financials

Daily-deals provider Groupon was supposed to be the star of this year's IPOs. But over the last several months, the chances of Groupon becoming a disappointment to investors have skyrocketed.

When Groupon filed its IPO papers in June, the excitement surrounding its decision was palpable. According to its filing, Groupon was planning to raise $750 million on its IPO, making it one of the largest public offerings this year. And although Groupon didn't comment on valuation, reports surfaced following its IPO filing, saying it could be valued at between $20 billion and $25 billion when it went public.… Read more

Apple's iPhone 4S was called "underwhelming" by some who were hoping for a major update to the company's iPhone 4, but it appears that shareholders are more than happy to see the device launch today.

As consumers scooped up the new device, the company's shares closed up 3.3 percent at $422, the highest closing price on record. The highest intraday share price Apple stock had ever tallied was $422.86, but it never closed this high.

The success of Apple's stock underscores the company's tremendous resilience. As noted, when Apple showed off … Read more

Daily deals provider Groupon might not go public on the inflated valuation that has been floated around over the last few months.

According to The Wall Street Journal, citing IPO analysts, Groupon might be valued at between $5 billion and $10 billion when the company finally offers its shares on the open market. Two major mutual funds that have invested in Groupon, Growth Fund of America and T. Rowe Price, have most recently valued the service provider at $9.5 billion and $8.7 billion, respectively, according to the Journal.

Those valuations stand in stark contrast to what many believed … Read more

Sprint Nextel plans to shed more light on the financial impact of selling the Apple iPhone during its next quarterly report.

The company had always planned to provide more guidance regarding the iPhone, Chief Executive Dan Hesse told CNET during an event at the CTIA Enterprise & Applications show in San Diego. With the iPhone 4S not even out yet, he didn't believe it would be fair to provide any estimate so soon.

Sprint and Hesse caught a lot of flack on Friday when the company laid out its own 4G plans. Investors at the conference bristled as Hesse … Read more

Investment firm Jaguar Financial, along with a growing number of Research In Motion shareholders, is calling to oust the company's co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, and potentially sell the BlackBerry maker to the highest bidder.

Speaking to Reuters in an interview published today, Jaguar CEO Vic Alboini said about 8 percent of RIM shareholders are in support of his firm's plans to negotiate with the smartphone maker for "changes in governance and the pursuit of a value creation transaction."

Lazaridis and Balsillie own about 10 percent of the company, besting Jaguar's supporters. And so … Read more

Research In Motion's top executives, including co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, have not purchased any of the company's shares on the open market since last year, a new report claims.

According to Bloomberg, which compiled data on stock purchases made by RIM executives, none of the company's "insiders" has acquired shares on the open market since July 2010. Over the last year and a few months, those people have, however, sold off stock "at least 11 times," Bloomberg's research has found.

From a personal financial perspective, the move may have behooved … Read more

Investors were put off yesterday by Apple's underwhelming iPhone news. Today we'll see if their overall infatuation with Apple kicks back into gear.

Shares slumped yesterday following the unveiling of the iPhone 4S--there had been widespread and fervent expectation of an "iPhone 5"--but intraday trading showed things could have been worse.

At around 10 a.m. PT yesterday when Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage at his company's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, Apple's shares started to inch lower. When Apple announced the iPhone 4S, and as it became abundantly clear that an … Read more

The Rev. Justin Yu is out for the rest of the week, but in his place we have the always informative financial guru Jill Schlesinger. Today we talk about the new Amazon Kindle Fire, and how it changes everything in the tablet market (especially for Google). But we also quiz Aunt Jill about the ongoing crisis in Europe, and she tells us about the sugary grab bag at the News & Documentary Emmys.

Pity the "affluent Americans." With financial futures too complex to be forecast or planned by Quicken or Mint, but with insufficient resources to get top-flight financial planning from a wealth management firm like Goldman Sachs, these (approximately) 15 million households are woefully underserved.

That's the start of the pitch from Personal Capital, a new financial adviser firm with a strong, free online financial management app. The founders I talked with, ex-Intuit execs Bill Harris and Jim Del Favero, told me that most financial planning tools just don't sell. Harris said, "I built a tax planning tool twice. It sold practically zero, both times."

So he's trying to build instead a "complete solution" for the connected, sort-of-high-net-worth consumer: a product that gives Mint-like ease of use and information, but with a focus on giving these users grown-up insight. In particular, Personal Capital shows you your investment allocation across all your accounts, so you can see if you're, for example, too heavily invested in U.S. stocks vs. emerging market stocks, bonds, currencies, and so on.

… Read more