Google touts daily deal on home page, a first (Reuters)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc promoted a Groupon-like daily deals offer on its home page on Wednesday for the first time, a rare instance of the Internet giant using its prized online real estate for advertising. The world’s No.1 Web-search engine launched a daily deals business in certain cities this year — called Google Offers — to try and counter Groupon’s increasing draw for Web surfers.

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc promoted a Groupon-like daily deals offer on its home page on Wednesday for the first time, a rare instance of the Internet giant using its prized online real estate for advertising.

The world’s No.1 Web-search engine launched a daily deals business in certain cities this year — called Google Offers — to try and counter Groupon’s increasing draw for Web surfers.

Wednesday’s daily deal was the first time a Google Offers product has been promoted on its minimalist website, and may signal an escalation of competition with Groupon — which has filed for an IPO sources say could happen as soon as next month.

The pair are vying for advertising dollars from local businesses, such as restaurants and retail stores.

A short blurb beneath Google’s sparse home page — a valued window into a plethora of services from email to maps — offered visitors $25 tickets to New York’s American Museum of Natural History for the discounted price of $5.

“We occasionally include a link on the Google homepage that points users to important information, whether it be about a relevant cause, a new product or an offer,” a Google spokeswoman said in a statement emailed to Reuters.

“Users can benefit from learning about great deals from local organizations.”

Google has traditionally resisted using its homepage for promotions, save for occasionally pushing in-house products such as its Chrome Web browser or its now-defunct Nexus S phone.

Google generated 96 percent of its roughly $29 billion in revenue last year from advertising. Most of it comes from ads that appear alongside Google’s search results.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic and Alistair Barr; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Japanese, Australian Stock Futures Increase as U.S. Factory Demand Rises

American depositary receipts of BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s biggest mining company and Australia’s No. 1 oil producer, gained 0.3 percent after metal prices climbed. Photographer: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg Aug.

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Japanese and Australian stock futures rose after a report showed U.S. factory orders expanded at the fastest pace in four months, boosting the outlook for Asian exporters to the world’s biggest economy.

American depositary receipts of Toyota Motor Corp. (7203), the world’s largest carmaker, rose 0.8 percent from the closing share price in Tokyo. Those of Sony Corp. (6758), Japan’s No. 1 exporter of consumer electronics, advanced 1.1 percent. ADRs of BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP), the world’s biggest mining company and Australia’s No. 1 oil producer, gained 0.3 percent after metal prices climbed.

Futures on Japan’s Nikkei 225 (NKY) Stock Average expiring in September closed at 9,030 in Chicago yesterday, up from 8,960 in Osaka, Japan. They were bid in the pre-market at 9,020 in Osaka at 8:05 a.m. local time. Futures on Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index advanced 0.7 percent today. New Zealand’s NZX 50 Index rose 0.3 percent in Wellington.

“The stock market has priced in concerns that the U.S. economy would near a recession without policy response, but recent economic reports haven’t deteriorated much,” said Mitsushige Akino, who oversees about $600 million in Tokyo at Ichiyoshi Investment Management Co. “Stocks have been oversold, and we will see how much rebound they can get.”

Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 0.1 percent today. In New York, the index rose 0.5 percent yesterday, paring its August decline to 5.7 percent, the biggest monthly retreat since May 2010.

Orders placed with U.S. factories rose 2.4 percent in July, the most in four months, Commerce Department figures showed yesterday. Vehicle orders climbed last month by the most since January 2003, rebounding from a slump caused by supply disruptions linked to the earthquake in Japan.

The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago Inc. said yesterday its business barometer fell to 56.5 in August, exceeding the highest estimate of 51 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, from 58.8 in July.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index declined 9.3 percent this year through yesterday, compared with a 3.1 percent drop by the S&P 500 and a 13.9 percent loss by the Stoxx Europe 600 Index. Stocks in the Asian benchmark are valued at 12.3 times estimated earnings on average, compared with 12.2 times for the S&P 500 and 9.9 times for the Stoxx 600.

The London Metal Exchange Index of prices for six industrial metals including copper and aluminum rose 1.3 percent yesterday.

To contact the reporter on this story: Yoshiaki Nohara in Tokyo at ynohara1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nick Gentle at ngentle2@bloomberg.net.

August Tech Recap: Patents, Buyouts, IPO Woes, and Surviving a Market Crash

Investors of all kinds can be glad that August is over. The Nasdaq shed 6.4%, even after a strong recovery at the end of the month.

Read this article:

Investors of all kinds can be glad that August is over. The Nasdaq shed 6.4%, even after a strong recovery at the end of the month. Just eight trading days ago the Nasdaq was down a whopping 15% for the month!

However, of all industries, technology saw some of the most dramatic changes. Here are four of the top storylines that emerged.

August tech news No. 1: The patent wars heat up
The brewing storyline of companies accumulating patent arsenals hit a fever pitch in August when Google announced it was buying Motorola Mobility on Aug. 15. The acquisition was the direct result of a consortium led by Apple, Microsoft, and Research In Motion purchasing a trove of Nortel patents. Elsewhere, Apple and Samsung have an ongoing battle in court that could result in Samsung’s popular Galaxy Tab tablets being pulled from store shelves.

