Comcast Corp. will merge with AT&T’s broadband unit in a deal worth about $52 billion, ending a bidding contest for the largest U.S. cable television operator, the companies said Wednesday night. AT&T’s selection of the Comcast bid came five months after it spurned a $41 billion unsolicited bid by the nation’s No. 3 cable operator for the cable division as being too low. The deal also includes about $20 billion in AT&T debt. Under the merger plan, AT&T will spin off its cable division and simultaneously merge it with Comcast, forming a new company called AT&T Comcast Corp. Other companies that submitted bids for Denver-based AT&T Broadband were AOL Time Warner Inc. and Cox Communications Inc.
With their $22.2 billion merger threatened, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Compaq Computer Corp. fired back Wednesday with a 50-page report detailing their reasons for the deal and criticizing leading opponent Walter Hewlett. “In the words of Dave Packard, ‘In the fields of advanced and rapidly changing technologies, to remain static is to lose ground,’ ” the document says.
Drivers who don’t buckle up in a new Ford vehicle get a persistent reminder to do so: five minutes of intermittent beeping and a flashing light on the instrument panel. An insurance industry study being released Thursday says such tactics make drivers more likely to wear seat belts. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said 76 percent of drivers in vehicles with the system wore a seat belt, compared with 71 in those without it. Extended to all drivers, that could save about 700 lives a year, according to Alan Williams, the chief scientist at the institute and the author of the study.
Fourth-quarter profits for brokerage powerhouse Morgan Stanley Dean Witter &Co. fell 28 percent because of the weak investment banking and stock sales climate, the company said Wednesday. For the three months ending Nov. 30, Morgan Stanley reported net income of $870 million, or 78 cents a share, down from $1.2 billion, or $1.06 a share, a year ago.
Struggling hand-held computer maker Palm Inc. on Wednesday reported a second-quarter loss that was narrower than Wall Street expected. For the three months ended Nov. 30, Palm reported a net loss of $25.2 million, or 4 cents a share. Wall Street had expected the company to report a loss of 7 cents a share, according to a survey of analysts by First Call/Thomson Financial.
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