Word: analysts
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...compared with last. Blockbuster has responded by investing in video-game rentals and launching its own online subscription service. It's "surprising that Blockbuster would choose to spend so much reinforcing its presence in the brick-and-mortar portion of this business," says Marla Backer, a Research Associates--Soleil analyst. If the Blockbuster deal is struck, the combined company will control roughly 50% of the traditional rental market--which means antitrust regulators will probably get involved. Movie Gallery notes that this is not a problem its bid is likely to face.--By Unmesh Kher
Others were suspicious too. In December 2002, a year before the company collapsed, Joanna Speed, Merrill Lynch's food-industry analyst in London, issued a "sell" recommendation on Parmalat stock. She found the accounts incomprehensible. Yet as late as 2003, Bank of America was still trying to woo Parmalat. In June, Kenneth Lewis, the bank's then chief executive, flew to Parma to see Tanzi. Ferraris recalls that the meeting with Lewis was cordial; he encouraged Parmalat to use the bank's services. "It was a marketing call," Ferraris recalls. "Lewis was saying, we'd love to do more business...
...reforms, and the bills for past borrowings are coming due. He has tried to use his popularity to go around the Democrat-controlled legislature, but governing through ballot initiatives has its limits. "Arnold is the 'stop the bleeding' guy," says Joel Kotkin, a Schwarzenegger supporter who is an economic analyst at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington. "But I don't know if he is going to do the reconstructive surgery...
...Schwarzenegger would take on Prop. 13, senior aide Murphy says the Governor "doesn't believe in changing" it. Some $15 billion in bonds tided the state over for this year, but by early January, Schwarzenegger's administration must come up with a budget to plug what nonpartisan state legislative analyst Elizabeth Hill estimates will be a $6.7 billion deficit for 2005-06. For the 2006-07 fiscal year, Hill expects past borrowing to swell the shortfall to $10 billion...
...that new economic energy is not likely to solve California's fiscal crisis. Says analyst Hill: "It is very unlikely the state could grow its way out" of debt. She suggests that all options, including spending cuts and tax increases, be considered. Schwarzenegger has repeatedly said he won't hike taxes but has been unable to get Democrats to agree on new spending cuts. And he has not been the cost slasher he promised to be. For example, after vowing to take back $300 million in pay and benefits promised to the prison guards, Schwarzenegger was bargained down...