August, pending shareholder
approval. (Tom Croke)
Seven local public companies listed one year ago in the Providence Business News “Stock Watch” section do not appear in this issue.
Over the past year national corporations have swallowed up some of the companies, while others have decided to completely dissolve and liquidate.
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Bell Atlantic merged with GTE Corporation in June of 2000 and became Verizon Communications. Complete Business Solutions, Inc., a global technology services company with offices in Providence, became Covansys after a “re-engineering effort” in February. Providence Energy, along with Fall River Gas, became a part of Southern Union Company last September on the heels of Southern Union’s merger with Valley Resources.
Inso Corporation changed its name to eBT International last August, according to a press release at the time, “to concentrate its resources exclusively on its e-business products and services, and follows the completion of the sale of Inso Corporation’s non-core assets last month.”
And late last month the company announced that its board of directors had unanimously voted to dissolve and liquidate the company, subject to the approval of the holders of a majority of its shares. Based upon current information, the company anticipates that assets available for distribution to shareholders will be between $3.10 and $3.22 per share.
College-Link.com’s common stock on the American Stock Exchange was suspended at the company’s request towards the end of last month. Officials said the suspension would last until the end of this week, when it expects to be delisted from trading on the exchange. CollegeLink then began trading on the NASDAQ on May 23.
Swank also announced recently that it had received notice from the Nasdaq Stock Market that, effective at the opening of business on May 25 its shares of Common Stock would no longer be listed on the Nasdaq SmallCap Market. The Company indicated that it expects its Common Stock would now be traded in the over-the-counter market.
Shares of Swank, which manufactures and markets men’s and women’s jewelry, belts and personal leather goods, have been trading for some time under a dollar, and most recently were at 50 cents per share.
University of Rhode Island Economics Professor Leonard Lardaro is not surprised by the drift occurring in the local stock market.
“It’s part of the way the world is going, and we’re going to get more of it,” he said. “There are going to be mergers and acquisitions, and big national chains gobbling up little retailers. What we’re seeing now is just part of an ongoing process, and it’s not the end of the world, but we do need to do a lot more to make this a good place for homegrown companies to flourish.”
Bryan Paisley, a regional sales representative for Guardian Investor Services Corporation said these are the days of natural selection.
“As far as acquisitions go, I would have to say the trend of bigger companies buying up small companies that have become cheaper due to stock market depreciation has definitely been prevalent,” he said. “There are a lot of smaller companies out there that have some good name brand recognition, and some of these larger multi-national companies with a strong cash position on their balance sheets could get some good bargains in this market.”
Completion of the merger between Providence Energy, Fall River Gas and Valley Resources with Southern Union increased the company’s New England division to approximately 300,000 customers, and topped Southern Union off at about 1.6 million customers nationwide.
“In the energy field that’s going to continue,” said Lardaro. “There will be a very small number of very large national energy companies.”
“And if you look at the tech companies, Rhode Island doesn’t have a very large technology industry, but what we do have here is affected,” he said.
CollegeLink.com’s investor relations spokesperson Kevin High refused to comment on his company’s situation.
