The year 2009 is in the books and some of the most troubled companies of the last decade made the biggest returns among S&P 500 firms in 2009.
Among S&P 500 stocks, Ford (NYSE:F), which two years ago was viewed as a Chapter 11 candidate, rose 336% to $10.. The No.2 US car company dodged the fate of GM and Chrysler by pledging most of its assets to get a $23 billion loan which carried the operation through the recession. Ford then quickly developed a line of popular fuel-efficient cars while its domestic competition was busy working on bailout programs with the government. Ford picked up market share in the US during 2009 even though overall sales in the market were down.
The other improbable winner among S&P 500 stocks was AMD (NYSE:AMD), the No.2 PC chip maker. Its shares rose 350% over the course of the year to $9.68.. AMD took on $5 billion in debt to get into the graphic chip business four years ago. That debt burden and competition from larger rival Intel (NYSE:INTC), almost took AMD under. During 2009, AMD won key antitrust actions against Intel, and one of those settlements brought the firm over $1.2 billion.
A number of large financial firms took beatings in 2009 as the credit crisis forced them to turn to the federal government for aid. The weakest of the bank giants and the one that needed the most help from Treasury and the Fed was Citigroup (NYSE:C). The problems showed up in the company’s stock price which dropped over 50% to close the year at $3.31. That made it one of the weakest S&P 500 components of 2009
Not all financial firms did poorly. The strongest US banks posted remarkable returns for 2009. Share in Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) were up almost 100% to $168.84.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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