Private Equity's Hungry

Andrew Ross Sorkin, who writes the DealBook articles for the New York Times business section recently floated the opinion that Wall St.'s appetite for private equity deal may be so insatiable that the list of "potential targets being bandied about" now included Viacom, Gap, Nike, Dell, Home Depot, Texas Instuments, EchoStar, Liz Claiborne, and Microsoft.

Some of these companies have truly ridonkulous market caps for this sort of thing (MSFT). Some of these companies are in need of a complete makeover and thus better off dying a thousand deaths (GPS). Some of the others have potential.

CHK It Out: Borrowing In Euros

Chesapeake Energy (CHK) is selling EUR 400MM worth of senior notes on the Irish Stock Exchange. Interesting play.

The money will be used to pay down revolving debt, hard to complain about that. They indicated there is strong "demand on the continent" for opportunities to invest in their company and that this move was urged by their debt underwriters. It's a strong-euro kind of market these days, so your guess is as good as mine: do they expect a strong dollar by 2016, or is this just one more point to make in the "petroeuro" case?

No One Is Talking About Project Turquoise

Not in the U.S., anyway. Why?

What's uninteresting about the fact that seven major brokerages are attempting to create a stock exchange to compete with the LSE?

The major players are Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and UBS. They're responsible for about HALF of the business on the LSE right now.

Exchanges are -red hot- right now. Is this factored into, say, Goldman Sachs' astronomical share price? If not, is GS going to 250? 300?

Oh, and here's another thing. Think of how many companies are going public in London to avoid the regulations in the US. If you can go public on this exchange and avoid SarbOx, would you?

Taser Execs Ride The Buffalo

Taser's execs get zapped to show the safety of their product:

Delta to USAirways: Fuck a Duck

Delta sent out a press release this morning to all its customers addressing USAirways' buyout attempts which included this language:

But you should know we are concerned that this particular transaction would not be in the best interest of our many stakeholders including our customers, employees, travel partners, and the communities we serve. We are moving full steam ahead with our own plan to emerge from Chapter 11 as a strong, independent, stand-alone airline dedicated to providing you with world-class service and superior performance.

Sounds harsh, right? There's something in the language though that got my attention. Note "This particular transaction," folks. Stay tuned to this one.

Also, Insure This

I was in AIG just long enough to profit from their colossal earnings last week (high premiums + no hurricanes = mad cash, naturally). However, when every day my news on the stock is flooded with "Form 144: Filing To Sell" I have to wonder wtf is up with all the insider dumping. So I'm out.

Oil's Too Big For Its Britches

The prices of some of the oil companies vs. oil itself have gotten out of whack. XOM, CVX -- hell, most of the OIH in general (maybe not the refiners like VLO, but still...) -- are trading higher than they were when Lebanon and Israel were exchanging bombs and sending oil into the 70s.

XOM puts anyone?

Note also the impending offshore drilling bill the lame ducks may pass after Turkey Day. That one affects oil as well as natural gas.