Looking forward, a few key questions have emerged:

• Will Android partners rebel? The Korean government recently said it was exploring an alternative mobile OS to reduce Korean electronics companies’ reliance on Android. Then reports surfaced that Samsung, the largest Android partner in terms of smartphone sales, was exploring buying Hewlett-Packard‘s webOS business. Google will have to juggle pleasing Android partners with producing its own hardware. That won’t be an easy task.
• Who’s next on the buying block? With Motorola gone, some key patent companies remain. InterDigital (Nasdaq: IDCC  ) has seen its share price soar as patent wars have heated up. Enthusiasm over VirnetX (NYSE: VHC  ) reached a peak in July when shares crossed $40 on patent mania. Since then, they’ve retreated to half that level, with rumors routinely sending shares up or down 10% a day. While it has little value left as a stand-alone business, a recent estimate valued Eastman Kodak‘s patents at over $3 billion. OLED-patent king Universal Display (Nasdaq: PANL  ) isn’t a likely buyout candidate, but managed to secure new licensing contracts with its major customers in August. It closed out the month up 64%.

August tech news No. 2: The CEO of a generation steps down
After a decade of stunning product successes, Steve Jobs stepped down as Apple’s CEO. He leaves a company that’s in a neck-and-neck race with ExxonMobil for the title of the most valuable company in the world. While Steve Jobs’ vision can’t be replaced, he leaves behind a capable management team that has a deep talent bench.

Here are some Fool articles looking at the impact of Steve Jobs’ reign and departure, and an examination of his replacement, Tim Cook:

August tech news No. 3: HP’s not-so-bold reinvention
HP started August out trading at $35.80 a share, and ended the month at $26.03. Ouch. Somewhere in the mess, HP issued poor guidance, announced it was divesting its PC business, killed its tablet offering, and purchased a $10 billion software company. Yeah, that’s a lot of news.

I haven’t been a big fan of how HP’s going about reinventing itself. It’s not that expanding across the technology stack (that is, offering services across services, software, and hardware) is a bad idea; seemingly every big technology company wants to clone IBM‘s wildly popular model. However, HP’s strategy doesn’t look entirely focused. Before buying Autonomy for $10 billion (a hefty 50 times earnings), the company also snooped around Tibco and Teradata.

Those are both fine companies, but I think HP’s willingness to pursue such disparate software companies shows its strategy amounts to little more than “get into software — any kind of software.” With IBM, their consulting business offers more high-end services than HP’s EDS business, so cross-selling software is a much easier proposition. Plus, they have a huge breadth of offerings, whereas HP’s software side is pretty slim aside from Autonomy. While HP’s trading on the cheap, I think there’s plenty more headaches ahead while it implements its transformation into a full-service IT company.

August tech news No. 4: A thawing IPO market
The main technology discussion point at the start of the year was whether we were in another technology bubble. Raucous IPOs from Zillow (Nasdaq: Z  ) and LinkedIn seemed to confirm we were. However, with markets pulling back, IPOs from Internet stars like Zynga and Groupon are rapidly being pushed back.

The most notable IPO of August was Tudou, a Chinese video company that attracts 200 million unique visitors a month. The stock quickly dropped a third from its IPO pricing but has since rebounded. It competes not only against other Chinese Internet giants like largest peer Youku.com, but also Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU  ) , SINA, and Sohu.com. The interesting question in the months ahead will be whether companies like Youku and Tudou can go it alone, or whether large Chinese Internet companies like Tencent, Baidu, and SINA will form partnerships or buy them outright. Just this week, SINA invested $66 million in Tudou.

Looking back at the American IPO market, recent IPO Pandora (NYSE: P  ) exceeded expectations in its first public earnings release. The month also saw an attempt by Research In Motion to launch its own streaming service. While I’m bearish on Research In Motion’s service due to the limited nature, the broader idea is that the media landscape is rapidly changing. Watching the evolution of how users consume media and how large companies distribute their own media on mobile devices will be central to your investment thesis in coming years, especially if you’re an investor in Sirius XM (Nasdaq: SIRI  ) . The reshaping of delivering media in America should be a storyline should have plenty of turns in the years ahead.

That’s it for August’s tech recap. To stay appraised, add any of the major companies listed above to our free My Watchlist service today:

August Tech Recap: Patents, Buyouts, IPO Woes, and Surviving a Market Crash

Investors of all kinds can be glad that August is over. The Nasdaq shed 6.4%, even after a strong recovery at the end of the month. Just eight trading days ago the Nasdaq was down a whopping 15% for the month! However, of all industries, technology saw some of the most dramatic changes.

Read the original:

Investors of all kinds can be glad that August is over. The Nasdaq shed 6.4%, even after a strong recovery at the end of the month. Just eight trading days ago the Nasdaq was down a whopping 15% for the month!

However, of all industries, technology saw some of the most dramatic changes. Here are four of the top storylines that emerged.

