A couple of weeks ago I posted some url's on FreeMarkets the Pittsburgh internet auction ipo. I don't know if Zack caught any of that stuff?
To make a long story short this high flying ipo raised 10.7 billion giving FreeMarkets a bigger market capitalization than steel/energy giant USX. The kicker is that Freemarkets has 300 employees and has been a money loser; not to mention that their plan is to "make markets" by acting as an auction house for industrial supplies and raw materials. This all sounds good until you get into the mechanics of things.
GM had some sort of an arrangement/contract with FreeMarkets. GM claims that they told FreeMarkets that they were going to cancel this arrangement back in November prior to the big ipo. Since word of this hit the newswires a few days ago FreeMarkets stock has plunged roughly 130 points!
I'm surprised about the Mellon-Scaife money behind this Freemarkets deal with or without the GM contract. Take a look at the stuff I posted from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
Tom Lehman
"christian a. gregory" wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
> Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2000 10:35 AM
> Subject: RE: thegreatcrash.com press release
>
> > From Richard A Brealey and Stewart C Myers, Principles of Corporate
> > Finance, Fourth Edition (McGraw-Hill, 1991), p. 60. Maybe there's a
> > new edition that's gotten more in touch with the New Era. Their use
> > of DEC as a growth stock example is pretty sobering.
>
> I went to Amazon to check out this book. Thought this review was
> interesting (and there are three or four more on the site like this):
>
> Why do investment bankers on the Street love this book? Simple---it makes
> their lightweight discipline look like rocket science, especially if you're
> unitiated. The structure of the book is tortuous and confusing, there is no
> mention of CAPM or Arbitrage Pricing Theory, precious little attention to
> statistics, and the authors' idiosyncratic (and unfunny) sense of humor. For
> those who want a thorough, simple introduction, get Ross/Westerfield/Jaffe's
> fine Corporate Finance; for those who want to get their hands dirty, try any
> of Damodaran's books or Bodie/Kane/Marcus Investments. Frankly, finance
> should be about making money---not wading through this kind of garbage.
>
> Rocket science without statistics? How could it be?
>
> Christian