Possibility Productions

Jakks, which received an unsolicited offer of $20 a share from Oaktree Capital Management LP in September, turned it down three weeks later and said the buyout firm was trying to “take advantage” of adverse economic conditions to acquire the company on the cheap. The bid valued Jakks at 0.52 times its revenue, less than half the median for toy takeovers over $100 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

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With Jakks losing 20 percent of its value after saying last month that sales for 2011 would fall short of its own estimates, the company is now worth less than

By Chris Reiter

Big car companies spend millions of dollars on ads to burnish their brands. But Hyundai Motor received one of its biggest boosts from an unlikely source: competitor Volkswagen. In a video shot during the Frankfurt Motor Show in September, VW Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn is seen praising the adjustable steering column on a Hyundai i30 compact, effectively anointing Hyundai as a top rival. “Nothing rattles,” Winterkorn said to his entourage in the amateur video posted on YouTube. “Why can they do it? BMW can’t. We can’t.” The video has been viewed more than 1.6 million times.

Winterkorn’s …

Cellarbrations, a wine shop in the inner Sydney suburb of Newtown, sells Moët & Chandon Brut Impérial, a popular French Champagne produced by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, for A$49.99 ($52.61) a bottle in six-bottle cases. Wine House, a Melbourne-based online store, is selling LVMH’s Chandon Green Point Cuvée 1995, a sparkling wine produced in Australia’s Yarra Valley, for A$52. Much to the dismay of Australia’s wine industry, its days of offering lower-priced alternatives to French vintages are fading.

With the Australian dollar at record levels against the euro, Aussie vintners are caught in a double-bind: Exports have been slammed …

Despite recent video out of China of egg-wielding customers angry about shortages of Apple’s iPhone 4S, that’s not where the mobile-phone action is on the mainland. China Unicom Hong Kong, the nation’s No.?2 carrier and an iPhone distributor, really saw its business take off last year when it began pushing smartphones that cost 80 percent less than Apple’s coveted device.

After previously courting high-end customers, China Unicom in May started selling handsets from local manufacturers Huawei Technologies and ZTE that cost less than 1,000 yuan ($158), about half a month’s salary for an urban Chinese worker. The 16-gigabyte iPhone 4S …

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Illustration by yesyesyes design

By Peter Coy and Matthew Philips

Negotiations over how to shrink Greece’s unaffordable government debt make the brinkmanship over the U.S. debt ceiling last summer look simple. In the U.S., almost everyone agreed that default would be disastrous. In Greece, default is probably unavoidable. The battle is over whether it happens gently, in what is known as a “consensual restructuring,” or chaotically, in what is known as “all financial hell breaks loose.”

What makes the standoff over Greece so dangerous is that the players aren’t just …

By Erin Zlomek

As a U.S. Army captain retiring after deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tom Pae feared he might have a hard time getting into a prestigious MBA program. When he started applying last year, though, the West Point graduate quickly discovered he had a coveted résumé as recruiters from top institutions encouraged him to consider their programs. In October he was accepted to Columbia Business School in New York, his “reach” school, and he expects to enroll there this fall. “There is a confidence issue when you’re in the military and applying to business school,” Pae says. “You …

Attacks by opponents portraying Bain Capital LLC, Romney and other buyout managers as corporate looters who enrich themselves at the expense of ordinary workers have put a spotlight on the industry that will affect negotiations about future investments, according to officials and trustees at public pensions. As firms struggle to raise funds, pensions may be more reluctant to commit money and may ask for more details on job creation and push for lower fees, these officials said.

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“Private-equity managers’ wealth and tax rates are on display at a time when pensions are getting squeezed,” said Joseph Alejandro, treasurer of the

While the plan would slow the pace of shipbuilding, its emphasis on naval forces in an era of budget-cutting may help vessel-makers Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., General Dynamics Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Austal Ltd. It also may provide opportunities for aircraft companies Northrop Grumman Corp. and Boeing Co. and missile maker Raytheon Co.

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“This budget protects, and in some cases increases, investments that are critical to our ability to project power in Asia and the Middle East,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said at a news conference at the Pentagon today disclosing elements of a $613 billion defense proposal for

Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) — MF Global Holding Ltd.’s clients may be the losers no matter who wins a $700 million dispute between bankruptcy administrators in London and New York that threatens the return of money locked in customer accounts.

The trustee of MF Global Inc., the New York brokerage unit, is seeking the return of money used as margin for American customers trading in Europe. It wants U.K. administrators KPMG LLP to tap into $1.2 billion it had set aside for customers with segregated accounts, which are supposed to be protected.

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MF Global Inc. trustee James Giddens “is prepared to

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