August tech news No. 1: The patent wars heat up
The brewing storyline of companies accumulating patent arsenals hit a fever pitch in August when Google announced it was buying Motorola Mobility on Aug. 15. The acquisition was the direct result of a consortium led by Apple, Microsoft, and Research In Motion purchasing a trove of Nortel patents. Elsewhere, Apple and Samsung have an ongoing battle in court that could result in Samsung’s popular Galaxy Tab tablets being pulled from store shelves.

Looking forward, a few key questions have emerged:

• Will Android partners rebel? The Korean government recently said it was exploring an alternative mobile OS to reduce Korean electronics companies’ reliance on Android. Then reports surfaced that Samsung, the largest Android partner in terms of smartphone sales, was exploring buying Hewlett-Packard‘s webOS business. Google will have to juggle pleasing Android partners with producing its own hardware. That won’t be an easy task.
• Who’s next on the buying block? With Motorola gone, some key patent companies remain. InterDigital (Nasdaq: IDCC  ) has seen its share price soar as patent wars have heated up. Enthusiasm over VirnetX (NYSE: VHC  ) reached a peak in July when shares crossed $40 on patent mania. Since then, they’ve retreated to half that level, with rumors routinely sending shares up or down 10% a day. While it has little value left as a stand-alone business, a recent estimate valued Eastman Kodak‘s patents at over $3 billion. OLED-patent king Universal Display (Nasdaq: PANL  ) isn’t a likely buyout candidate, but managed to secure new licensing contracts with its major customers in August. It closed out the month up 64%.

August tech news No. 2: The CEO of a generation steps down
After a decade of stunning product successes, Steve Jobs stepped down as Apple’s CEO. He leaves a company that’s in a neck-and-neck race with ExxonMobil for the title of the most valuable company in the world. While Steve Jobs’ vision can’t be replaced, he leaves behind a capable management team that has a deep talent bench.

Here are some Fool articles looking at the impact of Steve Jobs’ reign and departure, and an examination of his replacement, Tim Cook:

August tech news No. 3: HP’s not-so-bold reinvention
HP started August out trading at $35.80 a share, and ended the month at $26.03. Ouch. Somewhere in the mess, HP issued poor guidance, announced it was divesting its PC business, killed its tablet offering, and purchased a $10 billion software company. Yeah, that’s a lot of news.

I haven’t been a big fan of how HP’s going about reinventing itself. It’s not that expanding across the technology stack (that is, offering services across services, software, and hardware) is a bad idea; seemingly every big technology company wants to clone IBM‘s wildly popular model. However, HP’s strategy doesn’t look entirely focused. Before buying Autonomy for $10 billion (a hefty 50 times earnings), the company also snooped around Tibco and Teradata.

Those are both fine companies, but I think HP’s willingness to pursue such disparate software companies shows its strategy amounts to little more than “get into software — any kind of software.” With IBM, their consulting business offers more high-end services than HP’s EDS business, so cross-selling software is a much easier proposition. Plus, they have a huge breadth of offerings, whereas HP’s software side is pretty slim aside from Autonomy. While HP’s trading on the cheap, I think there’s plenty more headaches ahead while it implements its transformation into a full-service IT company.

August tech news No. 4: A thawing IPO market
The main technology discussion point at the start of the year was whether we were in another technology bubble. Raucous IPOs from Zillow (Nasdaq: Z  ) and LinkedIn seemed to confirm we were. However, with markets pulling back, IPOs from Internet stars like Zynga and Groupon are rapidly being pushed back.

The most notable IPO of August was Tudou, a Chinese video company that attracts 200 million unique visitors a month. The stock quickly dropped a third from its IPO pricing but has since rebounded. It competes not only against other Chinese Internet giants like largest peer Youku.com, but also Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU  ) , SINA, and Sohu.com. The interesting question in the months ahead will be whether companies like Youku and Tudou can go it alone, or whether large Chinese Internet companies like Tencent, Baidu, and SINA will form partnerships or buy them outright. Just this week, SINA invested $66 million in Tudou.

Looking back at the American IPO market, recent IPO Pandora (NYSE: P  ) exceeded expectations in its first public earnings release. The month also saw an attempt by Research In Motion to launch its own streaming service. While I’m bearish on Research In Motion’s service due to the limited nature, the broader idea is that the media landscape is rapidly changing. Watching the evolution of how users consume media and how large companies distribute their own media on mobile devices will be central to your investment thesis in coming years, especially if you’re an investor in Sirius XM (Nasdaq: SIRI  ) . The reshaping of delivering media in America should be a storyline should have plenty of turns in the years ahead.

That’s it for August’s tech recap. To stay appraised, add any of the major companies listed above to our free My Watchlist service today:

Goodsie Lets Anyone Create A Custom Online Storefront (Mashable)

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Read more:

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: Goodsie

[More from Mashable: 4 Ways to Set Up a Storefront on Facebook]

Quick Pitch: Do-it-yourself branded online storefronts.

Genius Idea: Making a point-and-click product look like it was made by a designer.

