| FTSE 100 movers: Break-up talk lifts C&W
LONDON (SHARECAST) - Cable & Wireless climbed to the top of the FTSE 100 leaderboard despite playing down a weekend report that it is planning to break up its businesses. "Any discussion of spinning off our businesses is premature," C&W told reporters this morning. The report had suggested C&W was considering a break-up and could sell its British and international arms to private equity groups or foreign rivals. Hotel giant InterContinental eased this morning as Credit Suisse lowered the hotels giant to 'neutral' from 'outperform' with 1,260p price target. The Swiss broker cited valuation grounds for the downgrade as it also cut its 2007 net profit estimate by 9% to 137m. Associated British Foods has been downgraded to hold from buy at Citigroup. The broker reckons the aggregate earnings upside is relatively modest, while some market estimates of the Primark freehold value are too bullish, but the price target goes up to 950p from 900p.
Helping farmers earns man SBA honor
Cutting out the middle man by shipping grain directly to feedlot operators seemed like a logical extension to his family's grain storage and trucking business in downstate Waverly, said Jay Johnson.
Last week, Johnson's efforts to boost the family business and the business of area farmers were recognized by the U.S. Small Business Administration, which named him the runner-up Small Business Person of the Year.
The business, Johnson Grain LLC, was founded in 1975 by Johnson's father, Robert. In 2003, Jay Johnson built a railroad siding in a partnership with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway to handle the shipments.
The company now sends 75 unit trains a year to feedlot operators in Texas and Mexico. Each unit train, a train of cars carrying only one product, contains 110 rail cars and transports the equivalent of 500 semi-trailer loads of grain.
The Nanny Society
This purported sense of outrage is at the foundation of what some people called the Nanny Society, where we invoke the power of the state to protect people from themselves, and to forbid behaviors that are harmful to society. Extending the premise a bit, we can also see mandating behavior that encourages a nurturing environment. I've had several conversations over the past week where Seung-Hui's behavior was cited and the question "why didn't anyone do anything?" came up. Something probably could have been done, but most of us wouldn't want to live in a society that required it. I thought the phrase "nanny society" was a relatively recent one, but a Wikipedia entry indicates that the earliest use of the term was back in 1965, where it was actually characterized as the "nanny state." Opposition to the nanny society is fairly universal, although it is usually selective in scope.
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