Walmart's New Health Food Push: Is It Too Hard to Swallow?
Bonds Are a 'Safe' Investment: A Big Lie Gets Even BiggerWhat once appeared to be a funny dust-up between a couple of older gentlemen has gotten nasty. John Malone's Liberty Media (NASDAQ: LINTA) has long held a controlling interest in IACI (NASDAQ: IACI), run by former Hollywood mogul Barry Diller. Diller has had the right to vote Liberty's shares giving him de facto control of IACI.
Diller had made the decision to take IACI and break it into five publicly traded pieces. That probably made some sense. The Home Shopping Network does not belong under the same roof as Ask.com and Lending Tree. But, Malone has not seen enough bang in the IACI share price since the spin-offs were announced. The stock trades at just over $27, near its 52-week low.
Mr. Malone today moved to push out Diller and most of the board that supports him at IACI. Whether Malone can take away the rights Mr. Diller has to vote Liberty's shares is unclear.
According to The Wall Street Journal, in a response to Liberty's actions Mr. Diller said in a statement: "After reading this new salvo, I am beginning to think these people are insane. Everything they cite is hogwash. First of all, we have never asked the board to take action on any specific proposal high, low or no-vote. What we have done, which we thought was the responsible thing to do given this conflict, is to go to the Delaware court and ask them to tell us what rights IACI has or doesn't have."
Wall Street will just have to wait a few weeks to see who is insane and who is not.
Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.
Goldman Earnings Sink After Buffett Dividend
Johnson & Johnson's Income Falls 23%
Burberry Shares Leap on Sales Update
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-29-2008 @ 12:07PM
Gumby said...
Doug, I like you... please dont block me from posting ... or is it AOL?
You are right about bad lungs... Look, I dont know of any one single super rich dude like Billy Gates or Mr Chambers of Cisco making a donation or starting a foundation to educate the international smokers to stop smoking or at least get lost smoking so not to bother the innocent bystanders in the bazaars or whatnots. I dont think I would ever want to travel through those international crowds out there. I would suffocate in heavy plumes of second hand smoke out there. I would rather see the nature and countrysides instead of inner cities where cigarette smokers contribute considerably to the street level air pollution. You see, not one leader doing anything about the powerless who are suffering the excessive air pollution generated by harebrained smokers gone amok thinking they possess the demonic liberties of lighting a cigarette anywhere they damn please. Not one single leader from America here. We had helped people in natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, genocides, etc but nothing about educating smokers to at least pay respect to other bypassers who do not smoke. I dont care about smokers' health as long as they manage to get lost somwhere where they cant do any harm to others except to Mother Earth which is already littered with quadrillions of cigarette butts....
1-29-2008 @ 12:11PM
gumbo koontz said...
Where are the environmentalists and Lady Bird Johnson when we see quadrilions of cigarette butts all over the world?? it is an ecological disaster !!!!! Smokers should stick butts up their asses...