The newspaper industry woes are hardly news any more. The Journal (and we understand we’re doing it too) buries news that Tribune said yesterday it will slash one quarter of the Hartford Courant’s newsroom jobs, along with 100 Baltimore Sun jobs. The Chicago Tribune does the same, while the LAT doesn’t even mention it.
The Trib quotes an unnamed “individual” saying the paper’s headquarters and parking lot could be worth $200 million. We assume this is either a real-estate broker or a Tribune official, but regardless the paper should give more information on its sourcing.
This Bud’s not for you
Anheuser-Busch will turn down InBev’s $46 billion merger offer, reports the Journal on B1, the Times on C1, and the FT on its Companies & Markets front. Anheuser says the bid is too low, even though it’s 30 percent higher than where the company’s shares traded before it was proffered.
The papers say it will start a “bitter” (yuk yuk) hostile takeover battle by the Belgian brewer of Stella Artois for the St. Louis maker of Bud. Anheuser will propose to sell noncore assets like its amusement parks to help its shares and keep the company under Busch family control.
Expect the company to pull out all the red, white, and blue stops to protect Americans’ God-given right to weak beer.
FT stenography
The FT fronts a story about Procter & Gamble’s CEO telling it in an interview that he hopes the presidential candidates don’t get too negative about the economy and send it into a “worse recession.” This is front-page news?
"[P]unitive damages shouldn’t be more than actual damages[.]"
Maybe we should apply that ruling to the criminal courts for actual humans. If you steal a car, the worst that can happen to you is you are forced to pay for the reduction in value of the returned car. Only if you entirely wreck the car would you be liable for the entire price of the car.
There should be no incentive not to commit crime, the courts are a marketplace.
Oh, and since Bush always wanted to limit malpractice suits to $250,000 (was it that much?) even in cases of death, it looks like Bill Gates could go on quite a killing spree before making a dent in his bank account.
Posted by JoshNarins
on Thu 26 Jun 2008 at 09:24 AM