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People looking to sell products on the Internet have no shortage of options. There are marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon where launching a page takes a matter of minutes, and dozens of storefront services such as Shopify if you’re selling for a small business.

In April, Goodsie jumped into this already crowded space with a new make-your-own online store product.

If it weren’t doing something different, it would be doomed. But the startup has managed to differentiate on three points: ease of use, design and price.

To start with, its creation tool is intuitive and requires no code knowledge — as evidenced by the fact that I was able to create this rough site in about ten minutes. Every detail, down to the logo on the checkout button, is a point-and-click command.

“It’s like you’re designing on a napkin and you can see it come to life on the screen,” CEO and founder Jonathan Marcus says.

The well-known companies in the space tend to offer themes that are only truly customizable if you’re fluent in CSS and HTML.

Easier options often create cookie-cutter pages, but Goodsie has enough flexibility to create varying results. It’s hard to tell from the rough store that I created, but it’s possible to create a professional-looking webpage. Check out this storefront from MilkMade, a members-only homemade ice cream delivery service in NYC:

Goodsie costs $15 per month, which is $10 less than BigCommerce’s lowest plan, $15 less than Shopify’s lowest plan, and $15 less than Yahoo eCommerce’s lowest plan. Granted, it does lack some of the features of more robust products such as Facebook and eBay storefronts, marketing features and a way to import product listings without entering them individually.

It also is still in the process of integrating technology that will allow vendors to accept credit cards in addition to Paypal and Google Checkout. But for my needs as a hypothetical tent seller, it works.

Marcus and his team built the product using much of the same point-and-click design used in another of its projects, Flavors.me. Eventually, Marcus hopes to more fully integrate the capabilities of Flavors.me and Goodsie so that users can combine their storefronts and their main web presence.

As a standalone storefront, about 500 companies pay for Goodsie and another 1,000 are enrolled in a free 30-day trial. That’s been enough to impress investors.

On Wednesday, Goodsie closed a $3 million round of funding from angel investors that include Path co-founder Dave Morin, TechStar’s David Tisch and Alex Zubillaga.

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Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

AT&T gearing up for rare antitrust fight with DOJ (AP)

SAN FRANCISCO – The Justice Department’s rejection of AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile USA will test new federal guidelines on challenging mergers and the companies’ resolve in forming the nation’s largest wireless carrier.

More:

SAN FRANCISCO – The Justice Department’s rejection of AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile USA will test new federal guidelines on challenging mergers and the companies’ resolve in forming the nation’s largest wireless carrier.

A courtroom battle is likely and could wring out information that the companies would prefer to keep private. Still, AT&T Inc. has a big incentive to fight: If the deal is called off, the company has to pay a $3 billion breakup fee and surrender some of its unused spectrum for wireless communications.

AT&T is promising to fight the Justice Department’s decision. The department filed a lawsuit Wednesday to block the $39 billion deal, saying it would reduce competition and lead to price increases for customers.

If AT&T follows through on that, it could produce the biggest antitrust showdown since business software maker Oracle Corp. squared off with the federal government seven years ago. That dispute, triggered by the government’s decision to block Oracle’s proposed purchase of rival PeopleSoft Inc., exposed several well-kept corporate secrets and required Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to testify before a packed courtroom.

In the end, Oracle pulled off something few companies have done in the past 30 years: It persuaded a federal judge that the Justice Department didn’t have grounds to block its PeopleSoft deal. Oracle closed its $11.1 billion takeover four months after getting the favorable court ruling.

Usually, not even the most powerful companies bother to fight government regulators in an antitrust dispute. Google Inc., for example, backed off in 2008 when the Justice Department threatened to sue to block a proposed Internet search partnership with Yahoo Inc. Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, pulled out of a deal to buy Intuit Corp. in 1995 after the Justice Department objected.

The Justice Department filed 138 antitrust cases in federal courts from 1999 to 2008 and lost just four of them, according to the latest breakdown from the agency.

One reason that the Justice Department has such a good track record is because it rarely challenges a deal unless it’s very confident it can win, said Joseph Bauer, a University of Notre Dame law professor and antitrust expert.

Knowing AT&T would probably go to court, the Justice Department may have wanted to signal that it intends to get tougher on corporate marriages between rivals in markets with few other competitors.

A union between AT&T and T-Mobile USA would leave Verizon and Sprint as the only other major cellphone carriers in the U.S. T-Mobile, a subsidiary of German telecom company Deutsche Telekom AG, is currently the No. 4 wireless carrier, while AT&T is second. Combined, AT&T would be the largest.

In a sign of its confidence, the Justice Department decided to strike down the deal even though it could have taken about three more months to study the pros and cons. The timing stunned AT&T, which said it didn’t get any advance warning.

“It was an aggressive and impressive move by the DOJ to take the battle right at AT&T,” said Daniel Wall, a San Francisco attorney who represented Oracle in its 2004 fight to win the right to buy PeopleSoft. “It sent a statement that the DOJ intends to fight this one all the way to the finish line.”

