Again, the proceeds can be put to more profitable use in the companies' operating businesses.
The venture proved so successful that before long Niederhoffer and a partner, Dan Grossman, started buying and operating businesses themselves.
Its collection of businesses and holdings looks more like an investment portfolio than a logical group of operating businesses.
Olam said it faced no risk of insolvency and elaborated at length on the valuation and performance of its many trading and operating businesses around the world.
Shed vision Countering the dominant notion that sheds are strictly the domain of middle-aged men, many young women are now operating businesses from sheds.
The fight illuminates a larger truth about open-source companies: their societal and strategic importance far exceeds their financial value as operating businesses.
In few other countries does the legal infrastructure provide for both a stable environment for operating businesses as well as ensure honest, transparent markets for investors.
But the best spot was a six-mile detour to Ohura, a little town verging on ghost status — none of the storefronts in the three-block downtown had operating businesses on the Friday morning I visited.
Yet most of Mr. Obama's black critics, mainly from academia, want him only to move further left; they seem to lack confidence in the ability of blacks to create businesses, when blacks have been operating businesses since colonial times.
In the building's lobby after the meeting, Thain discussed the developments with Peter Kraus, one of the Goldman bankers he had hired, and Peter Kelly, Merrill's general counsel for operating businesses.
"You have a collection of operating businesses that are all poised to do very well," Mr. Lyon said, "and they're selling at a very low multiple" of 10 times 2001 earnings.
