Corporate Asset

Today is the last day to apply for enrollment into the Master's of Engineering program at Michigan State University for Fall Semester '07. I still haven't decided if I want to pursue this. On the up side, my company would pay for it. On the down side, I would take one course at a time to get the most out of each course and still have time to work full-time and take care of home obligations. This would mean driving to Lansing 2 or 3 nights a week for the next 5 years! Much pause for thought is needed as we would like the stork to pay us a visit within this time-period. Well, the application deadline for Spring Semester '08 is September 15...

Also today, my company was bought. Smiths Group sold their Aerospace division to GE for $5billion. GE manufactures aircraft engines (among many other things) and would like to enter the more profitable aircraft electronics systems. Corporate mergers are always a nerve-wracking time for everyone involved, but I'm naive enough to believe that this is for the better. As of recently our engineering and development budget has been maxed out. We have so many new and exciting programs, but our company just doesn't have the size and cash to develop them all. My guess is GE bought us for our technical expertise, and will try to use their enormous cash reserve to pump us up into the biggest player on the block. GE is huge. How big is GE? A couple of years ago GE tried to buy our main competitor, Honeywell, for $55billion. The deal fell through on legal ground because it would make GE too big.
By June the deal should be complete. I'm looking forward to it. Bigger companies usually pay better and have better benefits. The only thing I'm concerned about is my company stock. Since Smiths is a British company not traded on the NYSE there's some weird legality that we can't buy company stock. So instead they offered us a stock-fund. It behaves like stock, but it isn't stock. I bought it because it was sold at a 10% discount, and was guaranteed to increase in value by 3% even if the stock price declined. After the buy-out share-holders will be paid $4.1 billion. Since I'm not technically a shareholder I probably won't see a penny of this. Smiths plans to do a share consolidation, and some analysts think the rest of Smiths Group will be split-up and sold. Then what happens to my almost-stock? This might end up being my $2000 lesson in corporate investing.