ADT Being Bought for 56% Premium

One big finance story today is that ADT (ADT) is being bought out by Apollo Global Management for $7 billion. That’s a cool 56% premium. You may recall that ADT was spun-off from Tyco a little over three years ago.

There’s an interesting backstory to ADT. In 1863, Edward A. Calahan was working for the American Telegraph Company. He noticed that Wall Street employed boys as “runners,” kids who would dash around with the latest stock price news.

Calahan’s idea was to use a telegraph machine to do the same job, and presto, the stock ticker was born. The small paper used by the ticker machine was called ticker tape, and that was used for New York’s famous ticker tape parades. (Thomas Edison didn’t invent the stock ticker, but he pioneered an early version.)

Calahan formed the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company. Now I’ll turn it over to Wikipedia:

Three years later, the president of Gold and Stock Telegraph Company woke up to a burglar in his home, which inspired him to create a telegraph-based alert system. This system eventually connected 50 of his neighbors to a central station where all the alert boxes were monitored. There were many small telegraph delivery companies in the United States in the 19th century. In 1874, 57 district telegraph delivery companies affiliated and became “American District Telegraph”.

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Posted by on February 16th, 2016 at 12:35 pm


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