Leasing News

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It is time to pull together, and the first place to do this is to buy CIT stock.

knowledge, a solid history, their finger on the pulse, the same board of directors

NEW YORK - Albert Gamper, pitching a $5.8 billion stock offering of CIT Group Inc., is telling investors the finance company will benefit from a higher credit rating and revived earnings growth once it separates from parent Tyco International Ltd.

The man who has led CIT for 15 years is mixing his forecasts with an acknowledgement that CIT's business has been harmed since it was bought 12 months ago by Tyco. Gamper told potential investors he has been ''war-scarred'' by the experience with Tyco, whose accounting is under scrutiny by regulators and whose former chief executive was indicted for tax evasion.

''The recent situation is not of our making,'' Gamper, CIT's chief executive, told sales people at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in a presentation later distributed to prospective investors.

In speeches to more than 400 investors at Manhattan's Pierre Hotel, the Sears Tower in Chicago, and on a Webcast to the Goldman sales force, Gamper blamed Tyco for a credit rating that's been cut three levels since CIT was acquired. Once the initial public offering is complete, Standard & Poor's is likely to raise the ratings, CIT executives said. Tyco is offering the shares at $25 to $29 each, valuing the IPO at $5 billion to $5.8 billion. At the high end of the range, CIT's IPO would be the third-largest in the United States, at the low end, the fourth-largest.

Criticism of Tyco has become a centerpiece of Gamper's presentations to money managers the past 10 days as he tries to persuade them to buy 200 million CIT shares from Tyco.

Bermuda-based Tyco, which is operated from Exeter, N.H., declined to respond to Gamper's comments.

Gamper is trying to prove to investors that the company is worth buying again, even though CIT, which leases airplanes and trains, finances telecommunications companies and provides home equity loans, isn't likely to increase earnings this year and is likely to suffer from high borrowing costs for the next three quarters.

May Chip Sales Reach $11.37 Billion for Worldwide Semiconductor Industry; Broad-based Growth Leads Chip Sales Increase of 2.8%

SAN JOSE, Calif.----Worldwide sales of semiconductors totaled $11.37 billion in May, a 2.8% increase from the $11.07 billion level reached in April, with broad-based growth in all product sectors except for computation, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported today.

"Continued steady growth across the industry is exhibited in May chip sales and, as announced in our forecast last month, we expect the industry to close the second quarter with growth of 4.7%," stated SIA president, George Scalise. He added, "While the computation sector is down, all other sectors including wireless and consumer continue to thrive. This increase drove the sales of such products as Flash, digital signal processors, application specific products and analog."

The migration of semiconductor customers to contract manufacturing continues with the Asia/Pacific market, especially China, the beneficiary. In May, sales to Asia/Pacific increased 4.8% from April and now represent 37% of the market.

Last month, the SIA released its mid-year market forecast, which outlines an industry-wide recovery that is currently under way. Semiconductor sales are expected to increase by 3.1 percent in 2002 with increases of approximately 9 percent in both the third and fourth quarters. The SIA expects the growth rate to accelerate to 23.2 percent in 2003 and 20.9 percent in 2004 with wireless and digital consumer products leading the growth of sales.

The SIA's Global Sales Report (GSR) is a three-month moving average of sales activity. The GSR is tabulated by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization, which represents approximately 66 companies. The moving average is a mathematical smoothing technique that mitigates variations due to companies' monthly financial calendars.

The SIA is the leading voice for the semiconductor industry and has represented U.S.-based manufacturers since 1977. SIA member companies comprise approximately 90% of U.S.-based semiconductor production. Collectively, the chip industry employs a domestic workforce of 284,000 people. More information about the SIA can be found at www.sia-online.org.

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We continue to enjoy Leasing News... the fact that the content realistically depicts what is going on in an adverse environment may be its greatest selling point.

We all have a certain fascination with the travails of others, particularly when their problems were self imposed or could have been avoided because their strategy was absurd, or when their success came at the expense of employees, shareholders, customers, friends or even family.

I don't find that this kind of bad news brings us down, rather I feel continually more educated about the pitfalls of business in general and leasing in particular with every new "disaster". It is valuable to be able to stay abreast of the industry's dirty laundry, unfiltered, and on at least two occasions I can recall having a deeply guarded view of a new "prospect" because of stories I read about them or their company in Leasing News.

I don't feel I would have benefited from "puff pieces" on people who are happy and prosperous, I know they are out there, and some of the industry's other media go out of their way to perpetuate the image (or should I say illusion) of milk and honey.

Additionally I feel our own business ethics and strategies are reaffirmed with every item about someone else stubbing their toe, or imploding. The negative stories therefore seem to have a positive message for the rest of us, albeit backhanded: Hey, we aren't being fried in the press this morning, and expect we never will be, and many many others are in the same position.

