Are you ready to make a quick killing with a big investment into Clear Channel? Its price is still well below the buyout price of 39.20, notes Boston Globe columnist Steven Syre. The result of a buy could be a lightning quick 25% gain.
But of course there is a catch. "The sale of Clear Channel seems as if it’s been going forever," he notes, "because it has. Initially, Bain and Lee emerged as the management-endorsed winners in November 2006. But public investors last spring drove the price higher, to its current level."
And since then, deteriorating conditions in both the radio business and the credit/banking community have been driving the stock price down. It also is making the banks consider whether paying a hefty penalty to break off the wedding is preferable to walking all the way down the to the altar.
RBR/TVBR observation: If the banks decide to ignore any shotgun-toting father-figure who really wants the wedding to go through, dodge the ensuing hail of buckshot and hightail it out of the wedding ceremony, there’s no telling where Clear Channel stock might go. But it doesn’t figure to shoot back up to 39.20. Stay tuned.
