Recent News: Fed Cash, Buy Rating, Dow Rally, Immelt on Leadership, and GE buying in India

GE Eschews - Or Does It Seek? - Access To Fed Cash
How can you tell when General Electric is prevaricating about the status of its capital position? Answer: when you can see its CFO’s lips moving. On Friday, the conglomerate’s finance chief admitted the company had reviewed the way the Federal Reserve was conducting its purchase of commercial paper. Then quickly insisted that GE was capable of completely funding itself, and would have no need to seek recourse to a government buyer-of-last-resort funding instument...

General Electric "buy," target price reduced
Analyst Stephen A O’Neil of Hilliard Lyons maintains his "buy" rating on General Electric Co (GE), while reducing his estimates for the company. The target price has been reduced from $30 to $25....

General Electric (GE) Not Participating In Today's Rally
For some reason General Electric is not participating in today's 600 point rally. Shares of GE are down 4% today to $20.63. GE did rise 13% on Friday, so it could have something to do with that....

GE’s Jeff Immelt on leadership renewal
Former Harvard MBA Jeff Immelt just delighted a packed conference hall (actually a big tent) with his observations about the need for leaders to renew themselves. “You’ve got to be able to do this,” he said. “Leadership is really a journey into yourself. I take every criticism personally, I think about them, and I go to bed at night thinking: ‘Oh God, what a failure I am.’ And then I wake up in the morning and I say: ‘Hello, handsome!’ ”...

What Credit Crunch? GE wants to buy in India
Even as the financial world seems to be crumbling and General Electric’s profits are headed south, the company may be looking for acquisitions in India. The other day my colleague Mehul Srivastava and I met with GE India boss Tejpreet Chopra. He sketched out an ambitious plan to boost the company’s revenues in the country to $8 billion by 2010 or 2011, from $2.6 billion today. “There will be some element of acquisitions in meeting our (sales) targets,” Chopra said...

Recent News Releases: Weather Channel, Dow and Oil, PHH, and Wind

The Weather Channel up for sale: report
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. cable channel The Weather Channel is to be put up for sale and could fetch more than $5 billion, The New York Times said in an online report on Thursday...

Dow off 221 after oil touches $100
The U.S. stock market had one of its worst opening days of any year after crude oil briefly touched $100 a barrel and gold hit a 27-year high...

PHH's 'Baa3' senior debt confirmed on termination of buyout by GE - Moody's
Moody's Investors Service said it confirmed PHH Corp's 'Baa3' senior debt and 'Prime-3' short term ratings after the mortgage-lending and fleet-management units operator's agreement to be acquired by a General Electric...

Collapse Of PHH Deal Is Bad Omen For '08
The easy money is no longer flowing for Blackstone....

EDP signs 600 mln usd agreement with equity investors for US wind farm projects
EDP Energias de Portugal SA said its Horizon unit agreed on Dec 31 to invest 600 mln usd in four wind farm projects in the US...

PHH, FedEx among big movers
Stocks that were moving substantially or trading heavily Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market...

Market Report -- Story Stocks (PHH)
Yesterday PHH Corporation (PHH) announced it has given a notice of termination to General Electric Capital Corp., which is a unit of General Electric (GE). The notice ends an agreement that would merge PHH...