|
Martha on the make?
|
 |
January 23, 2002: 7:46 p.m. ET
Will Martha Stewart find herself a new partner? Plus, Tiger lands a new deal.
BY Andy Serwer
|
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Thursday is Enron goes to Washington day. Hooray!!! As in, watch Enron execs get grilled! See Andersen's David Duncan take the fifth! (Glug glug?) Butt ugly if you ask me. And then there's the "let's see if the market can go up two days in a row during earnings season" mystery. Stay tuned! As for Wednesday, well the Naz climbed 39 freakin' points to 1922, while the Dow upped 17 to 9730. (We ain't seein' 10K 'til St. Patty's Day!) Hey, watch me, Peggy Lee (Great and now late. Who hasn't had the fever?), I mean Andy Serwer on CNN, CNN Headline News, and CNNfn. Read Loose Change.
STOCKYARD Prime time earnings season, folks. So many companies reporting that it's, well, I'll be honest with you 'cause I like you: It's CLUTTER!!!... JP Morgan got all excited about chip stocks and they rallied. And Novellus reported some okay numbers too. Stock climbed $3.42 to $39.65. Merrill said sell IBM and it fell! Exxon, Coke, DuPont, Boeing were mixed with no big surprises. ... And a sign of the times: Reuters reports that "Goldman Sachs' top strategist Abby Joseph Cohen cut her earnings forecast for the S&P 500 index by a third, citing accounting changes." Ah yes, accounting....
TIGER WOODS EXCLUSIVE Street Life has learned that a company called Global VR has just signed a happenin' deal with THE TIGER! (Growl baby, growl!) Next week the small, three-year-old Silicon Valley maker of arcade games and virtual reality simulators will announce an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with Electronic Arts to produce coin-op versions of EA Sports' Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf games. Until now, only corporate bigwigs like Nike, Disney, and General Motors have been able to market products under Tiger's name -- and reap the resulting financial rewards. The biggies pay tens of millions o' bucks for the Tige, but sources tell moi that Global is only paying $3 million for four years, or $750K per, with just half a mil upfront. Global will be going up against Incredible Technology's Golden T games. Having Tiger's name 'n' likeness should help!
MARTHA STEWART EXCLUSIVE This from Pattie (the Truf!) Sellers: "Lee mentioned in last night's StreetLife that the Kmart on Astor Place in Manhattan is a mess. Hey Lee, guess who agrees with you: Martha! Martha Stewart just told me that she felt 'distressed' after recently visiting the Astor Place Kmart. 'The shelves are empty!' she gripes. Yeah, Martha certainly is distressed these days. FYI, there's been a lot of bad reporting in the press: i.e., the Times says she's on the Kmart board -- no, she's not, but she told me she wishes she had been. As I say in the current issue (may I plug it, Andy?), Martha is a legend for her transformative powers (one Martha spoof book shows her racing the Pope to turn water into wine 'by sheer force of will'), but she hit her mortal limit in salvaging Kmart.
Now, Martha is saying publicly that she's sticking by Kmart, but believe me, privately she's whispering that she's available. Martha's no fool! You see, Kmart is not going to survive long-term. Why? First of all, anyone who would buy them and go head-to-head with Wal-Mart is too wacko to run this sinking juggernaut successfully. Also, virtually all retailers that file Chapter 11 eventually go out of business. It'll be no different with the big K. So Martha, find a way out of that contract and get a new partner now!"
TYCO Um, let me explain, guys. That was the wrong solution! You don't have a problem with the whole being worth less than the sum of the parts. (That would be a solution to AOL's problems!) You have a credibility problem! Breaking up doesn't address that. TYC fell $2.45 to $45.10.
PHAT VOLUME Cook Books. Cooked Books. Crooked Books. Crook book. Throw the Book at the Crook's Cooked Books. "Book him Dano!" Take him through central Booking. Everyday I write the Book. I can read you like a Book. Bookworm. Bookworms. Wormy Books....
Loose Change
(Or, stuff that makes me mad): Have you heard John Walker's Taliban accent. What a faker! What a bunch of BS!!! Reminds me of some kind of anglophile who visits London for a week and ends up with a British accent. ("Pip pip old boy!") BTW, do you know there is a person who works for CNN Headline news who thinks John Walker is cute!??!? WOW. If you go for the Charlie Manson look!!!...
Hey, I just came back from Boston, and the place just gets worse and worse. The airport is a sick joke. The Big Dig is a sick joke. The timetable for the Big Dig is a sick joke. Problem is the city is so damn corrupt that nothing changes, or if it does it proceeds at a snail's pace. Two things have happened: The poor people who live there have become so used to living like this they don't realize what a joke it is. And second, it is taking Boston from a second-tier city to a third-tier city. Business people will simply stop going there!!!...
Tell me its not true!!! An unnamed (Why? Because I'm nice.) Washington wonk talking head on CNN said today, "Enron? Well how about Kmart? We should have Congressional hearings/an investigation into that failure too!" (Or some such.) Is that UNREAL!?!?!... Does Commerce Bank rule? You tell me!!!... Sooooooo, what is your Super Bowl pick??? 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
