New York Corporate Law Blog

Lots of New York residents have friends who work in the finance and banking industry, so they have probably heard a few gripes from them about how heavily regulated the industry is and how burdensome these rules are. But then again, the recent disclosure from JPMorgan Chase, the country's largest bank, that it had committed a $2 billion "trading blunder" has prompted some to claim that we need more banking regulations, not fewer.

What do you think?

Talbots, the store familiar to many New York women as the place to buy chic-yet-practical clothing, has not been doing so well lately. It had a rough holiday season and competition from other chains like Ann Taylor and Banana Republic has blunted its sales figures. Because of its recent business woes, Talbot's has had some trouble generating an acceptable acquisition offer from a private equity firm.

That firm, Sycamore Partners, has been trying to acquire Talbots for several months. In late 2011, it offered $3 a share, which was rejected for being an "inadequate offer" that "substantially undervalues the company." Sycamore Partners came back with a new offer on Monday, offering $3.05 per share. That puts the total bid at about $215 million, which is not too bad given that shares of the company fell 45 percent last year.

For awhile there, New Yorkers would have been safe in their assumption that Amazon's Kindle was the final word in e-readers. But then Barnes & Noble said "Not so fast," and now that Microsoft has announced it will invest hundreds of millions of dollars the bookstore chain's Nook reader, it's looking more and more like what once was a settled sector has become a battleground.

On Monday, Microsoft announced that it would acquire just under 18 percent of the Nook unit. Analysts described the alliance as a uniting to two one-time market leaders who have allowed their competitors to catch them by surprise and overtake them. Microsoft, for example, has not kept pace with Google's Internet wizardry and Barnes & Noble has, until recently, had trouble catching up to Amazon.

Baby formula is big business.

That's why Nestle has agreed to pay nearly $12 billion for Pfizer's "infant nutrition" sector. Analysts had expected to the deal to be closer to the $10 billion mark, so the actual price tag for the acquisition did get some notice.

Nestle may be most familiar to New Yorkers as the maker of the famous Crunch Bar, but Nestle is actually a huge food-industry player. In addition to making all sorts of food and drink mixes for human consumption, it has a large animal food division as well.