Boardroom brawls are still pretty rare, but when they happen, they are often a good opportunity to take a closer look at what’s going on at a particular company — and, sometimes, the broader industry. And when one breaks out at a company that has faced problems in the past, it seems even more significant. [...]

As we’ve noted time and again, reading filings is all about detecting patterns and looking for the hidden signals that companies bury in their routine filings. Sometimes, those signals are loud — maybe even accompanied by a press release — and sometimes they’re a bit more subtle. We’re going to look at both ends of [...]

Yesterday, Citi put out a 20-page research report on Tivo (TIVO) speculating that Tivo was more likely to land at Echostar (SATS) than at Dish Networks (DISH). Today, that “news” spread like wildfire around the Internet with Tivo shares up 4% earlier in the day, although this note from Schaeffer’s Investment Research also noted that …

At first, we thought this 8-K filed by Dell (DELL) was yet another attempt at an April Fool’s Day joke. The timing — filed well after the market closed for the three-day weekend and less than five minutes before the SEC stops accepting 8Ks for the night — certainly seemed suspect. But it’s a pretty safe [...]

Over the past week, several big companies have attracted attention after announcing big charges tied to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The charges are tied to a reduction in the tax benefits available to companies sponsoring prescription-drug benefits for their retirees. Caterpillar (CAT) announced a $100 million after-tax charge; AK Steel Holding (AKS) [...]

In the past week, we’ve caught two deals where pre-merger signals should have been visible from a careful reading of the filings. Both Semitool (SMTL) and Iowa Telecommunications (IWA) did what we’d consider a tip of the hat in their filings several months ago that deals were in the works. Semitool announced its deal on [...]

A week ago, Kodak announced $700 million in new financing, giving the company, which in many ways has been the poster child for changing technology, some much-needed help. Kohlberg Kravis, perhaps best known from its LBO fame, agreed to serve as the lead investor and in exchange, would receive warrants that would give them …

Just before the July 4th holiday, we started to see the first tepid signs of small bank M&A when two New Jersey banks — BCB Bancorp (BPBP) and Pamrapo Bancorp (PBCI) — announced a deal on June 30. That same day in Ohio, NB&T Financial Group (NBTF) announced it was acquiring the closely …

Last Friday was the deadline for first quarter 13Fs. And while our usual point of view on 13Fs is that they’re mainly historical — after all a lot can change in the 45 days between the end of the quarter and the filing deadline — we noticed an interesting trend after doing a quick skim [...]

About a week ago, First American (FAF) crossed our screens because of some interesting trends in their filings. But given that the company was set to report earnings on April 30, we decided to take a wait and see approach since trying to decipher hidden meanings in SEC filings is a very different can of [...]