There is justice, the bad guys in the end mostly get their due, the people we stayed away from ultimately proved out our fears, the arrests of the principals of a fraudulent leasing company IS uplifting news. The rest of us are all just here doing our thing, maybe today focused on closing out our June quarters, and even if the

As I watch the local broadcast news, typically leading off with something like "Man in Lodi shot 3 times in the head this morning" its off-putting, useless, depressing, and (sadly only for the guy in Lodi) of no personal interest to me whatsoever. When I read about RW Professional or any other of the motley cast of characters who are the industry's bad guys du jour, I learn something directly or indirectly that helps protect our business and our prosperity.

We'll take positive, useful stories when you have them, but I hope you won't artificially gives these more, or less, than their due.

success. This was expected. It will take time. "Non-traditional" lenders have responded more favorably so far than has the leasing / broker community. What does that tell you? In this marketplace, lenders are searching for ways to "stay in this game". They truly do understand the value proposition but are, understandably, having a tough time weighing the value to the risk. We, as a community, can't let them down. They want to stay and are afraid to - for obvious reasons. The cooperative, we strongly believe, will provide many brokers and lenders - traditional and non-traditional - an opportunity to "stay in this game".

cooperative or you want to find out more information on it, please contact any one of us.

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The rumor on Lease Acceptance is true. I received a call from the lady who ran the Atlanta office, whom I have know for years, asking for a job. I gladly hired her as of yesterday.

I spoke to a former employee of Federated Capital, the titled vehicle financing division, both his division and the small ticket division, Lease Acceptance were shut down last Thursday. From what I understand due to losses within the portfolio within the vehicle financing division, and unprofitability of the small ticket division.

Comdisco Deadline Announced The U.S. Bankruptcy Court established July 19, 2002 as the final date by which interested parties must file ballots and/or objections to Comdisco, Inc.'s Plan of Reorganization.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Their contract expires Monday afternoon, but the 10,500 longshoremen who handle cargo at all West Coast ports will not strike and the shippers who employ them say they won't lock out the dock workers.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union met with the Pacific Maritime Association on Saturday, but the union rejected the association's proposal. The union plans to present its own offer when talks resume Monday, just two hours before the current contract expires at 2 p.m. EDT.

Negotiations have stalled over benefits and how to bring new cargo-handling technology to the ports, according to both sides. Still, with pressure coming from as high as the White House, longshoremen and shippers promise to keep talking.

The contract between the union and the association controls the flow of goods through America's 29 major Pacific ports.

Last year, longshoremen loaded or unloaded $260 billion in cargo, and association officials predict that total will double in the next decade. Major labor unrest would effectively cut off goods from Asia and send a shiver through the nation's economy. A recent study by University of California-Berkeley professor Stephen Cohen suggested even a 10-day disruption would cost more than $19 billion.

In 1999, longshoremen worked two weeks after the deadline passed before settling on a contract.

West Coast docks had strikes in 1934, 1936-1937, 1948 and 1971. But this time around, longshoremen have not voted to authorize a strike and such a vote would take weeks to stage, union spokesman Steve Stallone said.

Shippers' association spokesman Jack Suite said there will be no lockout unless there's a work slowdown.

Under federal law, President Bush can block a strike and impose an 80-day cooling- off period.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Friday that administration officials are monitoring the contract talks in San Francisco and are ''encouraging the parties to reach an agreement and keep in mind the impact that it could have on the economy.''

Union officials say shippers are trying to cut their health benefits, gut the grievance process and outsource some union jobs under the guise of making ports more efficient.

Shippers say they need to automate the ports to compete in the global economy and that their offer keeps the union's health package the envy of the working class.

Wages are also at issue. A longshoreman's $80,000 average annual salary for full- time dock work rises to a $167,000 average for the most experienced foremen.

At the West Coast ports, union workers rallied to show their solidarity. Rallies were held at ports in Oakland, CA; Los Angeles; Portland, OR; Tacoma and Seattle, WA.

The rally and barbecue at the Port of Oakland was billed as a "massive display of workers' unity" with speakers from all the major transport unions and international labor federations, including ILWU International President Jim Spinosa and Teamsters General President James Hoffa Jr.

"Employers are stonewalling negotiations and demanding major givebacks from union workers trying to provoke a lockout or a strike," read a flyer promoting the rally, sponsored by the ILWU Local 10.

Trucking industry insiders say shippers are frantically trying to get their imports off port docks and exports to port docks due to the potential of a strike.

"Shippers are getting freight out of ports because they're afraid of a strike by port workers," said truckdriver and OOIDA member Doug Fabish, who hauls produce off the West Coast. "Christmas stuff is moving through the ports now. Those of us who count on the hard-running loads in August and September won't be able to count on it this year."

Buddy Deal, a broker on the West Coast, said another broker told him his shippers were frantic to get export shipments to the ports by Friday, June 28.

