“Thanks to the election of Barack Obama, a black president in Washington fiction will be no more exceptional than one in real life,” Hillel Italie of the AP writes. Washington thriller write David Baldacci notes, “Before Obama, you wouldn’t have gotten away with simply having a black president and having that on the periphery.” But Richard North Patterson adds: “He’s charismatic, with a young family, and he’s multiracial, and I think for all of those reasons it would be very hard to accept the sort of traditional, white Donald Rumsfeldian authority figure you see in a lot of presidential fiction.” […]
Redstone Has to Keep Reassuring Investors
Shares of CBS and Viacom have continued to fall recently as investors remained concerned that Sumner Redstone will be forced to sell some of his shares in order to refinance his $1.6 billion in debt. In a self-fulfilling spiral, the market worries that “further weakness would undermine Mr. Redstone’s talks with lenders and force him to sell stock in the two companies he controls.” The WSJ adds: “Redstone is expected to have to sell some assets to get bankers to agree to a restructuring. Advisers are combing through the family’s holdings to assess their value and ease of sale, according […]
Quercus Raising More Capital; Cheetham Steps Down
Shut out of traditional credit markets, Quercus is planning to raise 1.75 million pounds “in additional working capital and to strengthen its balance sheet,” nearly all of which will come from Pentland Group, which currently holds almost 20 percent of the company’s stock. Shareholders must approve a waiver from the takeover code, however, to allow Pentland to increase their stake to more than 30 percent. The thinly-traded company currently has a market cap of 3.1 million pounds, with the stock having fallen over 71 percent in a year. The immediate need is to refinance 775,000 pounds in loans that have […]
More UK Credit Insurance Worries
Credit insurance seems to be a more standard feature of doing business in the UK than it is in the US, and the FT reports on growing concerns that “the drying up of credit insurance could herald a wave of insolvencies in the troubled sector with the weakest stores and suppliers driven out of business.” Entrepreneur Luke Johnson, whose company owns Borders UK, says: “This is a lubricant that is vital for everyday transactions. I think if necessary the government should step in to replace the capacity collapse.” An anonymous executive adds: “If credit insurance gets pulled it can be […]
NY Considers Library Funding Cuts
One more story on the economy: New York’s budget division has recommended to the governor a $20 million cut in library support as part of proposed statewide reductions of expenses. That represents abou 20 percent of the currently allocated $99 million, a number already slimmed by $4 million from the 2007 allocation. The NY Library Association says the proposal “would bring library aid down to a level not seen since 1993.” Executive director Michael Borges says in a statement that “no other educational institutions have been targeted for a 20 percent cut in state funding. There seems to be no […]
RDR Appeals Rowling Ruling
Facing a fine of just $6,750 and free legal defense, why wouldn’t they? Michigan’s RDR Books filed a notice of appeal last week against Judge Robert Patterson’s September ruling in favor of Warner Bros., blocking publication of RDR’s HARRY POTTER LEXICON.Grand Rapids Press