With $25 billion in its coffers, Microsoft isn’t exactly hurting for cash. So why is the company planning a bond offering that could raise billions in additional capital? Microsoft will say only that the sale of the notes will be used for “general corporate purposes.” Those include working capital and share buybacks. They also include acquisitions.
Earlier this year Motorola said it would sack 1,500 employees during the fourth quarter of 2008. Apparently, that was a mistake. What it meant to say was that it planned to sack 1,900 employees during the fourth quarter of 2008, as evidenced today by the company’s announcement that it will lay off 400 more employees than originally expected this year.
If Motorola were a Greek tragedy, we’d be at that point in the narrative where the company is just about to blind itself out of grief–with a pair of RAZRs, of course. Two reports issued today show an already grim scenario for Motorola growing markedly worse.
Today brought with it nasty news for Motorola. Standard & Poor’s slashed its corporate credit rating on the long-suffering handset maker, noting that the company’s troubled mobile business is likely to continue what is already a two-year downward slide.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
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