At our deadline Fri., Vodafone and Cingular Wireless were expected to submit bids for AT&T Wireless, with NTT DoCoMo reportedly bowing out of the competition for the carrier. It wasn’t immediately clear when the terms of any proposed offers would be made public, although AT&T Wireless’s board was expected to meet Sat. Legg Mason said in a research note last week that Cingular was the most likely winner. But Legg Mason said if Vodafone weighed in with a bid, Cingular could explore alternatives, such as pursuing T-Mobile USA if it didn’t win the auction for AT&T Wireless. “There have been preliminary discussions with Cingular and T-Mobile in the past so this option is not far- fetched, but the drawback is that T-Mobile has no interest in selling below its book value of approximately $22 billion,” Legg Mason said. It said that sum would be 10 times higher than the company’s projected earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, which would be a significant premium to the 7 to 8 times multiple that AT&T Wireless might attain in its own bidding process. As for a Vodafone bid, Legg Mason said the biggest challenge would be the company unwinding its 45% stake in Verizon Wireless, its joint venture with Verizon. Another possibility stirring speculation Fri. was the emergence of Nextel as an AT&T Wireless bidder. Legg Mason said it didn’t expect a Nextel bid, but if it did, it probably would be based on concerns that “another company doesn’t obtain the wireless assets ‘on the cheap,'” it said. Meanwhile, UBS said in a research note Fri. that the sale of AT&T Wireless to either Cingular or Vodafone could affect the ownership of Venezuelan telco CANTV. If Vodafone won AT&T Wireless, Verizon would be likely to buy out Vodafone’s 45% minority stake in their joint venture. That could be financed in part by the sale of Verizon’s 28.5% ownership of CANTV, in which Verizon is the single largest shareholder, UBS said. Potential buyers could include Mexico’s Telmex or Spain’s Telefonica, it said. Medley Global Advisers said in a research note last week that regardless of whether Cingular or another carrier won the AT&T Wireless bidding, a “complicated and time-consuming merger review process” lay ahead at the FCC and Dept. of Justice. “The process will be cumbersome due to the range of technical and political issues that will need to be addressed,” it said, including questions on the appropriate ownership of spectrum in overlapping markets. In general, one scenario on which analysts were speculating last week was that a decision by AT&T Wireless could be announced as early as today (Tues.), although a bidder could still enter the fray beyond the 5 p.m. Feb. 13 deadline that the carrier had set for bids. As of late Fri., Vodafone reportedly was mulling a $34 billion bid for AT&T Wireless.

(a) BGH has a preliminary de minimis rate of 0.43%.

Take-Two Interactive’s Mafia knocked Need for Speed: Underground from Electronic Arts (EA) out of the top spot on Rentrak’s list of the best-selling videogames in the U.S. Preliminary Home Video Essentials data for the week ended Feb. 8 showed that Mafia, in only its 2nd week of availability, jumped 11 notches to become the top-selling videogame, earning an additional $314,802 in the week for a total of $422,087 to date. But EA yet again had more games in the top 10 than any of its competitors, with 4, and PS2 again dominated the chart as every game in the top 10 was for Sony Computer Entertainment’s console. Need, in its 12th week, dropped to #2, earning an additional $271,040, for $4.89 million to date. EA’s other games in the top 10 were NFL Street at #3 (down one in its 4th week, earning $263,065 in the week, for $634,809 to date), Medal of Honor: Rising Sun at #6 (up 2 in its 13th week, an additional $160,731, for $5.08 million to date), Madden NFL 2004 at #9 (down 4 in its 26th week, an additional $152,184, for $6.60 million to date). Activision again had 2 titles in the top 10: True Crime: Streets of L.A. at #4 (down one in its 14th week, an additional $214,465, for $4.42 million) and Tony Hawk’s Underground at #8 (down one in its 15th week, an additional $155,952 and a total of $4.59 million). Rounding out the top 10 were games from Atari, Sony and THQ: Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2 at #5 (down one in its 10th week, an additional $170,138 and a total of $2.42 million), SOCOM II: U.S. Navy SEALs at #7 (down one in its 14th week, an additional $156,466 and a total of $3.43 million), WWE Smackdown! Here Comes the Pain at #10 (down one in its 15th week, an additional $130,472 and a total of $3.08 million).

For the 2nd consecutive week, Columbia TriStar’s Radio was the #1-rented movie on DVD and VHS in the U.S., Rentrak’s preliminary Home Video Essentials data for the week ended Feb. 8 showed Thurs. The movie earned $8.07 million on DVD and VHS in the week, for $17.07 million to date, Rentrak said. On DVD alone, the title earned $6.17 million in the week, $13.10 million to date. Its first full week of availability, Warner’s Secondhand Lions was the #2-rented title. Rentrak said the movie earned $6.83 million, $6.87 million to date. The title earned $5.17 million in the week, $5.21 million to date on DVD alone. Also new to the top 10 their first full week of availability were Disney’s Under the Tuscan Sun at #4 ($5.03 million in the week, $5.07 million to date on DVD and VHS), Universal’s Lost in Translation at #6 ($4.73 million in the week, $4.77 million to date), the R-rated version of Disney’s My Boss’s Daughter at #7 ($4.31 million, $4.33 million), Paramount’s The Fighting Temptations at #9 ($3.27 million, $3.30 million).

The International Trade Administration (ITA) frequently issues notices on antidumping (AD) and countervailing (CV) duty orders which Broker Power considers to be "minor" in importance as they concern actions that occur after an order is issued and neither announce nor cause any changes to an order's duty rates, scope, affected firms, or effective period.

¹ The ITA states that only the 2002 final results CV rate will affect the CV cash deposit rate for subject merchandise on and after the publication of the final results of these four reviews.

(a) These four companies each have a de minimis AD rate (Ferrara: 0.24%, Lensi: 0.36%, Pagani: 0.21%, and Pallante: 0.12%); no cash deposits will be collected although suspension of liquidation will continue.

Inconsistent performance across a variety of playback platforms and a lack of user-friendliness in some was the preliminary finding from our first evaluation of the “DualDisc” dual-sided DVD/CD hybrid now being test marketed by the 5 major record labels. In Windows PCs specifically, the DVD side of the flipper didn’t deliver DVD-Video or DVD-Audio content, depending on the title -- and promised online links to Web sites for value- added content were quirky and difficult to access, we found.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued messages on a number of antidumping (AD) and countervailing (CV) duty actions, many of which (marked by an * in the action column) were previously published in the Federal Register by the International Trade Administration (ITA) and summarized in International Trade Today.

(a) If the exporter is not a firm covered in this review, a prior review, or the original investigation, but the manufacturer is, the AD cash deposit rate will be the rate established for the most recent period for the manufacturer of the merchandise.