen months ago, Yahoo walked away from Microsoft’s nearly $45 billion acquisition offer — a 60 percent premium to Yahoo’s then market value.
from Rolfe Winkler:
AOL’s valuation off 97% from peak. Now a good investment?
In a regulatory filing this evening (see page 54), Time Warner announced that it bought back Google's stake in AOL, for a 97% discount to what it paid in January 2000. If AOL stock gets floated at a similar valuation, it might be a good value play.
First the news:
On July 8, 2009, Time Warner repurchased Google’s 5% interest in [AOL] for $283.0 million, which amount included a payment in respect of Google’s pro rata share of cash distributions to Time Warner by AOL attributable to the period of Google’s investment in us.  Following this purchase, we became a 100%-owned subsidiary of Time Warner.
I am thinking of rebranding myself as Zing
Some tech links to start the week:
I am seriously considering changing my byline to Zing, what with all the media attention a certain search engine is getting.
The New York Times looks at the ups and downs of turning brands into verbs. The jumping off point is Bing, Microsoft’s effort at verbal one-upsmanship over Google, Twitter and over generic daily activities. The software giant must alter deeply ingrained computer habits to succeed. In the meantime, my original questions about Bing remain.
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The Wall
