Professor Elam

Let’s see that makes Thornburg TMA, Carlyle listed in Amsterdam, and now J P Morgan buys Bear Stearns.

For $2.  Mind you I noted in class that these companies are still trading for much higher multiples than they deserve. And BSC dropped $27 one day this past week.  This is of course not a buy out but a rescue to save face and claim that a major investment  house did not go under. It is always thus. Back in the 1970s there were many such mergers, arranged to keep clients from losing their accounts or not being able to trade.

A week ago this was a $77 stock, note how quickly the balance sheet simply vanished. The $2 figure is the equivalent of the proverbial lawyer $1 and other consideration. This will continue to be a challenge for accontants, what is the balance sheet worth?

The firm I worked with initially, duPont Glore Forgan aka duPont Walston run by Perot was sold off office by office.  Note they are trying to get this done before the Asian markets open. The reason of course is to squelch rumors that  a major investment bank is going to fail. Did it?  Is Brittany Spears out of rehab, is there a difference?

Read more breaking news here. Gee if the FED is going to guarantee there will not be any losses we coold have bought it in Intermed II,what a neat accounting experiment!

Well the markets are opening in Asia and Japan is down 3% on the news of the BSC take over.

I remarked in class that individual areas have already crashed, it could happen to an entire exchange just as it did in 1987! This is setting up to be an interesting week!