Barnes & Noble Founder Wants to Take Retail Division Private

The times haven't been the kindest to B&N: retail sales are down and the Kindle is outselling the Nook. Joining Best Buy and Dell, B&N might be going private. From the article: "Barnes & Noble’s largest shareholder, Leonard Riggio, made an offer Monday to buy out the struggling company and take it private ... Essentially, it would split the company in two: one half would be Riggio’s private brick-and-mortar stores and related assets, the other the publicly-traded Nook and college bookstore management division."

Comments

Blame the market bulls ...

[oztiks]

Public companies are getting abused on the stock market so bad being private means they can actually run the business properly without having to worry about squeezing to make every Q more profitable according to analyst projections and "expected" profits.

Apple should do the same but having 1bn outstanding shares at $400 a piece means even their whopping $130bn in the bank wont even save them from the onslaught.

Re:Blame the market bulls ...

[TubeSteak]

That only happens with companies that are failing anyway. Its in nobody's interest to destroy a thriving business, or at least one that is worth more alive than dead.

[Citation Needed]
More importantly, you are making assumptions about what is and isn't rational behavior from your perspective.

From the perspective of a corporate raider:
Mortgaging a healthy company to the hilt and then selling off its assets is wildly profitable.
They don't want to run the company and earn a respectable return on investment.
They are not in it for long term profits.
They want X00% return on investment within a few years and they can get it.

Different motives and different agendas leads to different 'rational' behaviors.
Hence regulation to reign in the more destructive, yet completely rational, actors.
There was even a /. story today which showed us that 'rational' behavior is not a universal constant