Wednesday, April 14, 1999
Markets
J.P. Morgan
(JPM) - Get JPMorgan Chase & Co. Report
was looking like a Net stock today -- except for the smashing earnings (see below). Morgan was up a whopping half a sawbuck at midafternoon before profit-taking sent it downward, along with most other
Dow Jones Industrial Average
components.
The Dow closed at yet another record high despite the selloff, up 16.65 to 10,411.66 as money flew out of the tech and Internet sectors and into cyclicals like
Alcoa
(AA) - Get Alcoa Corporation Report
,
Caterpillar
(CAT) - Get Caterpillar Inc. Report
and
United Technologies
(UTX) - Get United Technologies Corporation Report
. The
Nasdaq Composite Index
TheStreet Recommends
dropped 76.02 to 2507.48; the
S&P 500
fell 21.36 to 1328.46; the small-cap
Russell 2000
gained a puny 0.15 to 417.39; and
TheStreet.com Internet Sector
plummeted 82.01 to 694.17 -- a level the DOT hasn't seen since ... well ... since last Thursday. The transport sector was sharply higher.
Both the NYSE and the Nasdaq saw positive breadth.
Major European indices finished modestly lower, while Asian markets were mixed overnight. Hong Kong's
Hang Seng
gained 65.56 to 11,834.13, and Japan's
Nikkei
rose 49.52 to 16,764.68.
For more markets action and news, click
here.
Companies
Boston-based REIT
Berkshire Realty
undefined
is being acquired for about $1.26 billion in cash and debt by a group led by Berkshire chairman
Douglass Krupp
and real estate funds run by
Blackstone Group
and
Goldman Sachs
.
Accounting colossus
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu International
has named
James Copeland Jr.
its new CEO, replacing
Edward A. Kangas
, who will stay on as chairman.
Gray Communications Systems
(GCS)
set plans to buy three
CBS
television affiliates -- two in Texas and one in Oklahoma -- for about $139 million in cash and stock, giving the company 10 CBS stations in all.
Shares of J.P. Morgan surged after the company posted first-quarter earnings of $3.01 a share, well above the
First Call
consensus of $1.73 a share. J.P. Morgan closed up 3 9/16 to 132 7/8, having hit an intraday high of 140 1/16.
For more news on companies and stocks, click
here.
Tech
The latest Web broadcasting announcement:
CMGI
(CMGI)
today said it will commit at least $100 million to an Internet broadcasting initiative to be headed by former
NBC
president
Neil Braun
.
Intel
(INTC) - Get Intel Corporation Report
last night reported first-quarter earnings of 57 cents a share, 2 cents better than the First Call consensus. But the company said that second-quarter revenue may be flat to slightly lower.
TheStreet.com
looked at Intel's quarter in a
story last night.
Lucent Technologies
(LU)
last night told investors that its second-quarter earnings would meet or exceed analysts' expectations of 15 cents a share.
TSC
columnist
James Cramer
has
mixed feelings about the announcement.
For more tech news and commentary, click
here.
General News
NATO
forces continue to bomb Serbian targets today. In Brussels, Germany proposed a peace initiative to NATO that would suspend the air strikes for 24 hours if Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic
began the withdrawal of his forces from Kosovo. Meanwhile, Yugoslav media reported that NATO warplanes struck a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees, killing at least 64 and wounding 20; NATO has yet to confirm the report.
A Malaysian High Court judge found former Deputy Prime Minister and political reformer
Anwar Ibrahim
guilty of abusing his office to cover up elicit sexual practices and sentenced him to a longer-than-expected six years in prison. Thousands of Anwar's supporters took to the streets in protest immediately after the verdict. Anwar still faces another corruption charge, as well as five counts of sodomy.
International
A consortium formed by
Royal Dutch/Shell
and
British Gas
won the bidding war for Brazil's largest natural gas distributor, the state-owned
Companhia de Gas de Sao Paulo
. The consortium will pay about $1 billion for the privatized company.
Endesa Spain
made a tender offer for
Empresa Nacional de Electricidad
, known as
Endesa Chile
, rivaling
Duke Energy's
(DUK) - Get Duke Energy Corporation Report
$2.1 billion bid for 51% of the company. Endesa Spain already holds about 25% of Endesa Chile through subsidiary
Enersis
and is offering about $19 per ADR for an additional 29.7% of the company -- a nearly $3.50 premium to Duke's offer.
Dutch retail group
Vendex
is not happy with the performance of its
FAO Schwarz
unit, and isn't ruling out its sale. In a masterful use of
litotes, Chairman Jan-Michiel Hessels described such a sale as "not impossible."
For more international news and commentary, click
here.
In the Papers
In today's
Boston Globe
,
TSC
contributor
Steven Syre
and
Charles Stein
take a look at the recent fortune of Boston-based
Atlantic Bank & Trust
(ATLB)
, a modest commercial bank whose stock has skyrocketed since it announced a pair of Internet deals last week.
The Jerusalum Post
reports that Israel's
Interuniversity Calculation Center
and
Gilat Communications'
(GICOF)
satellite subsidiary,
Israsat
, have signed an agreement to provide limited satellite access to Internet 2, the hyperquick network as much as 600 times quicker than the network you're using right now. Israel will be the first country to link to Internet 2 via satellite, as opposed to fiber optics, according to the paper.
Elsewhere
A judge yesterday rejected residents' bid to turn their small community of Brooksville, Ala., into a city governed only by the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus, saying that the proposal does "not even begin to meet the minimum standards" for incorporation. Melvin Duran, mayor of the town of Priceville, within whose borders Brooksville presently falls, said that "
one of their big issues is that we won't let them shoot guns off their back porch." But a Brooksville resident also noted, "We don't want no beer store on that corner."
Fifty-four-year-old Chilean immigrant
Maria Grasso
today claimed the $197 million
Big Game
jackpot, the largest lottery prize ever collected by an individual in the U.S. Grasso thus realizes the American Dream of a huge pile of free money.
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