Hory Herr! (Holy Hell) China National Offshore Oil Corp. bid $18.5 billion for Unocal. That’s two billion more than Chevron wants to pay. If you think three dollar a gallon gas sounds bad, how does 24 yuan sound? And when those five billion Chinese cars need gas, you can bet your sweet yuan that Unocal will be the first to run dry.
Hory Herr II The Haier Group, a Chinese manufacturing colossus is trying to acquire Maytag Corp. by outbidding an investor group, Ripplewood Holdings, by $200 million. If the Chinese win, the days of the Maytag repairman sitting on his ass are over. (Note: In April, the Beijing-based Lenovo purchased IBM's personal computer division or $1.75 billion. Chinese as a second language, anyone?)
Second Oldest Profession The accounting industry is trying hard to replace prostitution as the second oldest profession. KPMG seems about to go the way of Arthur Andersen if it can't its act together over scam tax shelters it developed and help sell in the late 1990’s. Clients who got screwed are lining up civil suits of $195 million.
Doughnut Holes Krispy Kreme, continuing to trim the bad cholesterol from its operation, fired six executives.
Big Popcorn AMC, number two movie chain, and Loews, number three movie chain, are merging. That will give the combined operation 5,900 screens compared with Regal’s 6,200. Now maybe Hollywood will churn out a few decent movies to go along with $10 tickets and $10 popcorn.
Republican Republican Republican…You can bet Bush and the boys will be rethinking cloning big time. A group of scientists thinks politics might be genetic. Boys of Brazil?
Corporate Crooks Update Kozlowski and Schwartz found guilty. Expect yet another trial. John Rigas from Adelphia communications is getting 15 years and his son, Timothy Rigas, twenty years for their part in ripping off their shareholders to the tune of hundreds of millions. Timothy pleaded for leniency saying their intentions were good; he didn’t say for whom.
PP Surely the Wall Street Journal could have picked a code name for its new Saturday edition whose acronym wasn’t PP, or maybe that's thier way of saying we're #1. Apart from that, a paper that allows people to relax aimed at a target market of people who don’t relax, ever, seems folly.
Revolution Brewing Steve Case, the ex-AOL guy who duped Time Warner big-time, has formed a new company called Revolution aimed at the healthcare market. Healthcare needs a lot aimed in its direction, I’m just not sure Steve Case is the guy I want holding the gun.