Don't tell that to Intel(INTC - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) investors, though.
As the Federal Trade Commission launched a formal antitrust
probe of the world's largest chipmaker Friday, the reaction on the
Street was marked more by apathy than anxiety.
The chipmaker's stock was down 4% to $22.90 amid a broad-based
selloff. A day earlier, when South Korean regulators fined Intel $25
million for anticompetitive behavior, Intel's stock was actually up 25
cents.
For many investors, the legal clouds gathering over Intel don't represent a credible threat.
Daniel Morgan, a portfolio manager at Synovus Trust, summed up
the attitude among Intel's investors to the FTC investigation: "I'll be
monitoring it, but it's not something I'm overly worried about," says
Morgan, whose firm owns Intel shares.
"They [Intel] have been investigated before; so has Microsoft(MSFT - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr), about a million times. So I'm just kind of immune to it," Morgan says.
The example set by Microsoft, which has been under antitrust
scrutiny for nearly two decades, doesn't provide much reason to panic.
Microsoft has been hit with billions of dollars in fines and
has even been forced to change business practices, such as bundling
certain software with its Windows operating system.
Yet analysts don't believe the various actions have held Microsoft back.
"They still have a monopoly on the operating system and the
productivity software market with Office, and that's what drives most
of their business value," says Allan Krans of Technology Business
Research.
Form : http://www.thestreet.com/