Wall said AT&T may have a tougher time proving its case than Oracle did against the Justice Department. In the PeopleSoft deal, Wall said, antitrust enforcers seemed to be manipulating the definition of the business software market. “This time, it looks to me that they have a pretty solid market definition,” Wall said. “They don’t appear to be playing games.”

University of Iowa law professor Herbert Hovenkamp said the Justice Department is being guided by a set of new guidelines, issued late last year, which make it clearer when mergers should be challenged on antitrust grounds.

“I don’t think they are overreaching here,” Hovenkamp said. “If there is a broader message here, it’s that the government intends to enforce these new guidelines.”

Besides being forced to divulge potentially damaging information, AT&T will face other risks if it doesn’t settle with the Justice Department. Going to trial will take months, or even years, leaving the company in a legal limbo that could depress its stock price and cause customers and key employees to defect.

There’s another risk to going to trial: as they try to prove their case, antitrust lawyers sometimes obtain confidential e-mails that contain embarrassing snippets and present other evidence that can make companies look bad.

Those are some of the reasons why AT&T mayl try to reach some kind of settlement with the government.

If AT&T persists, antitrust experts said that it’s better off going up against the Justice Department than the Federal Trade Commission, which also handles antitrust reviews. That’s mainly because lawsuits with the Justice Department are contested in federal courts. By contrast, the threshold for the FTC to block deals is generally lower, and the ensuing legal skirmishes occur in administrative law proceedings that drag on longer.

“The merging parties usually have a better shot when they are going up against the DOJ than the FTC,” said D. Daniel Sokol, a University of Florida professor specializing in antitrust law.

AT&T gearing up for rare antitrust fight with DOJ (AP)

SAN FRANCISCO – The Justice Department’s rejection of AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile USA will test new federal guidelines on challenging mergers and the companies’ resolve in forming the nation’s largest wireless carrier. A courtroom battle is likely and could wring out information that the companies would prefer to keep private. Still, AT&T Inc.

Original post:

SAN FRANCISCO – The Justice Department’s rejection of AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile USA will test new federal guidelines on challenging mergers and the companies’ resolve in forming the nation’s largest wireless carrier.

A courtroom battle is likely and could wring out information that the companies would prefer to keep private. Still, AT&T Inc. has a big incentive to fight: If the deal is called off, the company has to pay a $3 billion breakup fee and surrender some of its unused spectrum for wireless communications.

AT&T is promising to fight the Justice Department’s decision. The department filed a lawsuit Wednesday to block the $39 billion deal, saying it would reduce competition and lead to price increases for customers.

If AT&T follows through on that, it could produce the biggest antitrust showdown since business software maker Oracle Corp. squared off with the federal government seven years ago. That dispute, triggered by the government’s decision to block Oracle’s proposed purchase of rival PeopleSoft Inc., exposed several well-kept corporate secrets and required Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to testify before a packed courtroom.

In the end, Oracle pulled off something few companies have done in the past 30 years: It persuaded a federal judge that the Justice Department didn’t have grounds to block its PeopleSoft deal. Oracle closed its $11.1 billion takeover four months after getting the favorable court ruling.

Usually, not even the most powerful companies bother to fight government regulators in an antitrust dispute. Google Inc., for example, backed off in 2008 when the Justice Department threatened to sue to block a proposed Internet search partnership with Yahoo Inc. Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, pulled out of a deal to buy Intuit Corp. in 1995 after the Justice Department objected.

The Justice Department filed 138 antitrust cases in federal courts from 1999 to 2008 and lost just four of them, according to the latest breakdown from the agency.

One reason that the Justice Department has such a good track record is because it rarely challenges a deal unless it’s very confident it can win, said Joseph Bauer, a University of Notre Dame law professor and antitrust expert.

Knowing AT&T would probably go to court, the Justice Department may have wanted to signal that it intends to get tougher on corporate marriages between rivals in markets with few other competitors.

A union between AT&T and T-Mobile USA would leave Verizon and Sprint as the only other major cellphone carriers in the U.S. T-Mobile, a subsidiary of German telecom company Deutsche Telekom AG, is currently the No. 4 wireless carrier, while AT&T is second. Combined, AT&T would be the largest.

In a sign of its confidence, the Justice Department decided to strike down the deal even though it could have taken about three more months to study the pros and cons. The timing stunned AT&T, which said it didn’t get any advance warning.

“It was an aggressive and impressive move by the DOJ to take the battle right at AT&T,” said Daniel Wall, a San Francisco attorney who represented Oracle in its 2004 fight to win the right to buy PeopleSoft. “It sent a statement that the DOJ intends to fight this one all the way to the finish line.”

Wall said AT&T may have a tougher time proving its case than Oracle did against the Justice Department. In the PeopleSoft deal, Wall said, antitrust enforcers seemed to be manipulating the definition of the business software market. “This time, it looks to me that they have a pretty solid market definition,” Wall said. “They don’t appear to be playing games.”

University of Iowa law professor Herbert Hovenkamp said the Justice Department is being guided by a set of new guidelines, issued late last year, which make it clearer when mergers should be challenged on antitrust grounds.

