Ford Motor Co. (F-NYSE) was up 2% and then almost 4% pre-market on Bloomberg and Reuters reports that the founding family of Ford was considering a sale of part of their stake. The exact stake was not really known, but it doesn’t appear to matter now. CNBC was reporting that the family has denied this. The Ford’s share classification is such that on a fully diluted basis it controls roughly 4% of the stock, but it has roughly 40% of the votes. So if any sale were to occur, it would be expected that it would not dilute too much of their voting power.
On situations like this you always have to wonder if the ‘news is being leaked as a rumor’ to see what reaction there would be to the news. It wouldn’t be the first time. That being said, the Fords probably already know that Wall Street would probably prefer for them not to have the controlling stake.
Shares of Ford are up almost 5% pre-market, as are shares of General Motors (GM-NYSE). When DaimlerChysler is selling more than 80% of Chrysler to Cerberus for some $7.4 Billion that’s what happens.
Jon C. Ogg
May 14, 2007
Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.
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