December 22, 2003—Investors in Roto-Rooter (RRR) aren't the only ones cleaning up in the wake of Friday's announcement that the company plans to acquire Vitas Healthcare, a privately held hospice-care provider. The stock was up 26 percent on Friday and is up another 15 percent so far today. Indeed, Vitas' Chairman and CEO, Hugh ...

December 18, 2003—A class-action lawsuit filed over 7 years ago by cattle producers against a company now owned by Tyson Foods (TSN) looks to be a much bigger problem for Tyson, judging by its 10-K disclosure on Tuesday. In prior filings, Tyson, the world's largest meat company, described the potential for damages as "in ...

November 24, 2003—Helping out your child isn't necessarily a bad thing. But when you're a public company and that help starts to approach the high six figures (or seven figures depending on whether you're reading the 10-K or the proxy), investors deserve a bit more information. On Friday, Net2Phone (NTOP) filed its proxy and noted that ...

November 20, 2003—Between Oct. 3 and Nov. 13, Alliance Capital (AC) , a company at the center of the mutual fund scandal, was named as a defendant in 21 separate lawsuits -- practically one for every day the courts were open -- and several more have come in since Alliance filed its Q on Monday. ...

November 18, 2003—Yesterday, on the Stock Dr. radio show , I was asked why it was such a big deal when a company missed the deadline to file its 10-Q or 10-K. Companies currently have 45 days for the Q and 90 for the K, though that's going to start changing next year. On ...

November 17, 2003—On Friday, Clean Harbors (CLHB) , a company that specializes in environmental and waste-management services, was the best performing Nasdaq stock, climbing a whopping 46 percent in one day. That was primarily due to some strong third quarter numbers that the company reported on Friday. But you have to wonder how many investors ...

November 14, 2003—When a company discloses a few pages of related party transactions, investors really need to pay closer attention. When that disclosure suddenly increases even though the deals being disclosed appear to be several years old, that's definitely worth paying attention to. Such is the situation at Vail Resorts (MTN), which released its ...

October 13, 2003—You have to wonder if while the SEC is poking around at Cardinal Health and taking a closer look at a $22 million litigation settlement as the company announced last week, regulators find other things worth paying closer attention to. In its proxy filed late last week, Cardinal (CAH) ...

September 30, 2003—It seems as if Cardinal Health (CAH) is becoming a lot more sensitive to its quarterly practice of taking special charges. As noted in Chapter 4, during the 20 quarters between 1998 and 2002, Cardinal took special charges or gains in 19 quarters. Although there's nothing wrong with that as far as ...

September 29, 2003—So far, it's taken 3 times for Handspring (HAND) to get its 10-K filing right. On Friday, HAND filed two different ammended Ks -- one at 5 a.m. and a second at just after 3 p.m. But it was only the latter version which explained that the reason for the do-over was ...