Cramer’s Top Anti-Competitive Merger List (Part 1)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Tonight Cramer sais he is sick of hearing about the XM Satellite Radio (XMSR) and Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI), but this sort of competition-eliminating and anti-competitive merger could spurn other mergers in other sectors.  Vulcan (VMC) up 11 points in anti-competitive deal to buy Florida (FRK).  Whole Foods (WFMI) is anti-competitive in organics buying Wild Oats (OATS).  If the democrats take the White House in 2 years Cramer said the people at the DOJ may have to start taking their jobs seriously.  There is now a gun to the head of a CEO that is considering a merger to hurry up and get this done before time runs out.  This could bring upside to many names so here is FIVE out of a TOP 10 LIST.  If it isn’t this list, they could at least be close according to Cramer:

10- Kroger (KR) & Safeway (SWY)
9- Quest Diagnostics (DGX) & Laboratory Corp (LH)
8- Carnival Cruise (CCL) & Royal Caribbean (RCL)
7- Office Depot (ODP) & Office Max (OMX)
6- Cardinal Health (CAH) & McKesson (MCK)

Keep in mind that many of these are VERY anti-competitive and would be blocked if the DOJ actually monitored mergers, so this is sort of a ‘merger wish list’ of Cramer’s that would be horrible for consumers and great for shareholders.

Jon C. Ogg
February 21, 2007

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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