All this turmoil at the ports is translating into higher rates for the trucking industry. "Rates coming out of California are almost double," Fabish said.

Others in the industry say a shortage of trucks is pushing rates up. "I'm going to $3 a mile for loads to Salt Lake City and still can't getting any trucks," said Deal. "There are less trucks on the road because of all the companies going out of business. Dick Simon turned in more than 500 trucks, then you have your mom-and-pop operations turning in their trucks."

Longshoremen find strength in tradition as West Coast contract expires

By Justin Pritchard, Associated Press,

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) On the sidewalk outside the longshoremen's hiring hall, a man paints the white outlines of two dock workers killed during the 1934 strike that forever changed how billions of dollars of goods enter and leave West Coast ports.

Inside the hall, any longshoremen will tell you how those killings helped form a militant union that turned brutal waterfront work into a blue-collar job with white-collar wages and perks.

Ever since that bloody strike, longshoremen have controlled job assignments in every port on the West Coast leverage unrivaled among labor unions and a reliable trump card at the negotiating table.

The latest contract between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the shippers expires at 5 p.m. Monday.

The two sides have been negotiating in San Francisco, where both are based. After weeks of a news blackout, word came Wednesday from the union that the talks were stuck on issues including salaries and benefits.

The shippers' latest offer on a three-year contract was rejected Saturday and the union plans to present its version Monday. Neither side would speculate what will happen after the deadline. At rallies last week, the Teamsters union promised to join any strike.

With the outcome governing all of the 10,500 longshoremen in the United States' 29 major Pacific ports, it wouldn't take long for labor unrest to cripple trade with Asia and send a shiver through world economies.

The shippers' Pacific Maritime Association says the $260 billion worth of cargo that moved through ports from San Diego to Seattle last year supported 4 million American jobs.

With Pacific Rim trade expected to double in the next decade, the association says U.S. ports must become more efficient to remain competitive.

''In the post 9/11 era, there is no question that the need for technology and modernization is even more crucial,'' says spokesman Jack Suite. ''Modern workplace practices and the introduction of basic technology are absolutely necessary for ensuring national security, relieving mounting congestion on the terminals and removing this bottleneck in the global transportation system.''

Longshoremen fear that's simply employer doublespeak cloaking an attempt to outsource union jobs and regain control over work assignments, something the union can't afford to give up.

Not only has the union won longshoremen high salaries $80,000 on average for full- time dock work, up to a $167,000 average for the most experienced foremen shippers pay practically their entire health care costs.

They also like the freedom the hiring halls afford each morning, longshoremen decide what assignment they want and who will be their boss.

''When you come through this window, you can have any of those jobs,'' says Richard Mead, president of Local 10, gesturing to slips of paper inside the dispatch booth, where a woman calls workers by number. ''Or you can look in here and say `I don't want to do any of that today,' and leave.''

And they know their work is vital.

''The job that we are blessed to have affects the whole economy,'' says Henry Pellom III, known as ''Gloveman'' for the goods he sells to fellow union members. He plays $5-a-hand card games with friends at the hall each day before heading to the docks to work the giant cranes and move acres of containers.

''Our job dictates that we have some type of leverage,'' Pellom says.

In 1999, longshoremen kept working past a contract deadline and a contract was settled after two weeks. But they struck in 1936-37, 1948 and 1971.

Among the rank and file, talk of a strike or a lockout was common during rallies Thursday.

''A culture of resistance has emerged in the union,'' says David Wellman, author of book on the ILWU's San Francisco local and a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Union founder Harry Bridges refused to buckle despite repeated federal investigations and constant police surveillance. He created a union culture that still embraces racial inclusion and spurns hierarchy local leaders can serve no more than two one-year terms before returning to the rank-and-file.

Inside the hall near San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, photos of Bridges compete for wall space with murals of pre-union hardships. Their motto is ubiquitous: ''An injury to one is an injury to all.''

New longshoremen must take classes on union history. And every July 5, San Francisco Bay area ports sit idle as the union memorializes the two men shot by police in 1934.

Tom Villeggiante, one of six sons who followed ''Watermelon Charlie'' Villeggiante into the union, speaks of the hall as hallowed ground.

''Longshoremen lost their lives for that hall,'' says Villeggiante, 47. ''That's like the lifeline of the union. Everybody takes care of everybody at the hall.''

On the Net:

ILWU: http://www.ilwu.org/main.htm

Maritime Association: http://www.pmanet.org/

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) As they nurse a horrendous high-tech hangover, venture capitalists are getting a sick feeling that more pain is on the way.

Their foreboding stems largely from the glut of startups still remaining from the dot- com frenzy that venture capitalists fueled during the late 1990s and the first half of 2000.

While hundreds of startups have folded since the end of 1999, thousands more are hanging on, desperately trying to preserve their money in hopes of a high-tech industry rebound.

