From: Walter Watts (wlwatts@home.com)
Date: Tue Jan 29 2002 - 12:06:36 MST
Accounting, on the whole, looked on and even blessed the airy wind-up of
new equity we saw in the markets over the last ten years. Things like
rich cable consortiums paying six Billion dollars for a BIG room full of
web servers and some HTML code (remember Excite, the 3rd or 4th ranked
portal?).
And NOW the accounting doubts spread?
Jeeeeezzzzzzuuuuusssssss christ in a tophat!
Walter
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Stocks Tumble, Accounting Doubts Spread
Tuesday January 29, 12:53 PM EST
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell into a deep rout in early afternoon
trade on Tuesday, with sellers getting out of equities as a wave of
doubt about the truth of corporate accounting crested over the market.
Adding to long-simmering apprehension about accounting, first sparked by
Enron Corp.'s (ENRNQ)(ENE) record bankruptcy filing, traders said news
this morning from Williams Cos. (WMB) turned up the heat.
The Nasdaq composite (IXIC) fell 39 points, or 2 percent, to 1,904. The
Dow Jones industrial average (DJI) dropped 154 points, or 1.56 percent,
to 9,711.
Energy trader and pipeline operator Williams on Tuesday delayed the
release of its full quarterly earnings report as it looked into the
impact of lingering financial commitments to its former subsidiary
Williams Communications (WCG).
Conglomerate Tyco International Ltd. (TYC), which had been on a buying
spree, took a hit after medical device maker C.R. Bard (BCR) said it was
in talks with Tyco regarding Tyco's proposed $2.6 billion acquisition of
Bard. Last week, Bard said it was reassessing the deal after Tyco said
it would split into four companies.
Tyco, in a proxy statement released on Monday, also disclosed a $20
million payment to Frank E. Walsh, one of its an outside directors.
"A lot of the people that got badly burned on Enron are just terrified
of the fact that this could happen twice," said David Memmott, head of
listed block trading, Morgan Stanley. "They're just bailing out of Tyco,
regardless of whether the rumors are factual."
-- Walter Watts Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc. "To err is human. To really screw things up requires a bare-naked command line and a wildcard operator."
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