January 29, 2004—You have to wonder why it's taken Arriba (ARBA) , a former high-flying tech stock whose shares once traded at around $200, so long to describe an unusual loan arrangement between its former Chairman and its current Chief Executive. The company's latest attempt at describing the deal -- in an amended 10-K filed ...

January 21, 2004—No, this isn't a reference to the spam we all seem to receive. It's about Hewlett Packard's (HPQ) expanding 10-K. In the K it filed yesterday, the company devoted 15% more space to footnotes than it did in its fiscal 2002 10-K and nearly 70% more than it did in fiscal 2001 ...

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 19, 2003—Still trying to catch up on some of the filings I missed while on vacation and found Disney's (DIS) disclosure on pensions pretty interesting. It also shows you how a small decrease in the expected rate of return that the company uses to calculate its expenses -- in Chapter 6 I ...

December 17, 2003—Investors in AFC Enterprises (AFCE.PK) lost big when the company announced earlier this year that its stock was being delisted from NASDAQ because of its failure to file its 2002 10-K. Since August, the stock for the company that owns and franchises Popeye's and Church's fried chicken restaurants, as well as Cinnabon ...

December 2, 2003—For anyone who still wonders why it's so important to pay attention to the pension footnote, check out Greyhound Lines' parent company's 10-K filed yesterday. Sprinkled throughout the 270-page document filed by Laidlaw International (LALW.OB) are details on the company's ongoing efforts to prop up its 13 different pension plans, following the ...

November 5, 2003—When Mark J. O'Brien resigned as president and CEO of Pulte Homes (PHM) in July, he took home an impressive array of parting gifts. Although O'Brien,60, had worked for Pulte for 21 years, he had only been CEO since January 2001. The bounty is included in the 10-Q that Pulte filed ...

October 20, 2003—Even before it went public last year, Express Jet Holdings (XJT) has had a symbiotic relationship with Continental Airlines (CAL) that was mutually beneficial. ExpressJet has received loan gurantees and substantially all of its business from the much larger Continental. And Continental has been able to substantially reduce its costs ...

September 12, 2003—It's always nice to see when a company takes the conservative road when it comes to the expected rate of return on their pension funds. As I note in Chapter 2, many pros like to look at this number because it tells them pretty quickly whether the company is likely to be aggressive on ...

September 1, 2003—It was right around this time last year when Inktomi -- once a high-flying Internet search engine whose stock traded over $200 a share -- was forced into a real estate squeeze play. During the Internet boom, Inktomi inked a synthetic lease deal with Deutsche Bank that enabled the company to keep the cost ...