Have these people been alive and breathing in recent days? Hilarious... From the San Jose Business Journal: Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. shareholders have filed suit against the brokerage firm’s chief executive, John Thain, and its board over Bank of America Corp. ’s proposed $ ... Re ... Read more

As one of ~300 million Americans, we each now own about 0.000000002663333% of AIG. I think the Fed did the right thing here by requiring some financial benefit in return for such a huge loan. Not only do taxpayers get a 79.9% equity stake in AIG, but we also are collecting some hefty interest on t ... Read more

The Federal Reserve Bank serves as the "lender of last resort" in this country, meaning they stand ready to lend when nobody else will. For this reason, I think the government will give AIG the bridge loan it believes it needs to try and avoid filing bankruptcy. Keep in mind that this is not a bai ... Read more

The Federal Reserve Bank serves as the "lender of last resort" in this country, meaning they stand ready to lend when nobody else will. For this reason, I think the government will give AIG the bridge loan it believes it needs to try and avoid filing bankruptcy. Keep in mind that this is not a bai ... Read more

*BAC closing price: $26.55 *Share exchange ratio: 0.8595 *Implied MER purchase price: $22.82 *MER closing price: $17.06 *Discount to deal value: 34% Full Disclosure: Long shares of BAC at the time of writing ... Read more at http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PeridotCapitalist/~3/39416 ... Read more

How do companies with such great assets go belly up within days once a cascade of bad things start happening? At the outset of 2008 we had five major independent investment banks and now we have two (Goldman Sachs & Morgan Stanley). A core reason is that the leveraged finance business model is a ... Read more

How do companies with such great assets go belly up within days once a cascade of bad things start happening? At the outset of 2008 we had five major independent investment banks and now we have two (Goldman Sachs & Morgan Stanley). A core reason is that the leveraged finance business model is a ... Read more

As soon as Lehman Brothers (LEH) shares hit $4 today and reports came out that the company is up for sale to try and survive, only one name came to my mind as a potential buyer; Bank of America (BAC) CEO Ken Lewis. The guy loves doing deals. Who else would have bought Countrywide? Since Peridot is ... Read more

There are many times, particularly in bear markets like this one, when I look at a company and am quite baffled as to how investors can let a stock drift so low. Then I remind myself that Wall Street is short-term oriented and only cares about today, this week, and maybe this month. What the reality ... Read more

The announcement from Google (GOOG) yesterday that it has released a beta version of a new web browser called Chrome has gotten a lot of attention, but shareholders like myself aren't overly enthused. Once again it appears that Google is more about coming out with new free products than it is about ... Read more