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To: blankmind who wrote (20519)	8/13/1998 1:12:00 AM
From: Mang Cheng	Respond to of 45548

Article about lucent, with the following bits about acquistions : "Though raiding competitors would secure top talent, and Lucent's acquisitions to date have secured great technology, the company is in dire straits without an installed base of enterprise customers. A strategic acquisition would let Lucent instantly create a customer base for future products. Eager neither to drive up the price of a potential acquisition nor to violate the law, Lucent's management is predictably evasive. "We haven't taken the possibility of a large acquisition in the data networking space off the table, and we're certainly not going to make any declarations, but we'll take a long look at all of the usual suspects," says Mr. O'Shea. Analysts believe that the most likely suspect is Ascend Communications. "The company has great technology with a large installed base, and the two have worked together for a long time," argues Chris Crespi of BT Alex. Brown. "Ascend would give Lucent exactly what it needs." Another name that has come up is Newbridge Networks, whose close ties to Siemens would provide important overseas channels. A second, and less apparent, need is for Lucent to increase its presence in the comparatively untapped international market. To date, Lucent's ongoing international sales force development, partnership with Philips, and acquisition of German wireless-communications-software developer Optimay have established an overseas beachhead. "We exited the international business in 1925," Mr. McGinn explains. "Since the divestiture, we have built up our international market share to 25 percent, exactly what it was 73 years ago." As with the data networking market, Lucent may have no choice but to make a sizable acquisition if it desires international clout: Alcatel Alsthom and Siemens would be the largest, and most daunting, candidates. redherring.com Mang

To: blankmind who wrote (20519)	8/13/1998 2:31:00 AM
From: William Wang	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 45548

It is customer demand that will ultimately drive stocks higher. On Wednesday, the only real non-futures-buy-program-related buying I saw was in retail. There were consistent buyers of Wal-Mart (WMT:NYSE), Kmart (KM:NYSE) and Gap (GPS:NYSE). There was no dramatic customer interest in Dell (DELL:Nasdaq) or Cisco (CSCO:Nasdaq) or Microsoft (MSFT:Nasdaq) or Intel (INTC:Nasdaq), and every move these stocks made was keyed entirely off of the program of the moment. All would have been down if the programs had more of a negative bias. In other words, Wednesday's action smacked of the turnaround of the previous week -- a turnaround that was later corrupted by real selling. As you know, I thought this Tuesday's bottom was better than the other week's bottom. But as long as buy programs, keyed off of S&P futures, are behind the moves, I ain't trusting the market as far as I can throw it -- which isn't far, in case you were wondering. (From TSC By James J. Cramer)