“I don’t think they are overreaching here,” Hovenkamp said. “If there is a broader message here, it’s that the government intends to enforce these new guidelines.”

Besides being forced to divulge potentially damaging information, AT&T will face other risks if it doesn’t settle with the Justice Department. Going to trial will take months, or even years, leaving the company in a legal limbo that could depress its stock price and cause customers and key employees to defect.

There’s another risk to going to trial: as they try to prove their case, antitrust lawyers sometimes obtain confidential e-mails that contain embarrassing snippets and present other evidence that can make companies look bad.

Those are some of the reasons why AT&T mayl try to reach some kind of settlement with the government.

If AT&T persists, antitrust experts said that it’s better off going up against the Justice Department than the Federal Trade Commission, which also handles antitrust reviews. That’s mainly because lawsuits with the Justice Department are contested in federal courts. By contrast, the threshold for the FTC to block deals is generally lower, and the ensuing legal skirmishes occur in administrative law proceedings that drag on longer.

“The merging parties usually have a better shot when they are going up against the DOJ than the FTC,” said D. Daniel Sokol, a University of Florida professor specializing in antitrust law.

AT&T gearing up for rare antitrust fight with DOJ (AP)

SAN FRANCISCO – The Justice Department’s rejection of AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile USA will test new federal guidelines on challenging mergers and the companies’ resolve in forming the nation’s largest wireless carrier. A courtroom battle is likely and could wring out information that the companies would prefer to keep private.

Read the original post:

SAN FRANCISCO – The Justice Department’s rejection of AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile USA will test new federal guidelines on challenging mergers and the companies’ resolve in forming the nation’s largest wireless carrier.

A courtroom battle is likely and could wring out information that the companies would prefer to keep private. Still, AT&T Inc. has a big incentive to fight: If the deal is called off, the company has to pay a $3 billion breakup fee and surrender some of its unused spectrum for wireless communications.

AT&T is promising to fight the Justice Department’s decision. The department filed a lawsuit Wednesday to block the $39 billion deal, saying it would reduce competition and lead to price increases for customers.

If AT&T follows through on that, it could produce the biggest antitrust showdown since business software maker Oracle Corp. squared off with the federal government seven years ago. That dispute, triggered by the government’s decision to block Oracle’s proposed purchase of rival PeopleSoft Inc., exposed several well-kept corporate secrets and required Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to testify before a packed courtroom.

In the end, Oracle pulled off something few companies have done in the past 30 years: It persuaded a federal judge that the Justice Department didn’t have grounds to block its PeopleSoft deal. Oracle closed its $11.1 billion takeover four months after getting the favorable court ruling.

Usually, not even the most powerful companies bother to fight government regulators in an antitrust dispute. Google Inc., for example, backed off in 2008 when the Justice Department threatened to sue to block a proposed Internet search partnership with Yahoo Inc. Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, pulled out of a deal to buy Intuit Corp. in 1995 after the Justice Department objected.

The Justice Department filed 138 antitrust cases in federal courts from 1999 to 2008 and lost just four of them, according to the latest breakdown from the agency.

One reason that the Justice Department has such a good track record is because it rarely challenges a deal unless it’s very confident it can win, said Joseph Bauer, a University of Notre Dame law professor and antitrust expert.

Knowing AT&T would probably go to court, the Justice Department may have wanted to signal that it intends to get tougher on corporate marriages between rivals in markets with few other competitors.

A union between AT&T and T-Mobile USA would leave Verizon and Sprint as the only other major cellphone carriers in the U.S. T-Mobile, a subsidiary of German telecom company Deutsche Telekom AG, is currently the No. 4 wireless carrier, while AT&T is second. Combined, AT&T would be the largest.

In a sign of its confidence, the Justice Department decided to strike down the deal even though it could have taken about three more months to study the pros and cons. The timing stunned AT&T, which said it didn’t get any advance warning.

“It was an aggressive and impressive move by the DOJ to take the battle right at AT&T,” said Daniel Wall, a San Francisco attorney who represented Oracle in its 2004 fight to win the right to buy PeopleSoft. “It sent a statement that the DOJ intends to fight this one all the way to the finish line.”

Wall said AT&T may have a tougher time proving its case than Oracle did against the Justice Department. In the PeopleSoft deal, Wall said, antitrust enforcers seemed to be manipulating the definition of the business software market. “This time, it looks to me that they have a pretty solid market definition,” Wall said. “They don’t appear to be playing games.”

University of Iowa law professor Herbert Hovenkamp said the Justice Department is being guided by a set of new guidelines, issued late last year, which make it clearer when mergers should be challenged on antitrust grounds.

“I don’t think they are overreaching here,” Hovenkamp said. “If there is a broader message here, it’s that the government intends to enforce these new guidelines.”

Besides being forced to divulge potentially damaging information, AT&T will face other risks if it doesn’t settle with the Justice Department. Going to trial will take months, or even years, leaving the company in a legal limbo that could depress its stock price and cause customers and key employees to defect.

