Many companies rushed to spin off all but their most essential "core" activities.
The Sears response was to sell or spin off all its nonretail businesses and return to its roots.
Time Warner found it made more economic sense to spin off all its titles rather than retain a few of them, a person with knowledge of the negotiations said.
"Perhaps the best solution would be to spin off all of the noncore assets, real estate and subsidiaries into a separate company for liquidation to pay for the damages," said Curtis Freeze, founder of Prospect Asset Management in Honolulu.
In a long-expected move, Tele-Communications Inc., te nation's largest cable company, said it would spin off all of its cable programming holdings and some of its cable subscribers into a separate company.
At a news conference yesterday, Geoffrey C. Bible, the chairman and chief executive of Philip Morris, said he would not spin off all of Kraft, which will be a giant among food makers once the acquisition of Nabisco is complete.
Goldman said Cabletron previously indicated it would spin off all four companies by year-end, but on Wednesday it committed itself to separating only two companies by year-end.
He thinks Sony may have to spin off all its media assets to boost its electronics business.
But asking Amazon to spin off AWS (or whichever way you want to look at it) would be like asking Walmart to keep Jet.com, but spin off all of the technology that makes Jet.com possible.
In a Tuesday filing, the tycoon hectored Wendy's about the need spin off all of Tim Hortons and sell some of its subsidiary brands, including 305 Baja Fresh Mexican Grill restaurants.
Nelson Peltz, the billionaire investor who took a 5.5% stake in Wendy's International, then set about hectoring the company about the need to spin off all of its Canadian coffee and doughnut chain Tim Hortons and sell some of its subsidiary brands, including 305 Baja Fresh Mexican Grill restaurants, seems to be prevailing.
