The news today from Nick Bradbury, the developer of the FeedDemon desktop RSS aggregator for Windows, that his company Bradsoft has been acquired by NewsGator is a significant move in the market for tools and applications that enable you to more easily and effectively retrieve, manage and use information. NewsGator enables you to subscribe to […]
Category: Investor Relations
Nokia’s rap on the knuckles
BBC News: Phone maker Nokia has been reprimanded by Finland’s financial market watchdog and stock exchange for not releasing positive earnings news quickly enough. Listed in New York and Helsinki, Nokia followed US rules but did not abide by Finland’s, the regulators said. Nokia should have told investors about the improved fourth-quarter earnings and sales […]
Fear and loathing with Sarbanes-Oxley
The Financial Times has a story about how CEOs and CFOs feel about providing the financial markets and investors with guidance regarding a publicly-listed company’s future earnings. The issue of how best to share critical information with the public is such a hot potato, the FT says, that few corporate officers, auditors and investor relations […]
Corporate responsibility reporting enters the mainstream
International accounting firm KPMG has published the results of its latest survey on corporate responsibility reporting. The survey report shows continuing support for corporate responsibility and open communication by the leaders of many of the world’s most successful and biggest companies: Corporate responsibility (CR) reporting in industrialized countries has clearly entered the mainstream, with Japan […]
Blog censorship and the impact on doing business in China
The many conversations in recent weeks about blog censorship in China won’t lead to any meaningful conclusions, I reckon. While the first amendment rights to free speech that many bloggers passionately post about is a US concept (and hardly likely to make inroads in China any time soon), it is something I also strongly believe […]
Email has its disclosure risks, too
Financial Times: Versatel, the Dutch telecoms company, on Thursday denied it was the source of an e-mail announcing that it may be bought by Deutsche Telekom, triggering legal and regulatory probes into the document’s origin. Dutch media received the e-mail, purportedly from Versatel and Talpa, an investment company that is its biggest shareholder [and the […]
Game sex scenes denial hits GTA maker’s share price
BBC News: The best-selling Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas game has been given an adults only ratings in the US after explicit sexual content was found in it. The Entertainment Software Rating Board changed the rating as the game’s publisher Take Two admitted it created sex scenes found in the title. There would be nothing […]
IBM starts investor-focused podcasts
Reuters: IBM is the latest major company to embrace podcasting. […] The world’s largest computer company said on Friday it plans to introduce a series of occasional podcasts on its investor relations site as part of a broader effort to communicate directly to its investors and the wider public about hot topics. This is a […]
Newsworthy to start the day 9-8-05
> The driving force behind the spectacular market debut of shares in the Chinese search engine company Baidu.com on Friday was its resemblance and ties to Google, whose own offering created a sensation last year, analysts said over the weekend. Shares in Baidu soared Friday on the Nasdaq stock market in one of the most […]
Microsoft snaps up Teleo
The instant messaging market just shifted up a few gears with the news today that Microsoft has acquired Teleo, the Skype-like internet phone/chat service. In a press release this morning, Microsoft said it plans to use this acquisition as a means to greatly extend the capabilities of MSN Messenger. An announcement on the Teleo website […]
Strong rumours persist about Skype acquisition
From the Financial Times this morning: Skype, the European internet telephony provider, on Thursday played down talk of an imminent takeover, declining to comment on a report that Ebay had joined the list of potential suitors with an offer valued at up to $5bn. Ebay on Thursday declined to comment on a report in the […]
Ebay acquisition of Skype looks imminent
Still just a rumour? Last Thursday, the Financial Times reported on a strong rumour that Ebay was in talks to acquire Skype. This morning, the FT has this story prominently displayed on its home page: Ebay was in the final stages late on Sunday night of sealing an agreement to buy Skype, the fast-growing provider […]
Ebay says it is acquiring Skype
It’s now official – Ebay is acquiring Skype. A press release on the Ebay investor relations website makes it clear: London, September 12, 2005 – eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY; www.ebay.com) has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA, the global Internet communications company, for approximately $2.6 billion in up-front cash and eBay stock, plus potential […]
Communicating the power of 3
Listening to eBay’s investor conference call last night which took place to discuss eBay’s acquisition of Skype, and following along with the slide presentation (PDF), it’s now clearer to me what the expected synergies are from this deal from eBay‘s and Skype‘s perspectives. It’s something they’re calling the Power of 3: (Click to see a […]
GM’s Bob Lutz: The disruptive communicator
He was the first General Motors executive blogger when the GM Fastlane Blog launched last January. Now he’s the first GM executive podcaster on FastLane Radio, GM’s podcast series launched in February. GM vice chairman Bob Lutz stars in a Q&A discussion with Bill O’Neill, GM’s executive director of communications. During much of the 20-minute […]
Keeping Apple coolness intact
The problems with scratches on the new iPod nano that hundreds of users reported during the past two weeks hasn’t turned out to be the brand, reputation and PR crisis for Apple that it could have been. Thanks largely to a public acknowledgement that a batch of nanos did suffer from a manufacturing defect regarding […]
Lessons from Interpublic’s global financial chaos
The Financial Times reports the sobering story of marketing and ad agency group Interpublic who, after over 400 acquisitions and global expansion, found itself having to restate its accounts for the past ten years and be the subject of an SEC investigation into its accounting practices: […] The company discovered “instances of deliberate falsification of […]
One stop for earnings call transcripts
One of the blogs I find of great informational value is The Internet Stock Blog (“news and analysis of Internet stocks, no buy or sell recommendations,” it says in its masthead). Recently, the blog started including a most useful new service – full transcripts of some of the most popular companies’ earnings conference calls. What’s […]
Dell’s hell as earnings fall short
ZDNet: Dell announced on Monday that third-quarter revenue will fall well short of expectations due to sluggish consumer sales and a faulty component in its OptiPlex desktop PC. […] The leader in computer manufacturing blames its shortfall partially on sluggish consumer sales in the U.S. and U.K. […] Dell fell into similar territory in [the […]
A fortuitous move in a boom-and-bust tech business
Wall Street Journal: Seagate Technology has agreed to pay $1.9 billion in stock to buy rival Maxtor Corp. The transaction unites two of the biggest makers of computer disk drives, a boom-and-bust business in which Seagate has long played the role of consolidator. I’ve bought and installed quite a few hard drives in my time. […]