Discover’s Horrible Spin-Off

Last month, Morgan Stanley’s CFO, Colm Kelleher, said “If you were to normalize our business and take out this $9.4 billion charge, you would see that we had a record year across the whole enterprise.”
In other words, if you ignore the losses, we’re doing quite well. Somehow, the market wasn’t terribly impressed. Since July, Morgan’s stock has plunged from $70 to $45.
But here’s the thing, their performance is even worse if you recall that Morgan spun-off Discover Financial Services (DFS). I’m usually a big fan of spin-offs, but Discovery has been a disaster. Since its July debut at $26, shares of DFS have plunged to $13 today.

Posted by on January 18th, 2008 at 10:05 am


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