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Biotech / Medical : VVUS: VIVUS INC. (NASDAQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sonki who wrote (2961)	12/2/1997 10:05:00 AM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23519

Sonki, it's going to be choppy markets IMHO. Yesterday I sold all my INTCW. I am now 95% in cash The only stock I own is Vivus.I will be ready to add during any weakness. Markets choppy because of Japan. I don't think the Japan has payed out yet.Here is an article to come out in Dow Jones: 12/04/97 Far Eastern Economic Review 94 1997, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.) With the demise of Yamaichi Securities, Tokyo's markets are abuzz with speculation about other companies in danger. Some of the most fevered talk centres around fellow members of the Fuyo group, a loosely affiliated web of companies that traces its roots to the prewar conglomerate known as the Yasuda zaibatsu. On November 24, the Standard & Poor's credit-rating agency downgraded the debt of Yasuda Trust & Banking to junk-bond status. A similar downgrade on Yamaichi by Moody's Investors Service a few days earlier drove the final nail into that company's coffin, but Yasuda Trust was ready to fight back. Hours after the downgrade, it announced it was receiving 50 billion ($390 million) from other group companies in exchange for new shares. A statement insisted the company is in good shape. Markets weren't impressed. A flood of selling sent Yasuda Trust's share price below 100 (79 cents), compared with over 500 a year ago. * Like most of Japan's troubled financial institutions, its problems date back to lending to real-estate speculators in the late 1980s, among them New York mogul Donald Trump. (Another Fuyo group company, Yasuda Marine & Fire Insurance, symbolized the high-flying late 1980s with its purchase of a Van Gogh painting for $39.9 million in 1987. Yasuda Marine's stock has fallen by more than half since June.) Yasuda Trust's situation underlines how little faith investors have in the pronouncements of Japanese companies about their financial condition. Even a venerable name like Yasuda isn't worth much any more. By contrast, a clean bill of health from a U.S.-based credit-rating agency sets everyone at ease. The woes at Yamaichi and Yasuda Trust are bad news for the heavyweight of the Fuyo group, Fuji Bank. Fuji has 91.5 billion in outstanding loans to Yamaichi and its affiliates, although it insists that only about 10 billion-20 billion of those are sour. Another problem: Fuji's holdings of shares in Yamaichi and Yasuda Trust, once valued together at more than 200 billion, are now close to worthless. While it does not appear to be in immediate danger, Fuji has more bad loans than any of the other eight commercial "city banks." It plans to set aside 650 billion for bad loans by March 31, 1998. And now Fuji could be in trouble with regulators too. It admits it knew of Yamaichi's huge off-the-books losses more than a month before Yamaichi told the government. Fuji shares, which stood above 2,000 as recently as the fall of 1996, plunged below 700 on November 26, with trading paralyzed by an overload of sell orders. Of course, the Fuyo group is hardly the only subject of speculation. Ten large construction companies, for example, have seen their shares plunge below the crisis line of 100, and it seems only a matter of time before a few of them join the three listed construction companies that have already gone bankrupt this year. And a regional bank, Tokuyo City Bank, went under on November 26. Don't expect much cheer on the Tokyo stock exchange this holiday season. TA