But ultimately, look for a lot more bought-out firms to hit the public markets again.
Even though Iomega won the battle of removable storage--it bought out the assets of its main rival, the bankrupt SyQuest , in late 1998--and its Zip drive is a de facto standard for PCs, Porter says the company made a critical error by selling the drives at a low margin, thinking profits would come from the sale of the disks.
The management buy-out bought MFI from its previous owner, private equity group Merchant Equity Partners (MEP).
Semler was infuriated further when he learned that TPG and Apax bought out Q-Telecom, Greece's fourth-largest cell carrier, for 14.3 times annualized trailing earnings.
At age 24--among the first to use plastic strapping, instead of wire, to wrap newspaper bundles after they leave the printing press--he bought out his father's partner and relaunched the company as Power Industries.
In nearby Greensboro, International Textile Group, a collection of rolled-fabric makers bought out of bankruptcy by financier Wilbur Ross, is coming up with new products for affiliated company Nano-Tex, which develops textile applications on the nano scale.
News on Monday that two more Wall Street institutions had faltered -- 158-year-old Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch accepted an offer to be bought out by Bank of America -- allowed the Democrats to go on the attack after being mostly on the defensive when the political debate focused on Palin and whether the phrase "lipstick on a pig" was sexist.
Orix bought the down-and-out Kobe baseball team and named it the Orix Blue Wave.
German-owned Siemens bought out MCT last year and have continued pursuing the project.
Analysts think that company's operator could also be the extra "fifth player" that gets bought out if T-Mobile manages to remain independent.
In June, the company bought out the second-leading player in the disc-rental kiosk market, the NCR-owned Blockbuster Express kiosks (in which the store chain held an interest).
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Look for them to go belly-up or be bought out in the next 12 to 18 months.
He founded Geely in 1998 without a government license, then bought out a Hong Kong-listed shell company, giving him access to capital markets and the flexibility to grow as he wished.
For Prof Miles, this raises an obvious question: what, exactly, do we get out of a "helicopter drop" - or the bank just extinguishing all the gilts it has bought - which we do not get out of the policy we have now?
Even though we've all gone out and bought HD-DVD players already (not really), Sony is trying to woo consumers over to the Blu-ray camp with a snazzy new line of BRAVIA-brand flat-panel LCD TVs, five of which sport the coveted XBR designation, and five of which offer 1080p resolution for maximum enjoyment of the BDP-S1 that Sony is hoping you'll pick up this summer.
During Schmidt's tenure, Google also bought video-sharing site YouTube and branched out into other areas, with mixed results.
The Dolans could sell the cable business to AOL Time Warner--the guys who bought Chuck Dolan out of HBO three decades ago.
"All these dot-coms went out and bought lots of hardware, " Myers notes.
For those buy-out shops that presciently bought undervalued assets in 2002 and 2003, returns today from selling, floating, refinancing or otherwise liquidating earlier investments have been spectacular.
Now a majority of the Bancroft family, which has controlled Dow Jones since financial-journalism pioneer Clarence Barron bought out Charles Dow, Edward Jones and the other founders in 1902, has decided to sell its shares to News Corp.
The 29-year-old chose to leave Brawn, which has since been bought out by Mercedes, last month but is still enjoying a winter break before pre-season testing begins in February.
Pfizer recently bought out the Exubera stake of co-developer Sanofi-Aventis, creating a higher-margin opportunity.
Horace Hagedorn, the father of James, and a partner (bought out long ago) started Miracle-Gro in 1951.
Unilever has shut down more than a dozen and Coca-Cola and Starbucks have recently bought out their Chinese partners.
Before Pulliam gradually bought most of them out, outside investors -- including cowboy star Gene Autry -- complained about lousy dividends.
Pfizer recently bought out the Exubera stake of co-developer Sanofi-Aventis (nyse: SNY - news - people ), creating a higher-margin opportunity.
Kevin Breslin, 54 years old in Rockaway Beach, said he bought 30 50-pound sandbags to keep water out of the basement of his beachfront home.
And so she launched into her garage-based endeavor, at first modifying store-bought bikinis and then stitching her own out of whatever materials she could get her hands on.
It was interesting that the firm apparently bought a lot of bonds from the RTC--out of the portfolios of the RTC.
In 2001, in an attempt to beef up its own keyword search technology, the company bought Teoma, a search start-up that spun out of Rutgers.
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