AllThingsD » Evan Newmark

Mean Street: Wall Street Is LinkedIn to Its Old Black Magic

Evan Newmark — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 07:00:41 +0000

If you’re looking for further confirmation that nothing ever really changes on Wall Street, check out the just-released research on LinkedIn Corp.

It’s the old Wall Street black magic circa 1999.

We have four firms that underwrote the LinkedIn IPO at $45 a share now initiating coverage with buy notes and price targets of between $85 and $92.

That’s a 100 percent markup, but it’s actually even bigger than that. LinkedIn launched its IPO roadshow with a price range in the low $30s.

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Mean Street: New Motorola CEO, Welcome to My Pain

Evan Newmark — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:32:18 +0000

What do CEOs say to each other in private? Mean Street intercepted an (imaginary) email sent this morning by Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain to Sanjay Jha, newly appointed co-CEO of Motorola.

Dear Sanjay,

Many congratulations on your new job–and welcome to our ranks. It is a rare privilege to be CEO of a desperate company.

I’ve been at it now for almost nine months at Merrill Lynch, and I’ve learned a thing or two that you might find useful.

I hate to start on a sour note, but Monday’s announcement could have been handled better. Your arrival at Motorola was trumpeted a bit too loudly.

“A stunning win for Motorola,” cheered the Wall Street analysts. And your recruitment alone added more than $2 billion to the market value of Motorola.

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Mean Street: Salesforce.com–How Much Higher Can It Go?

Evan Newmark — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:44:09 +0000

If you are a believer in efficient markets, every now and then a hot tech stock comes along that pushes your conviction to its limits.

VMware was bought for $625 million by EMC in 2004, went public in 2007 and soon hit a market cap of $48 billion. It currently trades at about a quarter of that value.

Even the hottest stock can’t defy gravity indefinitely. Or can it?

Let us take Salesforce.com. The San Francisco software company has been orbiting the stratosphere ever since its IPO in 2004. Its shares went public at $11. Last month, the shares peaked at more than $75.

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