Strong financial performance in the most recent quarter and continued growth in results despite a challenging economy have led Standard & Poor's (S&P) Rating Services to raise Red Hat Inc.’s  (RHT) corporate credit rating from BB to BB+.   Red Hat is a leader in open source software solutions and has been upgraded thrice in less than two years. The company believes that it is still in the early stages of growth and has tremendous growth opportunity beyond 2010.   We believe the company’s strong market position, focused execution, strong balance sheet, impressive cash flow, international expansion and proven value proposition will help grow its business in the near term and deliver strong revenue growth beyond fiscal 2010.   We remain positive on the company’s long-term growth given its robust performance, driven by the record bookings and billings, substantial recurring revenue stream and growth in deferred revenues.  ...

Did Buffett overpay for Burlington Northern Santa Fe? The Oracle of Omaha surprised many of his followers by doing such an expensive deal. On looking behind the scenes, though, the reasoning makes...div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.taipanpublishinggroup.com/~ff/taipan?a=ZCCL7BVxmaY:58I9exYpTkg:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/taipan?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.taipanpublishinggroup.com/~ff/taipan?a=ZCCL7BVxmaY:58I9exYpTkg:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/taipan?i=ZCCL7BVxmaY:58I9exYpTkg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.taipanpublishinggroup.com/~ff/taipan?a=ZCCL7BVxmaY:58I9exYpTkg:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/taipan?i=ZCCL7BVxmaY:58I9exYpTkg:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.taipanpublishinggroup.com/~ff/taipan?a=ZCCL7BVxmaY:58I9exYpTkg:wd9GD17jvC4"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/taipan?d=wd9GD17jvC4" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.taipanpublishinggroup.com/~ff/taipan?a=ZCCL7BVxmaY:58I9exYpTkg:l6gmwiTKsz0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/taipan?d=l6gmwiTKsz0" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/taipan/~4/ZCCL7BVxmaY" height="1" width="1"/

In my previous post on the Allied-Ares merger arbitrage opportunity, I introduced a topic which I realized I’ve never quite talked about here on The Curious Investor. As I intend this blog for both beginning investors and seasoned investors alike, here’s a run down on the concept of merger arbitrage.

What is arbitrage? Rigorously speaking, arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two markets which allows the arbitrageur, or person taking advantage of the arbitrage, to obtain a risk-less profit.

Technically speaking, an arbitrage refers to a situation where the same asset sells for a different price in two markets. For example, a textbook in the UK selling for $20 and a textbook in the USA selling for $100. The arbitrageur would buy the UK textbook and simultaneously sell the USA textbook and pocket the $80 difference.

...

Avnet, Inc. (AVT) recently announced that it has acquired a controlling interest in Vanda Group from Hutchinson Whampoa Limited in a strategic move to expand its presence and customer base across China. Vanda Group will operate as an Avnet company while maintaining its current operations, management team and the Vanda brand. Vanda Group is a leading IT solutions and services provider covering major cities in China, Hong Kong and Macau, and has been around 27 years. Vanda Group provides systems integration services and solutions incorporating hardware and software from major suppliers including IBM (IBM), Lenovo, Cisco (CSCO), Sun (JAVA), Nokia (NOK) and Oracle (ORCL). The company serves clients from diverse industries including major banks, financial institutions, telecommunications companies, utilities and government departments. Vanda Group generated revenues of approximately $50 million in 2008 and employs more than 600 people. The transaction will ...

It is feared that some users of Sidekick phones have lost most of the personal information stored on remote servers manned by Microsoft (MSFT). The servers were based on Sun’s (JAVA) Solaris/Linux/Oracle (ORCL) technology.  Several versions of the phone were sold through service provider T-Mobile, which is a part of Deutsche Telekom AG (DT). T-Mobile has offered customers a $20 refund toward one month of data usage on the phone and an additional $100 through a customer appreciation card, which can be used for T-Mobile products and services, or for payment of a T-Mobile bill.  Customers have expressed outrage at the prospect of compensation, which was largely deemed to be insufficient. This was made worse by T-Mobile’s announcement that it would require another two weeks to send out details regarding the $100 claim. T-Mobile has also announced that it would probably be able ...

Dr Stock Pick HOT News & Alerts!

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FREE Daily Stock Alerts From DrStockPick.com

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Monday October 12, 2009

DrStockPick.com Stock Report!

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YRC Worldwide Inc. (Nasdaq: YRCW) today announced that it has finalized amendments of its credit facilities that extend to October 30, 2009 certain provisions under the previous amendments. Specifically, the amendments extend the expiration of the revolver reserve amount, the suspension of the minimum liquidity covenant, and the due date for the asset-backed securitization commitment fee of $10 million.

Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions, a business segment of Arrow Electronics Inc. [NYSE: ARW], has received the Oracle PartnerNetwork

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• Wynn (NASDAQ:WYNN) IPO, representing a 25% stake in Wynn's Macau operations, priced its $1.6 billion listing at the high end of the projected range

• Deutsche Bank (NYSE:DB) raised its price targets on numerous applications software firms, noting positive signs for the second half. Included in this group were: Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) with its target lifted to $22 from $20; Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) hiked to $44 from $40; and Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) raised to $80 from $65

• Bristol-Myers-Squibb (NYSE:BMY) coverage was initiated by Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) with "outperform," rating noting that, "strategic repositioning ahead of patent cliff, new product flow between 2009-2012, broadening R&D portfolio through selective risk-sharing, and high dividend yield underlie our positive thesis"

• Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) initiated coverage of Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) with "market perform," and with a $33-$35 valuation, noting concerns over a "steep and lengthy patent cliff and recent clinical setbacks."  The firm cautioned its Alzheimer's program and the Imclone pipeline "do

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BIO-key International made a monumental announcement this week with the news that the young company will showcase their biometric solutions at the Oracle Openworld 2009 Conference which is being held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from October 11-15, 2009.

The New Jersey based BIO-key has been gaining a renowned reputation as a pioneer in finger-based biometric identification and wireless public safety. As a charter member of the Oracle Identity Assurance Partner Alliance, BIO-key will provide hands-on product demonstrations of its state-of-the-art identification technology in booth #2520 at the above-mentioned Openworld Conference.

At the conference, BIO-key will display a variety of healthcare, retail, financial and government deployed identity solutions and will showcase ID Director for the Oracle Access Manager.

The ID Director is a valuable addition to the BIO-key family and the Oracle Identity Management platform because it requires only the touch of a finger to establish a person’s identity making

...

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – October 9, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: International Business Machines (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL), Intel (INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=5513

Here are highlights from Thursday’s Analyst Blog:

IBM Faces Antitrust Hurdle

International Business Machines (IBM) has been charged by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), a non-profit trade group organized by IBM’s rivals Microsoft (MSFT) and Oracle (ORCL). The allegation is directed at its Mainframe computer business, which is taking

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International Business Machines (IBM) has been charged by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), a non-profit trade group organized by IBM’s rivals Microsoft (MSFT) and Oracle (ORCL). The allegation is directed at its Mainframe computer business, which is taking revenues and pressurizing profits of its competitors by withdrawing the license access to customers using non-IBM hardware operating systems. The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) is investigating the allegations against IBM for its conduct in the Mainframe business. Some smaller companies in the banking, government and health care sector develop technologies that would allow the software to run on cheaper hardware. Thus, to freeze competition, IBM has combined its mainframe operating systems with hardware and acquired startup Platform Solutions Inc. Moreover, it has been alleged that IBM has curbed license of its mainframe operating systems to users of Hercules, which is an open-source software that ...