Word: firmly
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When a private-equity firm goes in and buys, say, a washing-machine company, it rarely does anything to improve the washing machines. Instead it concentrates on restructuring the company--selling off the dryer division, perhaps. Or it doesn't even get its hands dirty to this extent but just fiddles with the finances. I'm not knocking it. It seems to work. Shares in the company are suddenly worth double. But most of that increase in value has gone to the private-equity firm and its investors, not to the folks who have bought stocks in the ordinary...
...Donald Felsinger, CEO of Sempra energy, based in San Diego, took charge of a volatile company tainted by the California energy scandal, which threatened to bankrupt the $15.5 billion firm. Felsinger settled lawsuits, shed holdings in coal and expanded its natural-gas business globally. Now, he tells TIME, the volatility has moved south...
...immediate cause of the trouble is the A380, a $14 billion, 555-seat, double-decker plane that is one of those bet-the-company ventures, so beloved by the aerospace industry, that either succeed spectacularly--as the Boeing 747 did--or risk sending a firm into a tailspin. Remember Lockheed's L1011? Mechanically, the A380 works. But Airbus has had to tear up its delivery schedule several times because of nagging manufacturing problems, primarily involving wiring. That has enraged launch customers; some have canceled their orders. FedEx and UPS walked, which killed the cargo version of the plane...
...Rides legislation. The first 200 people to be paired via the UC rides system will receive five-dollar gift certificates redeemable at the Harvard Square eatery b.good, Hadfield said. The UC voted two weeks ago to allocate $1,000 to have the new service designed by a Seattle firm co-founded by former Campus Life Fellow Zachary A Corker ’04. Last week, however, Mather House UC Representative Matthew R. Greenfield ’08 asked for the legislation to be retroactively amended, citing negative feedback from his constituents. Greenfield said he received an e-mail from...
...veritable free-for-all. Louisiana public service commissioner Foster Campbell, a North Louisiana populist in the Huey Long tradition, is in the running. But many are pinning their hopes on former U.S. Senator John Breaux, who left office in 2005 to join a powerful Washington, D.C., lobbying firm. Breaux remains a popular, widely known figure, but there's one problem: having changed his permanent address to Maryland, he may be ineligible to run for state office under residency requirements set forth in Louisiana's constitution, a snag Republicans started hammering away at in television attack ads even before Blanco stepped...