Kelly Black

McDonald’s unveiled plans late last year to haul away Colorado-based Boston Chicken and use what’s left of the struggling company for firewood, in a cash deal worth about $175 million. A federal court overseeing bankruptcy proceedings for the chain approved the deal yesterday. Big Mac is about to put the big smack-down on Boston Chicken. […]

E*Trade married off its E*Offering unit to Wit Capital for a handsome $328 million dowry. This stock swap looks tailor made for both companies in a couple of respects. This is a case of trading Baltic and Mediterranean in exchange for the remaining two Railroads I don’t already own. Bottom line is, both parties got […]

HomeGrocer.com’s co-founder and president Terry Drayton took a leave of absence last week. The top banana claims the 80-hour work weeks and emotional brain-drain from the online grocer’s March 10th debut has him feeling punchy. Drayton is headed for the hills until September, and at first blush, that looks like plenty of time for this […]

Let’s face it. There’s never been a better time for consolidation than now. When the IPO pipeline needs a plumber, the M&A patch catches fire. Sky-high cyber-valuations that once put offline snails to shame have come home to roost. But these blue-light specials won’t last. While Internet stocks are dirt-cheap, it’s time for old school […]

Don’t throw good money after bad. Are you listening, Paul Allen? News hit the wires that Value America is the latest in a long line of struggling e-tailers getting a new lease on life, courtesy of you-know-who. Of course when you have as much money as Allen has, you can just as well hang around […]

In a pseudo-counteroffer, Comcast wants to wrestle control of Excite@Home from AT&T. Its plans to turn the tables on AT&T’s strategy to boost its voting stake in Excite@Home won’t fly, but it’s just another day in an ongoing made-for-TV movie. This is like a bad episode of The Brady Bunch. Excite and @Home hopped into […]

CDNow made a midnight run for the border. And this time the music e-tailer didn’t drop the chalupa. Instead, the company scored a rich uncle in Mexico’s multibillionaire Carlos Slim Helu. It’s a $52.8 million windfall, giving cash-strapped CDNow some wiggle room for the next couple of quarters to get its act together. Mexico’s Mr. […]

Well, it finally happened. It’s safe to say lawyers have found their way online. But not like the rest of us. There’s big business interests to protect, and lucrative settlements to be had. And the consumer is somehow caught in the middle of a grassroots circus sideshow. I’ve been waxing philosophical lately about the throwback […]

Talk about a high stakes game of poker. When Time Warner (TWX) pulled the plug on ABC television earlier this week over stalled contract negotiations, the cable giant might as well have hung out a welcome sign begging for a rubber glove probe into its planned merger with America Online (AOL). The company couldn’t have […]

Maybe Enter Sandman should be re-titled, Metallica with their head in the sand. The band’s most recent circus sideshow involved stacking legal documents outside Napster’s San Mateo headquarters, profiling over 300,000 usernames of individuals swapping pirated songs using MP3 sharing software. Gee, that’ll teach ’em a lesson. Force Napster to cancel a bunch of recyclable […]

CDNow (CDNW) sounds like a broken record these days. The music e-tailer is burning through cash faster than a six pack-a-day habit. The writing’s been on the wall to cut back on spending for quite some time, but it’s too late to quit cold-turkey, and CDNow is hittin’ the skids for the last time. It’ll […]

Hollywood.com (HOLL) is looking to make waves with its latest planned acquisition that’ll take it from the big-screen to Broadway. Straight from the cut-ups that created the wildly popular Sci-Fi Channel, the newcomers are on the move to add a little sophistication to a otherwise steady diet of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. For a […]