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the scoop on tracking stocks

If you own Sprint, Ziff-Davis, or Circuit City, you're probably familiar with tracking stocks; these corporations issued them for their Sprint PCS, ZDNet, and CarMax subsidiaries respectively. This Forbes.com article declares tracking stocks "in vogue": a way for big companies to "have their cake and sell it to" by offering sharholders stake in a "sexy" subsidiary while maintaining complete ownership of the sub. It's a tricky little equities ploy, around since the mid-1980s but experiencing a popularity surge only recently, and in this age of dot-com spinoffs, something you should be aware of.

Mon, 06 Dec 1999 03:33:56 -0800