So far this year, 217 public companies have been bought out by private equity shops, reports USA Today. And only 110 have made public offerings this year. A PE buyout pretty much has to be somewhere north of $10 billion before it even gets to be news. And no wonder with 12 of the S&P 500 now taken out of [...]

The wisest of the wise men agree: We can all rest easy on the subprime front. In his annual address, Warren Buffett said, reports Bloomberg, that there’s nothing to worry about. His exact metaphor was that it won’t be "any huge anchor" on the economy. And on Thursday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke echoed the Oracle of Omaha. He [...]

You know the razor blade business model: sell the razor real cheap and make the long-term profit on the blades, which have to bought time after time after time. Well, good old capitalist competition has put a new spin on that reports the New York Times. It comes courtesy of Kodak, which has been trying to [...]

There was further confirmation from the Federal Aviation Administration that Las Vegas needs more airport capacity, reports the Review-Journal. The report on "Capacity Needs in the National Airspace System" is another reminder that major hubs are struggling to keep up with the growth of the airline industry since 2001. McCarran brought in a little over 46 [...]

The incredible shrinking housing market continues to take a toll. London-based HSBC’s U.S. unit reported Monday that profits fell 11 percent because of losses in the subprime portfolios that it bought, reports Reuters. The bank set aside $205 million for the losses, a 31 percent increase since last year. And now home builders’ confidence has fallen to [...]

The long wait to see who gets Chrysler is over. DaimlerChrysler has chosen Cerberus Capital to buy 80 percent of the Chrysler operation and Daimler will retain the other 20 percent, reports the Detroit Free Press. Little more than $1 billion will change hands and Daimler will take a $600 million hit to unload its [...]

A new study from the Harvard Business School shows that a new CEO can often spell serious career problems for those in senior management, reports the Boston Globe. In fact, only 4 percent improved their position after a change of leadership. "Chances are high that executives will find themselves out the door," is the blunt assessment [...]

Stone Cold Creamery and Kahala fast foods brands are merging into a holding company with over $1 billion in annual revenue, reports the Associated Press. The terms were not disclosed. Apart from Cold Stone, the other brands in the new stable are hardly household names in Las Vegas but the new company that will be headquarted [...]

Despite all the talk of soaring pay for senior executives, plenty of CEOs have gone the opposite route, reports BusinessWeek. Among the CEOs who rely only on stock dividends are Richard Kinder of Kinder-Morgan, Steve Jobs of Apple and Eric Schmidt of Google. The magazine says taking the $1-a-year pay package requires confidence, ego, risk-taking and [...]

Many senior managers at Citigroup’s consumer operations have been heading for the exits, reports the Financial Times. The most recent casualties are Faith Massingale, head of Citi’s international cards business, and Ashok Vaswani, former head of Asia Pacific. The really troubling thing, says one unnamed executive, is that the loss of people further down the food chain, [...]