If the merger goes through, there apparently is still money to be made.
"Short-term, we are going to be completely dependent on them if the merger goes through," he said.
Although Sanford I. Weill, the Travelers chairman, will move from the Greenwich Street building if the merger goes through, employees of Salomon Smith Barney and other Travelers operations will remain, corporate officials say, so the umbrella stays.
"There will be no loss of competition if this merger goes through," Representative Leonard L. Boswell, Democrat of Iowa, said with more than a touch of irony, "because there is no competition now".
"If this merger goes through," said George F. Schweitzer, senior vice president for communications at CBS Inc., "it's another example of how all our competitors can build very powerful communications complexes, while the networks are held back by 20-year-old regulations, which are now increasingly unfair and outmoded". The networks are not allowed to own cable television systems.
Hewlett also predicts a 10% to 12% revenue decline if the merger goes through, as opposed to the 5% HP asserts.
If the merger goes through, what happens to the microcap companies that don't meet Amex listing requirements but now nest in Nasdaq?
The payoff is down to $1.20 now, and if the New Mexico merger goes through, each Western share will turn into a share of a new company paying only 80 cents.
The Justice Department is concerned that if the merger goes through, AT&T will then raise prices on Time Warner's Turner networks, like TNT, TBS and CNN in a way that would hurt other pay TV providers.
"If this merger goes through, there could well be a strong public reaction against Burger King that could more than offset any tax benefit it receives from a tax-avoidance move," Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich).
2013: Xstrata merger goes through.
