Here ya go
SMARTMONEY ONLINE: Market Insider
By KARYN MCCORMACK
Dow Jones Newswires
Oil Sector
Traders are anticipating higher production cuts at OPEC's meeting
scheduled for Wednesday in Vienna. Analysts say it will take at least a
1 million-barrel cut in daily production to boost oil prices, which have
fallen dramatically this year. The oil ministers seem intent on having
that effect. Kuwait's minister said that if oil prices don't recover
after Wednesday's meeting, OPEC would review the size of production
reductions. It helped that over the weekend, Egypt, a non-OPEC country,
said it will cut 20,000 barrels of oil production a day. Investors
should expect the oil stocks to be volatile in the days before the
important meeting.
Alcatel Alsthom
As we predicted in our June 10 story, "Is Alcatel Worth Keeping," the
French telecommunications equipment company sold half of its 50% stake
in GEC-Alsthom NV, a locomotive and power generation equipment maker
that is a accounted for almost 20% of Alcatel's revenue last year, but
is a slow-growth asset that the company wanted to ditch so it could
focus on the telecom wars.
The 121 million-share offering of Alstom SA (ALS) was priced at 34.16 a
share, then dipped to 34 at the close because of lingering concerns
about the Asian economies' effect on its core engineering business. But
it raised $2 billion for Alcatel, which will likely use the money for
product development. Earlier this month, Alcatel announced it is buying
DSC Communications (DIGI) for $4 billion in stock. When the merger is
completed, Alcatel's U.S. revenue will nearly double to about $3
billion. Alcatel is a pick from our May 1997 portfolio 'Five Great
Foreign Stocks.' |
