Word: evening
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...government hopes Jones will find the associations more than a little guilty, and it has even used Visa's archrival, American Express, for help. Justice opened its current investigation in 1993; by 1996, Amex had enlisted, arguing that the restrictive by-laws should go. In other countries, the company points out, it is free to issue credit cards through banks. As MasterCard general counsel Noah Hanft says of Justice's fix, however, "it's a remedy that seems catered to suit the needs of Amex." Amex is not an official party to the suit, though its lawyers attend...
...strong-willed new President and a public that is fed up with rigged markets and insider deals. The insurance crackdown was its biggest to date, but earlier in the summer, the Authority slapped $320 million in penalties on eight oil companies for conspiring to fix gasoline prices. Even earlier, it fined the country's two main cellular-phone operators for setting identical prices for fixed-to-mobile calls. The Authority has even taken on Gorgonzola-cheese producers, forbidding them to set production ceilings for individual producers...
Hogg Robinson's decision is part of a surprising trend at a time when start-up companies still dream of going public. Even so, a growing number of European firms--mostly from old-economy sectors--are delisting from stock exchanges. Freed from having to please investors every quarter, many smaller companies find it easier to grow--or reinvent themselves--when they are financed by private-equity funds and banks instead. The buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Robert recently created a $3 billion European fund and started scouting the Old World for new privatization deals. "There are lots of opportunities here," explains...
...Britain in 1999 worth $6.83 billion, up from 27 worth $3.98 billion in '98. And KPMG Corporate Finance says the growth is continuing; deals during the second quarter of 2000 were worth $8.7 billion, a 334% increase over the first quarter. In Continental Western Europe, the trend is even steeper: 27 deals worth $3.84 billion last year, up from three deals worth $224.3 million in 1998. Significant transactions include KKR's $940.5 million acquisition of British conglomerate Wassall, whose primary holding is Thorn Lighting, a manufacturer of light fixtures; and the $1.4 billion buyout of the German bathroom-fixtures maker...
...economy that is driving many firms out of the stock market. As investors, especially institutional investors, focus on big-growth, high-tech stocks, smaller, nontech companies don't show up on the radar, even if they are profitable and growing steadily. Martin Bolland, a partner at Alchemy Partners, a London private-equity investment firm, says that because smaller companies are hard to track, "they are an inefficient way of investing" for fund managers. Of the companies that have gone private, more than 90% are in traditional industries such as paper, textiles, food and water, reckons the University of Nottingham...