More Enrons: Ron Perelman plays financial games

Barron’s reports on Ron Perelman’s latest shenanigans and that he’s likely to get his way in selling a stake in Panavision to M&F Worldwide, another publicly-traded company he controls. Somehow, this other company was willing to pay $17.50 per share when Panavision stock was trading at $4. The other shareholders of M&F weren’t so happy and drove the stock down 18% Friday after the news cme out. Perelman is an operator whose exploits go back to the junk bond salad days in the 1980s. As the article mentions, one wonders how much longer such financial engineering will be going on in light of Enron, Global Crossing, and (speculating) Calpine.