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The Merrill Lynch Diet: Starving Shareholders

 Aug 04, 2008 02:40 PM UTC
Symbol Sentiment Start Return Closed
MER n/a

7/29 - "I thought we were supposed to believe that Merrill Lynch’s (MER) selling a part of its Bloomberg stake and by taking $40 billion of writedowns this year alone, investors were (almost?) out of the woods.

Guess again, news came overnight that Merrill will be selling more than $8 billion in new stock (read, diluting existing shareholders) at preferential terms to the Singaporean buyers of the last slug of stuck Merrill stuffed everyone with."

"I may sound angry, but come on, guys. I don’t even own the stock but this is the fourth share sale this year and all along, management has said that it has sufficient capital. This is not a great way to treat existing shareholders, and certainly not enough to engender enough trust to lure new investors off the sidelines."


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7/31 - "You really can fool all of the people all of the time (or so it would seem). Writedown after writedown, lies and more lies: and yet, Wall Street believes in the Investment banks. The DJIA was up over 266 points yesterday!...Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me ten times, shame on me." Investors just don't seem to get it yet." "Yesterday, a further $ 8.55 billion stock sale was announc...


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