Tony:
Some corrupt senator in government rewrites the Glass-Stegall Act. Citicorp buys Solomon Smith Barney, pays, what?, 2 Billion, based on the promise that they will make BILLIONS on the underwriting deals.
SmithBarney finds this company, Transmeta, that has this BS new chip. Spends maybe, 1 hundred million, getting the Company to the stage where it can get Mezzanine financing.
Some one points out at the road show that the company's chip will take a year to get it past 600Mz. Don't worry, there's plenty of room in the market, we're talkn' Independent Wealth, here, Obie.
Citicorp, which owns SSB does the Mezzanine financing. Gives ("loans") Transmeta maybe 3-4 hundred million to buy a couple of steppers and some nice office space.
Right in the middle of the signing of the loan docs, someone points out that it is stupid to spend 2 Billion dollars on a new chip to double battery life, when it only costs $49 for a second BATTERY!
This is the key: Citicorp says "who cares?", we are going to put our savings account holders into this deal and will get bailed out [referred to as "taken out" by 1st round financing] by the 4 BILLION that those little old grey-haired ladies thought they put into their savings accounts.
But who do we downgrade to get them to get some cash for Transmeta??????
CPQ blows off the transmeta chip.
Next question.
BTW, in a completely unrelated event, TMTA was up 3.5+% today.
The above is JMO, I have checked ANYthing real, but it would make sense. |
