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B R E A K F A S T W I T H T H E F O O L Monday, December 11, 2000 benjamin.rogers@enron.com _________________________________________________________________ Sponsored By: FOLIOfn Investing in individual stocks but tired of trying to guess winners? Try FOLIO investing and take the unnecessary risk, cost and guesswork out of investing. Click here for FREE TRIAL: http://www.lnksrv.com/m.asp?i=3D237379 "To be an adult is to disappoint others." -- Unknown IBM, INTEL ANNOUNCE CHIP ADVANCES HOW SMALL AND FAST CAN THEY GO? VERY AND VERY. Intel's transistors will be three atoms thick. By Tom Jacobs Chip giants IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) both announced breakthrough chip technologies. IBM has started using a new manufacturing technology, while Intel promises transistors as small as three atoms thick, making chips almost seven times faster than its recently released Pentium 4. IBM's new manufacturing technique, named CMOS-9S, showcases advances in copper wiring, silicon-on-insulator transistors, and better insulation so that chip circuits can be as small as 0.13 microns -- 800 times thinner than a human hair. IBM is making a variety of chips with this technique, and customers should receive their first shipments in early 2001. But Intel now plans the world's smallest and fastest CMOS transistor. At 30 nanometers thick, the Santa Clara gorilla could fit 400 million of them on a chip, which is just shy of 10 times the number on a Pentium 4. Intel says that it will be possible to build chips by 2005 that run 10 billion operations a second, compared to the Pentium 4's 1.5 billion a second. Dr. Sunlin Chu, vice president and general manager of Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group, said that new processors using the transistors not only would be smaller and faster, but use less power. He said, "It's one thing to achieve a great technological breakthrough. It's another to have one that is practical and will change everyone's lives. With Intel's 30 nanometer transistor, we have both." http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237380 While industry observers believe that this advance approaches the limit on thickness, Jim Hardy, an analyst at Dataquest, says that "This is proving there's no reason the normal growth of the semiconductor industry can't continue on for probably another 10 years." If so, that's good news for Intel investors, who have endured recent Intel revenue warnings and stock price cliff-drops. Fools recently dueled over its future. http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237381 http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237382 Intel closed at $34.00 Friday, down from a 52-week high of $75.81, while IBM finished at $97.00, off its year high of $134.94. _________________________________________________________________ NEWS TO GO U.K. drug maker Shire Pharmaceuticals Group PLC (Nasdaq: SHPGY) will buy Canadian biotech pharmaceutical company BioChem Pharma Inc. (Nasdaq: BCHE) for $4 billion in stock. Shire will pay $37 a BioChem share, a 40% premium over the company=01,s $26.50 Friday close. Shire looks to expand beyond its key niche in hyperactivity drugs, which comprise half of Shire's revenues but face increasing competition. Shire will pick up BioChem's successful Epivir AIDS treatment, marketed by Glaxo Wellcome (NYSE: GLX), but also BioChem=01,s Zeffix Hepatitis B treatment, which has been disappointing. All eyes watch tomorrow's start of the U.S. wireless spectrum auction, with pessimists observing the big telecom lemming march over the cliff into Debt Sea. To improve its chances, AT&T Wireless (NYSE: AWE) has partnered with three Native Alaskan corporations so it can bid for "closed" frequencies set aside solely for small companies. Created in 1971 to settle Alaska natives' land claims, the corporations -- whose phenomenal success was portrayed popularly on TV=01,s Northern Exposure -- operate with little oversight and invest in natural resources, tourism, and other businesses in Alaska and throughout the lower 48 states. The companies, together with AT&T, paid $240 million to participate in the auction, 13% of the $1.8 billion paid for the chance to seek more licenses. Cingular Wireless and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) also partnered with small companies for the same reason. The FCC will auction 422 licenses in 195 markets, and estimates of the auction's take range from $10 billion to $18 billion. Morgan Stanley Capital International, a division of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (NYSE: MWD), said Sunday that it would change the weighting it gives companies in its benchmark indices. MSCI plans to weigh stocks in its indices according to market cap based on free float -- shares actually available for sale -- not total shares outstanding. This is expected to hurt companies that have a high percentage of shares owned by families, government, management, or other restricted company holdings. With an estimated $200 billion in sales and purchases expected when the indices change beginning November 30, 2001 and ending May 31, 2002, analysts expect U.S. and U.K companies to benefit, with Japanese, German, and French companies to suffer. MSCI will exclude any company whose free float is less than 15% of its total. http://www.lnksrv.com/m.asp?i=3D237383 Bloomberg reports that the Federal Government's Copyright Office, part of the Library of Congress, will publish a final executive branch administrative rule today requiring that U.S. radio stations pay royalties to record companies when the stations broadcast on the Internet. About 4,000 of 14,000 U.S. radio stations rebroadcast, or Web cast, on the Internet. Spokespersons for the National Association of Broadcasters decried the decision, which they say will add "tens of millions of dollars" to the already $300 million in fees paid to composers and publishers. Websites also assert that a related Copyright Office decision allows them to negotiate blanket licenses without having to negotiate with each record company, as can radio stations that have limited customer involvement but not individualized programming. The record industry disputes the distinction between consumer-influenced ("play my fave song") versus individualized programming, and promises to fight. _________________________________________________________________ EDITORS' PICK Zeke Ashton discusses the Rule Maker's low-turnover investment strategy, which minimizes year-end tax liabilities. http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237384 _______________________________________________________________ -News & Commentary http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237385 -Fool Community http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237386 -Post of the Day http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237387 -Latest Fribble http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237388 -Latest Market Numbers http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237389 ____________________________________________________________ My Portfolio: http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237390 My Discussion Boards: http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237391 My Fool: http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237392 Fool.com Home: http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237393 My E-Mail Settings: http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237394 Sponsored By: FOLIOfn Investing in individual stocks but tired of trying to guess winners? Try FOLIO investing and take the unnecessary risk, cost and guesswork out of investing. Click here for FREE TRIAL: http://www.lnksrv.com/m.asp?i=3D237395 GET A HEAD START ON 2001 Start your investing research now with Industry Focus 2001. Available in electronic download or hard copy. http://www.lnksrv.com/m.asp?i=3D237396 NEW! COMPLETE HOME FINANCE CENTER You can do it all here: get a mortgage, get an equity loan, or refinance http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237397 FOOL DIRECT E-MAIL SERVICES Need to change your address or unsubscribe? You can also temporarily suspend mail delivery. Click here: http://www.fool.com/community/freemail/freemaillogin.asp?email=3Dbenjamin.r= ogers @enron.com< Have ideas about how we can improve the Fool Direct or new e-mail products you'd like to see? Try our discussion board: http://www.fool.com/m.asp?i=3D237398 ____________________________________________________ © Copyright 2000, The Motley Fool. All rights reserved. This material is for personal use only. Republication and redissemination, including posting to news groups, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of The Motley Fool. . MsgId:=20 msg-4465-2000-12-11_9-27-21-3404109_2_Plain_MessageAddress.msg-09:32:16(12-= 11- 2000) X-Version: mailer-sender-master,v 1.84 X-Version: mailer-sender-daemon,v 1.84 Message-Recipient: benjamin.rogers@enron.com
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