Word: like
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...word merger conjures up only thoughts of deals to join corporate giants like Exxon and Mobil, conjure again. What headline writers call "merger madness" is also breaking out among relatively pint-size companies, which seal new relationships in the cafeteria and celebrate with interpersonal mingling that can involve the whole staff. These not-so-big deals sometimes seem to occur in a business world altogether different from the one inhabited by the megabillion-bucks monsters. Witness the just completed merger of Personify and Anubis, two California e-commerce companies...
...Like many new high-tech firms, both were growing fast--but not fast enough to keep up with the demands of their customers. Personify, founded in San Francisco in 1996, builds software that lets an e-marketer keep track of visitors to its website, what pages they look at, and how long they take to pick out something or go elsewhere. By last summer it had signed up 50 clients that were paying Personify about $6.2 million--and demanding more and different kinds of services than the company's 60 employees could supply. CEO Eileen Gittins decided the best...
...monster variety (besides the obvious one of size). Although the conglomerate craze is waning, most big-time mergers still aim at a degree of diversification. But small firms almost always combine with others in the same industry. That, of course, frequently means mergers of direct competitors or potential competitors, like Personify and Anubis. But while trustbusters may try to stop such a merger between two giant competitors or at least attach onerous conditions, they are almost sure to ignore combinations of little competitors. It is difficult to imagine a combination the size of Personify-Anubis or Gresham-Open resulting...
...Columbia, S.C., visitors' bureau, has advanced prostate cancer; he's been given two to three years to live. A few months ago, he received the funding for his viatical settlement, which handed him $58,500, or roughly 40% of his $150,000 policy. "There are some things I'd like to do, but I didn't have the resources for, like a trip to Hawaii or herbal remedies not covered by insurance," says Volz...
Unfortunately, viaticals have attracted con artists the way blood does leeches, and regulators are contemplating halting, or at least restricting, the practice. The problem is with folks like Davis, indicted on fraud and other charges by a Dallas County grand jury last summer. He persuaded scores of unsuspecting Texans to shell out millions on supposedly low-risk, guaranteed investments in viaticals offered by his Dallas-based company, First American Fidelity Corp. But authorities say the policies were fraudulently obtained for the express purpose of reselling them, an increasingly common practice dubbed cleansheeting. Davis allegedly solicited HIV-positive...