Tarragon's Bitter Taste

Inside Tarragon Corp.'s(TARR Quote) investor day at its New York City office last week, the housing developer's bow-tied chief executive, William Friedman, pitched his company as one of the bigger value stories being missed by the stock market today.

The solution to creating value, he said, is to separate the apartment and homebuilding divisions into two separate companies.

To back up his claim, Friedman pointed to several slides with fancy pictures but unaudited financial results, since the company was delinquent in filing its annual report. Tarragon's chief financial officer, Erin Pickens, was nowhere in the room to answer questions. ...