Word: spinnings
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...creates an inflow of people, and that creates dollars, and that's what we're all about." He hands a visitor a lapel pin emblazoned with the legend ROSWELL 1947 and the image of a smiling spaceman waving from a flaming UFO shaped like a Stetson hat--a unique spin on an event that, if it actually occurred, was surely one of the most momentous in history; no one would argue that it doesn't trump lizard races. And so the town is gearing up, not entirely wholeheartedly, for what it is calling Roswell UFO Encounter '97, a celebration that...
...make sense of a scary, sometimes depressing world. In this case, it is a tale that combines deeply American strains of spirituality and paranoia as well as--let us be frank--a large scoop of native wackiness. One could even say, if one were inclined to put yet another spin on the following cliche, that we have met the aliens and they are us. In fact, to judge from the way they are most often depicted, aliens have sprung from the same corner of the national psyche that has a thing for Walter Keane's paintings of grotesquely doe-eyed...
...beautiful idea. It has sold a staggering 6 million copies--making it, according to publisher HarperCollins, the best-selling hard-cover nonfiction book ever--and has been published in 38 languages. The book has earned Gray somewhere in the neighborhood of $18 million. And that's not counting the spin-offs. So far Gray has produced Mars and Venus in the Bedroom, Mars and Venus in Love, Mars and Venus Together Forever. Ask about future books, and his answer is, frankly, a little scary: Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, Kids Are from Heaven, a parenting book...
...bust-up, though, has proved a resounding success for investors who simply did nothing. One hundred shares of AT&T the day before the court-ordered break-up was worth $6,052. Anyone who held on to those shares, along with all the new Baby Bell shares and their spin-offs, and reinvested all dividends would today own shares in 11 companies and have a package worth $58,396, according to a study by the brokerage Edward D. Jones. That amounts to an average annual gain of 18.4%, vs. 16.3% for the Standard & Poor's 500 in the same period...
...success of Ma Bell's progeny is no accident. A Penn State study found that the stocks of 161 spin-off companies between 1965 and 1990, on average, rose 76%, vs. a market average of only 43%, over three years. Why? Often spin-off companies become more focused, and because they are smaller they tend to have greater ability to grow rapidly. Meanwhile, there is little evidence that giant mergers create great wealth for shareholders. Just ask AT&T. It paid $7.4 billion for NCR Computer in 1991 and soon gave up on the acquisition, spinning it off to shareholders...