RSS feedTPG makes it fifteen for Yahoo
Breaking news on Thursday night/Friday morning: TPG Capital enters the fray for Yahoo.
Here’s more from the NYT:
The private equity firm TPG Capital has signed a nondisclosure agreement with Yahoo,
That loud sucking sound is Facebook poaching your employees
Spotted on page 66 of Citigroup’s epic Tuesday report on “Social Media, E-payments & the new Digital Market”, a neat depiction of the talent war among some the big digital media firms:
(More
An experiment in Delta None
Just as correlation does not imply causation, this post should not imply usefulness. Consider it a bit of light frippery at the end of a rather challenging week for symmetrical trading.
Here’s how it works.
The Samsung skirmish in the patent war
Speaking of a patent war in the smartphone industry…
Compared to the massive Google-Motorola deal, Samsung’s ongoing battle with Apple is more like a skirmish, but it probably shows just how disruptive Google’s strategy could be,
Paulson’s BofA-Citi-Wells switcheroo
John Paulson’s quarterly 13F filing was released late on Monday and the headlines make for interesting reading. We may go through it in more detail later but we thought this portfolio change-up was worth noting right away:
Presenting the Google phone
Breaking Google news on Monday lunchtime:
RTRS-GOOGLE TO ACQUIRE MOTOROLA MOBILITY
RTRS-GOOGLE INC – DEAL FOR $40.00 PER SHARE IN CASH
RTRS-GOOGLE INC – DEAL FOR ABOUT $12.5 BLN
RTRS-GOOGLE INC – SAYS MOTOROLA MOBILITY WILL REMAIN A LICENSEE OF ANDROID AND ANDROID WILL REMAIN OPEN
RTRS-GOOGLE INC – SAYS GOOGLE WILL RUN MOTOROLA MOBILITY AS A SEPARATE BUSINESS.
Googling the British economy
In a world where hedge funds are using Twitter as a trading strategy… It was only a matter of a time before a central bank started using Google seriously for forecasts.
Or as the Bank of England is quite naffly calling it — ‘nowcasts’.
Google adventures out along the yield curve [updated]
By John McDermott and Cardiff Garcia
Here’s a corporate bond mystery for you.
Google has $36.7bn cash on hand as of the end of March, according to its Q1 SEC filing. $16.9bn of this cash is held overseas.
Microsoft and Skype, for and against
Microsoft’s agreed $8.5bn acquisition of Skype evokes shades of the frenzied dotcom bubble era and M&A tech mania: the deal, unveiled on Tuesday, brings this year’s total of announced tech deals to $94.5bn — a 56 per cent increase from last year – and also marks the highest levels of tech M&A activity since 2000,
Further further reading
For the commute home, where you always over-deliver on expectations,
- Google misses earnings expectations.
- China changes how it reports GDP.
- Meet the Glencore IPO’s bankers. And its winners and losers.
LSE under attack
Technologically speaking all is still not well at the London Stock Exchange.
Prices are being disseminated on Monday morning but anyone trying to enter the LSE website via Google gets hit with this message.
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Thursday,
- BNP Paribas reports Q4 results; takes €534m hit on value of stake in Axa — statement.
- Nestle says emerging markets demand helped offset rising raw material prices — statement.
A tale of a two execs (in one chart)
Click to enlarge:
Related link:
“Google Docks”, or, how to generically and pompously write the Schmidt story – FT Alphaville
“Google Docks”, or, how to generically and pompously write the Schmidt story
Lede: The regency is over. The young princes are all growns up. Marie de’ Medici Schmidt departs.
2nd par: Back in 200X Eric Schmidt was Google’s top search result. But worries that he has hindered the growth of a more diversified,
A digitised history of contango, backwardation
The Google Books Ngram Viewer continues to amuse us at FT Alphaville.
Here, for example, is a particularly interesting ngram brought to our attention by reader Bagehot by-the-Bay.
After all, you wouldn’t necessarily expect this very cyclical pattern to appear when you chart the terms ‘contango’ and ‘backwardation’ through Google’s store of digitised literature:
Google and Groupon: Smart or stupid?
With its talks to buy the fast-growing US electronic coupon company Groupon for as much as $6bn, Google has analysts wondering whether it’s being very smart or very stupid.
As the FT reports, analysts are sharply divided over “whether a deal would represent a coup for Google,
[Wilmot's PMI tour] The new proletariat
Here’s a heretical thought to sign off with.
Some day, and perhaps not in the very far future, robots will become the low cost producers in global manufacturing. Displacing and replacing a high percentage of human workers,
Don’t be evil, or too reliant on Ireland’s tax regime
Presenting a possible, and overlooked, ripple from the Irish bailout (which was looking ever more likely, bar the shouting, at pixel time).
Basically, sovereign bailouts involve a certain quid pro quo.
Behold, Google’s view on inflation
It was bound to happen.
According to the FT, Google is mid-way through the process of creating its very own consumer price index — based (understandably) on its ability to access real-time price data from across the web.
How to profit from long-tail journalism
Google may be stepping into the business of content production and journalism.
As the FT scooped on Thursday:
Google is developing technology that could position it to compete with a new breed of digital media companies that are generating story ideas for the internet by mining online search data for under-covered topics.
‘It is not permitted to hold discussions or investigations on the Google topic’
How seriously is Beijing treating Google’s decision to stop censoring the search results displayed to users on the mainland?
Here’s a hint: the Chinese government issued a series of directives to the country’s media regarding how they may portray Google’s gambit;
Google v China: it’s all about free trade
Google’s decision to pull out of China was not motivated by anything so high-falutin’ as human rights. As the New York Times reported (emphasis ours):
Alan Davidson, director of public policy for Google,
The rise and rise of the corporate treasury trader…and Google
Un thème nouveau pour l’époque?
It appears that corporations, just like municipalities and, err, city-states, are increasingly dabbling with the ‘synergies’ that can be extrapolated from managing their own treasury affairs,
Worthless
The above chart shows the price action in Palm after Peter Misek of Canaccord Adams said shares in the market of the Pre smart phone maker were worthless:
Due to Palm’s lack of earnings visibility,
One Search Platform To Rule The Middle Kingdom? (updated)
It didn’t take long for Wall Street to figure out which company stands to benefit from Google’s decision to end the controversial censorship of its search service in China.
Baidu, the Chinese-language Internet search provider.
Microsoft and News Corp discuss web alliance
Microsoft has discussed a plan with News Corp to “de-index” the media company’s news websites from Google. The Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft, which owns the rival Bing search engine, has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search engine.
Google buys mobile ad business
Google tightened its grip on digital advertising with a further push into the mobile world on Monday as it agreed to buy AdMob, the largest mobile advertising network, for $750m in stock. The deal will
[Galleon] Galleon rat report
Okay, okay, that’s just a lame little joke.
Call ‘em what you will — stoolies, narks, informer, a grass, co-operative witnesses. Either way, FT Alphaville does not condone illegal activity in any form.