Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> ____/ Mark Kent on Tuesday 04 March 2008 07:50 : \____
>
>>>> Microsoft's share-price has more or less arrived at where it was a year
>>>> ago, although it's still up on the previous year. It does appear to
>>>> have stabilised at this US$27 point, but if the present trend continues,
>>>> it could well be back at its pre-1998 value before long. Time will
>>>> tell.
>>>
>>> That's after up to $32,000,000,000 in buybacks.
>>>
>>> New summary here:
>>> http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2008/03/microsofts-finances.html
>>>
>>> Even Glyn Moody (a journalist) has cited it.
>>>
>>
>> Another Worldcom?
>
> Different scales. But the execs are leaving the company quickly (guilty
> conscience?).
>
Worldcom were claiming US$100bn in assets as they collapsed, and their
fraud was at about US$4bn.a Microsoft claim US$49bn in assets, about
half the asset base of Worldcom, although their current market cap is
about US$250bn, but falling.
Interestingly, there has been something of a change in the law in the US
regarding damages for patent infringement, something which will benefit
large companies and deliberate infringers well indeed, but probably make
little or no difference to anyone else:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a4bFLqwEx2II&refer=us
The finance pages seem to think that the capping of possible damages to
US$2bn when the original claim had been US$6bn has benefited Microsoft.
Well, it would, wouldn't it?
Alcatel-Lucent, of course, stand to lose proportionately.
The bizarre thing is that the legal people still don't seem to see that
there's anything strange about patenting maths. Still, as they're
making so much money out of it, I suppose that isn't all that
surprising, either.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
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| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |
|
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