abc close to deal on us assets, page-56

A few things to bear in mind:

- I could not find in the financials a split of the intangible assets between the various countries. Given revenues of circa 40% came out of the US, of the 3 bil good will approx. 1.2 bil could be attributed to the US operations. Question is, now that the US business has been valued at 775 mil, what adjustment will be made to goodwill. How much will the write down amount to?

- Conditions/covenants/Pricing for the new convertible note.

- The strike price will be very interesting. To say 300 mil of notes will roughly convert to 10% of ABC's mkt cap....well does it means they expect mkt cap to be circa 3 bil based on vwap? What if it stays at 1 bil...then 30% dilution?

To me the US assets were sold at fire sale prices. All this 14 times ebitda is bs, its based on actual, which numbers were depressed. The full potential of the US asset was never realised.

HOWEVER, the main theme of this deal apart from the financial aspect is that Morgan Stanley believe in the Management and are willing to cough-up some serious cash. The flip side to this is......existing shareholders got sold out.

Does Eddie still get to keep his job and all the options etc that he will accrue in the future?

Sorry guys, my sentiment is negative on this one. I don't hold but hope the sp is up on this on tomorrow.

BYG