And with the chances of a tech recovery this year dimming, people in the business expect dozens of unprofitable startups to fail during the next six months a phenomenon that would force venture capitalists to recognize even more losses on their books.

''You can just look at the numbers and see that another day of reckoning is coming,'' said Peter Barris, managing general partner of New Enterprise Associates, a venture capital firm in Reston, Va. ''We are going to have to go through another painful trough.''

Things already look pretty bad. In 2001, the value of venture capital funds fell by an average of 27.8 percent, marking the first annual loss recognized in any calendar year since the industry began tracking its returns in 1980.

Though they still have an estimated $40 billion to $60 billion sitting idle in their funds, skittish venture capitalists invested just $5.1 billion in this year's first quarter, a 53 percent drop from a year ago, according to VentureOne, an industry research firm.

The investment activity has declined in every quarter since peaking at $26.9 billion during the first three months of 2000, VentureOne said.

Venture capitalists raised just $2.25 billion during the first quarter, the slowest pace since 1995. By some industry estimates, refunds to investment partners exceeded the amount of new money raised.

The grim conditions produced some dire predictions at a prominent industry conference in June in San Francisco.

Venture capitalists attending the International Business Forum said they are bracing for a traumatic contraction that will wipe out up to half of the nation's roughly 800 venture capital firms in the next few years.

Some said another wave of failed investments could push their five-year and 10-year returns into the red, a possibility that seemed unfathomable in the boom years.

As of Dec. 31, the industry's average five-year return still stood at a respectable 35.9 percent while the average 10-year return was 26.4 percent, according to statistics compiled by Thomson Financial/Venture Economics.

Some of those returns may be artificially high because a significant number of venture capitalists still haven't faced up to the grim conditions by discounting the values of investments in failing startups.

For example, the privately held stock of a startup once worth $8 per share has been marked down to $3.75 per share by Kline Hawkes & Co., said Frank R. Kline, the Los Angeles venture capital firm's managing partner. But another investor still values the company at $6.75, hoping for a turnaround. Kline wouldn't identify the startup or other investor.

''The industry has moved from a recessed state to a state of depression,'' said Edwin M. Kania Jr., managing general partner of OneLiberty Ventures in Cambridge, Mass. ''We are in an existential crisis where venture capitalists are asking, 'What is our purpose?' Why am I here?'''

After never investing more than $20 billion in a single year during the industry's first 50 years of existence, venture capitalists poured $141 billion into startups during 1999 and 2000, according to VentureOne.

Some of that money went to more mature privately held companies, but $89.5 billion funded 4,383 startups, mostly in high-tech industries, during 1999 and 2000, VentureOne said.

Slightly more than one-fourth 1,248 companies either went public, were acquired or went out of business, according to VentureOne.

That means 3,135 of the startups created at the height of the Internet bubble are still around, hoping to either begin making money on their own or persuade venture capitalists to invest in them again.

Only a handful are likely to survive, according to venture capitalists, industry analysts and turnaround specialists working with troubled startups.

''I'm still seeing some companies out there that should have been put to rest a year ago,'' said John Zipp, a senior director for SageGroup Strategies, a turnaround consulting company. ''They have been hoarding their cash and now it's starting to run out.''

Companies that have finally given up in the last few weeks include Personic, a Brisbane maker of online software for job recruitment that abruptly shut down in early June after burning through $76 million in venture capital.

Other recent flops include Sanrise of Dublin, Calif., a data storage company that burned through much of its $305 million in venture capital before filing for bankruptcy protection on June 12.

The big push for follow-up investments is likely to occur in six to nine months, predicted Susan A. Mason, a general partner with Onset Ventures in Menlo Park.

Few, if any, of these startups will be able to raise money in the public markets, given Wall Street's disdain for the initial public offerings of unproven high-tech companies.

These cash-starved startups, Barris said, also are likely to be spurned by chastened venture capitalists who now realize ''we invested in a lot more companies than deserved to be alive.''

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The former Tyco International chairman, L. Dennis Kozlowski, pulls a crucial document out of a box of papers bound for investigators, according to the criminal indictment for evidence tampering. Executives at WorldCom hide billions of dollars in expenses through almost blatant accounting tricks, reportedly to meet increasingly distant profit projections. And there lies Arthur Andersen, devastated by the Enron fiasco and its guilty verdict for obstruction of justice.

Why do so many smart people appear to be doing so many boneheadedly dishonest things? Even Martha Stewart is being investigated over whether she lied about the circumstances surrounding her sale of ImClone stock just before it took a tumble. Ms. Stewart and Mr. Kozlowski may eventually have their names cleared. But former chief executives shake their heads at the growing crowd of tarnished business leaders. Roger A. Enrico, the former chief executive of Pepsico, said that during his tenure, "The rule was when you run into bad news, get to the bott