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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (24052)	5/2/2000 10:21:00 AM
From: mauser96	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

According to the book I quoted, MSFT has done an exceptional job of retaining employees. Part of this is due to careful hiring, mainly at the entry level, and promotion of present employees rather than seeking outside talent. Also there's the job security (for good performers) and the fact until recently that after several years at MSFT many are rich from stock options. The disadvantages of this are that it tends toward an insular inbred employees and management. Breakup could alter this pattern, and get at least one company away from the totally dominating influence of Mr. Gates.I suspect that a breakup will stipulate that major shareholders like Gates and Ballmer concentrate their holdings in only one of the resulting 2 companies. It's probable that the government really doesn't want to kill the golden egg goose, and that it's learned something from it's past terrible record of trying to run school systems and companies by fiat. The antitrust division of the DOJ employees 350 lawyers, 340 economists, and zero technologists so it obviously can't run MSFT, nor can the judge. I'm not trying to be a proponent of MSFT. I can see both sides of this. What I'm really interested in is getting richer at the lowest risk. The real question is not who is or is not the good guy, but whether MSFT represents a good value at today's prices. Prejudice for or against the company just limits your investment options. If I was 100% sure it was a good deal, I would already own a lot of it. Hopefully some of this feedback will help me decide.