There’s another risk to going to trial: as they try to prove their case, antitrust lawyers sometimes obtain confidential e-mails that contain embarrassing snippets and present other evidence that can make companies look bad.

Those are some of the reasons why AT&T mayl try to reach some kind of settlement with the government.

If AT&T persists, antitrust experts said that it’s better off going up against the Justice Department than the Federal Trade Commission, which also handles antitrust reviews. That’s mainly because lawsuits with the Justice Department are contested in federal courts. By contrast, the threshold for the FTC to block deals is generally lower, and the ensuing legal skirmishes occur in administrative law proceedings that drag on longer.

“The merging parties usually have a better shot when they are going up against the DOJ than the FTC,” said D. Daniel Sokol, a University of Florida professor specializing in antitrust law.

AT&T gearing up for rare antitrust fight with DOJ (AP)

SAN FRANCISCO – The Justice Department’s rejection of AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile USA will test new federal guidelines on challenging mergers and the companies’ resolve in forming the nation’s largest wireless carrier. A courtroom battle is likely and could wring out information that the companies would prefer to keep private. Still, AT&T Inc

Read more here:

SAN FRANCISCO – The Justice Department’s rejection of AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile USA will test new federal guidelines on challenging mergers and the companies’ resolve in forming the nation’s largest wireless carrier.

A courtroom battle is likely and could wring out information that the companies would prefer to keep private. Still, AT&T Inc. has a big incentive to fight: If the deal is called off, the company has to pay a $3 billion breakup fee and surrender some of its unused spectrum for wireless communications.

AT&T is promising to fight the Justice Department’s decision. The department filed a lawsuit Wednesday to block the $39 billion deal, saying it would reduce competition and lead to price increases for customers.

If AT&T follows through on that, it could produce the biggest antitrust showdown since business software maker Oracle Corp. squared off with the federal government seven years ago. That dispute, triggered by the government’s decision to block Oracle’s proposed purchase of rival PeopleSoft Inc., exposed several well-kept corporate secrets and required Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to testify before a packed courtroom.

In the end, Oracle pulled off something few companies have done in the past 30 years: It persuaded a federal judge that the Justice Department didn’t have grounds to block its PeopleSoft deal. Oracle closed its $11.1 billion takeover four months after getting the favorable court ruling.

Usually, not even the most powerful companies bother to fight government regulators in an antitrust dispute. Google Inc., for example, backed off in 2008 when the Justice Department threatened to sue to block a proposed Internet search partnership with Yahoo Inc. Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, pulled out of a deal to buy Intuit Corp. in 1995 after the Justice Department objected.

The Justice Department filed 138 antitrust cases in federal courts from 1999 to 2008 and lost just four of them, according to the latest breakdown from the agency.

One reason that the Justice Department has such a good track record is because it rarely challenges a deal unless it’s very confident it can win, said Joseph Bauer, a University of Notre Dame law professor and antitrust expert.

Knowing AT&T would probably go to court, the Justice Department may have wanted to signal that it intends to get tougher on corporate marriages between rivals in markets with few other competitors.

A union between AT&T and T-Mobile USA would leave Verizon and Sprint as the only other major cellphone carriers in the U.S. T-Mobile, a subsidiary of German telecom company Deutsche Telekom AG, is currently the No. 4 wireless carrier, while AT&T is second. Combined, AT&T would be the largest.

In a sign of its confidence, the Justice Department decided to strike down the deal even though it could have taken about three more months to study the pros and cons. The timing stunned AT&T, which said it didn’t get any advance warning.

“It was an aggressive and impressive move by the DOJ to take the battle right at AT&T,” said Daniel Wall, a San Francisco attorney who represented Oracle in its 2004 fight to win the right to buy PeopleSoft. “It sent a statement that the DOJ intends to fight this one all the way to the finish line.”

Wall said AT&T may have a tougher time proving its case than Oracle did against the Justice Department. In the PeopleSoft deal, Wall said, antitrust enforcers seemed to be manipulating the definition of the business software market. “This time, it looks to me that they have a pretty solid market definition,” Wall said. “They don’t appear to be playing games.”

University of Iowa law professor Herbert Hovenkamp said the Justice Department is being guided by a set of new guidelines, issued late last year, which make it clearer when mergers should be challenged on antitrust grounds.

“I don’t think they are overreaching here,” Hovenkamp said. “If there is a broader message here, it’s that the government intends to enforce these new guidelines.”

Besides being forced to divulge potentially damaging information, AT&T will face other risks if it doesn’t settle with the Justice Department. Going to trial will take months, or even years, leaving the company in a legal limbo that could depress its stock price and cause customers and key employees to defect.

There’s another risk to going to trial: as they try to prove their case, antitrust lawyers sometimes obtain confidential e-mails that contain embarrassing snippets and present other evidence that can make companies look bad.

Those are some of the reasons why AT&T mayl try to reach some kind of settlement with the government.

