Motorola Mobility’s well-timed agreement…
We were going to write about something else this morning, but the big news that Google (GOOG) agreed to buy Motorola Mobility (MMI) in a $12.5 billion deal prompted us to change our plans. The WSJ live-blogged the conference call and there’s plenty of other breathless coverage pointing out that this is Google’s biggest deal...
Goldman: cutting, repoing, provisioning, losing
Goldman’s 10Q was released this morning and it adds some interesting detail to its mixed Q2 earnings.There were 15 days when it posted a trading loss in daily trading revenues,...
Morgan Stanley and that downgrade
Morgan Stanley’s 10-Q statement – that’s a quarterly report for European readers – is getting plenty of attention on Monday.Or rather, the section on...
Rolls Royce health-care at Northrop Grumman…
Back during the great health-care legislation debate of 2009-2010, we heard a lot about “Cadillac health-care plans,” and we’ve even seen a few here on footnoted (at Goldman Sachs and elsewhere). But last week, defense contractor Northrop Grumman (NOC) disclosed what looks to us like a Rolls Royce health-care plan — and true to the...
Raising the debt-ceiling alarm…
Last we checked, about two weeks ago, companies didn’t have a lot to say about the budget brouhaha in Washington. A few companies were warning of unpleasant consequences if federal lawmakers didn’t get their acts together one way or another, but for the most part, it was a sideshow. With the drama in the Beltway...
Upgrading an exec’s exit at United Continental…
Publicly traded companies make a big deal out of efficiency, which typically implies watching every penny and avoiding unnecessary costs. So what to make of the separation agreement that United Continental Holdings (UAL) filed on Tuesday? United Continental certainly talks the talk — during the Q&A in its latest earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Zane Rowe...
A new debate over an old filing…
Here at the footnoted Global Campus (location: the Cloud), we pride ourselves for a pretty unusual day job: There aren’t a lot of people in this world who spend most of their time reading and writing about Securities and Exchange Commission filings. That said, plenty of people do it at least occasionally, and sometimes what...
A reluctant move to Ohio…
Although the global workplace has a lot of advantages, occasionally a company decides that people need to move in order to work in a particular location – a decision that doesn’t always sit well with those who are affected. That seems to be the case at Wendy’s/Arby’s Group, Inc. (WEN), which announced in Jan. 2011...
Is Google really afraid of rumors?…
Risk factors in SEC filings often seem like boilerplate that the attorneys throw in to cover every conceivable possibility of things that could go wrong. One of these days, we wouldn’t be surprised to find a risk factor that says something along the lines of “Our CFO may catch the flu from his Aunt Edna,...
BlackRock exit gave exec plenty of time to think…
It’s fairly common for an executive of a company that’s merging to come along for the ride, spend a year or so to help work out the transition-related kinks, and then move on to something else. What we see less often is an executive leaving with several million dollars, having spent just a year at...
And the beef goes on (at Yum)…
You probably remember the big dust-up a few months ago over what exactly was in Taco Bell’s beef. A class action lawsuit was filed in California federal court in late January, 2011 by Alabama-based law firm Beasley, Allen against Taco Bell, a subsidiary owned by Yum Brands (YUM). Beasley Allen’s petition claimed that Taco Bell’s products that...
Some tidbits from Apple’s proxy…
Filings by Apple (AAPL) can get picked over pretty thoroughly by everyone from investors to tech bloggers, so sometimes we let the dust settle a bit before checking whether our reading of a given filing brought anything new to light. With the most recent 10-Q, filed last week, we found a few interesting details. None...
