Finance Matters

Archive for January 5th, 2010

Whitney Tilson doesn’t think Warren Buffett interfered at all when he voted against Kraft’s proposal to acquire Cadbury. Instead, Tilson thinks that Cadbury will still get a good offer from Kraft while Buffett is essentially negotiating for a lower price. Watch Tilson on CNBC below:

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See Also:

• Warren Buffett Just Delivered A Death Blow To Cadbury
• Kraft And Nestle’s Cadbury Bidding War Has John Paulson Laughing All The Way To The Bank
• UK Cadbury Factory Workers Protest Against Any US Take-Over

Update: A commenter reminds us we’ve posted this before, but you know what, we don’t mind. If had forgotten about it, then surely several readers have, too, and it’s just that good.

Russian gas giant Gazprom has an amazing corporate anthem which starts with the lyrics “Don’t bother trying, you’ll never find a surer friend than Gazprom.” It’s not new, but it never gets old, and you will enjoy watching it immensely.

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See Also:

• You Know Natural Gas Has Gone Big Time When Cramer is All Over It
• CERA Analyst Jim Osten: There’s A Permanent Oversupply Of Natural Gas
• American Shale Gas Revolution Threatened By Fracking Environmentalists

In light of today’s news that Apple has purchased mobile ad company Quattro, Google took to its Public Policy blog to point out, “mobile advertising space continues to be competitive.”

Why did it need to do that? Its acquisition of AdMob is being held up as the FTC investigates it. The FTC wants to make sure Google won’t own the mobile market.

Here’s the full post:

When we announced our planned acquisition of AdMob in November, we noted that the mobile advertising space is highly competitive — with more than a dozen mobile ad networks.  In fact, the experts at MobiThinking recently called mobile advertising a “very fragmented” space, in which “no ad network is dominant” and “no one really knows what ad network is biggest.”

Today’s news that Apple is acquiring one of AdMob’s competitors, Quattro Wireless, is further proof that the mobile advertising space continues to be competitive.  And with more investments and acquisitions in the space, including from established players like Apple and Google, that’s a sign that vigorous growth and competition will continue. That’s ultimately great for users, advertisers and publishers alike.

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See Also:

• Google’s AdMob Deal Is Being Held Up
• Two Consumer Groups Try To Block Google’s Acquisition Of AdMob
• The Real Reason Google’s $750 Million AdMob Buy Is Getting Held Up

In the just-so story of the evolution of our economy, our old manufacturing based economy has been replaced by an innovative knowledge economy. That’s not quite true.

In fact, the decline of the jobs in goods producing sectors of the economy–construction, manufacturing, mining and agriculture–has largely been met with an increase in jobs on the government payroll. We’ve gone from providing jobs in profit-making private industry to providing jobs in profit-eating government work. Toward the end of 2007, the total number of government jobs exceeded the total number of goods producing jobs. Welcome to the government payroll economy.

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Now that Google’s Nexus One phone has been revealed, the question everyone is asking is how does it compare to the other current top smartphones on the market, most notably, iPhone and Motorola Droid? Moreover, is it worth switching to Nexus One from your current device? BillShrink has put toge…

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