If AT&T persists, antitrust experts said that it’s better off going up against the Justice Department than the Federal Trade Commission, which also handles antitrust reviews. That’s mainly because lawsuits with the Justice Department are contested in federal courts. By contrast, the threshold for the FTC to block deals is generally lower, and the ensuing legal skirmishes occur in administrative law proceedings that drag on longer.

“The merging parties usually have a better shot when they are going up against the DOJ than the FTC,” said D. Daniel Sokol, a University of Florida professor specializing in antitrust law.

AT&T gearing up for rare antitrust fight with DOJ (AP)

SAN FRANCISCO – The Justice Department’s rejection of AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile USA will test new federal guidelines on challenging mergers and the companies’ resolve in forming the nation’s largest wireless carrier. A courtroom battle is likely and could wring out information that the companies would prefer to keep private.

See the original post:

SAN FRANCISCO – The Justice Department’s rejection of AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile USA will test new federal guidelines on challenging mergers and the companies’ resolve in forming the nation’s largest wireless carrier.

A courtroom battle is likely and could wring out information that the companies would prefer to keep private. Still, AT&T Inc. has a big incentive to fight: If the deal is called off, the company has to pay a $3 billion breakup fee and surrender some of its unused spectrum for wireless communications.

AT&T is promising to fight the Justice Department’s decision. The department filed a lawsuit Wednesday to block the $39 billion deal, saying it would reduce competition and lead to price increases for customers.

If AT&T follows through on that, it could produce the biggest antitrust showdown since business software maker Oracle Corp. squared off with the federal government seven years ago. That dispute, triggered by the government’s decision to block Oracle’s proposed purchase of rival PeopleSoft Inc., exposed several well-kept corporate secrets and required Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to testify before a packed courtroom.

In the end, Oracle pulled off something few companies have done in the past 30 years: It persuaded a federal judge that the Justice Department didn’t have grounds to block its PeopleSoft deal. Oracle closed its $11.1 billion takeover four months after getting the favorable court ruling.

Usually, not even the most powerful companies bother to fight government regulators in an antitrust dispute. Google Inc., for example, backed off in 2008 when the Justice Department threatened to sue to block a proposed Internet search partnership with Yahoo Inc. Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, pulled out of a deal to buy Intuit Corp. in 1995 after the Justice Department objected.

The Justice Department filed 138 antitrust cases in federal courts from 1999 to 2008 and lost just four of them, according to the latest breakdown from the agency.

One reason that the Justice Department has such a good track record is because it rarely challenges a deal unless it’s very confident it can win, said Joseph Bauer, a University of Notre Dame law professor and antitrust expert.

Knowing AT&T would probably go to court, the Justice Department may have wanted to signal that it intends to get tougher on corporate marriages between rivals in markets with few other competitors.

A union between AT&T and T-Mobile USA would leave Verizon and Sprint as the only other major cellphone carriers in the U.S. T-Mobile, a subsidiary of German telecom company Deutsche Telekom AG, is currently the No. 4 wireless carrier, while AT&T is second. Combined, AT&T would be the largest.

In a sign of its confidence, the Justice Department decided to strike down the deal even though it could have taken about three more months to study the pros and cons. The timing stunned AT&T, which said it didn’t get any advance warning.

“It was an aggressive and impressive move by the DOJ to take the battle right at AT&T,” said Daniel Wall, a San Francisco attorney who represented Oracle in its 2004 fight to win the right to buy PeopleSoft. “It sent a statement that the DOJ intends to fight this one all the way to the finish line.”

Wall said AT&T may have a tougher time proving its case than Oracle did against the Justice Department. In the PeopleSoft deal, Wall said, antitrust enforcers seemed to be manipulating the definition of the business software market. “This time, it looks to me that they have a pretty solid market definition,” Wall said. “They don’t appear to be playing games.”

University of Iowa law professor Herbert Hovenkamp said the Justice Department is being guided by a set of new guidelines, issued late last year, which make it clearer when mergers should be challenged on antitrust grounds.

“I don’t think they are overreaching here,” Hovenkamp said. “If there is a broader message here, it’s that the government intends to enforce these new guidelines.”

Besides being forced to divulge potentially damaging information, AT&T will face other risks if it doesn’t settle with the Justice Department. Going to trial will take months, or even years, leaving the company in a legal limbo that could depress its stock price and cause customers and key employees to defect.

There’s another risk to going to trial: as they try to prove their case, antitrust lawyers sometimes obtain confidential e-mails that contain embarrassing snippets and present other evidence that can make companies look bad.

Those are some of the reasons why AT&T mayl try to reach some kind of settlement with the government.

If AT&T persists, antitrust experts said that it’s better off going up against the Justice Department than the Federal Trade Commission, which also handles antitrust reviews. That’s mainly because lawsuits with the Justice Department are contested in federal courts. By contrast, the threshold for the FTC to block deals is generally lower, and the ensuing legal skirmishes occur in administrative law proceedings that drag on longer.

“The merging parties usually have a better shot when they are going up against the DOJ than the FTC,” said D. Daniel Sokol, a University of Florida professor specializing in antitrust law.

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