This is no surprise. The Sarbanes-Oxley act has increased the cost of being a publicly traded company to obscene levels. Couple that with the heady days of private equity and hedge funds we are seeing, and it's not a surprise at all that a railroad the size of FEC is being taken private. This is probably a good thing at this point. If anybody here watches CNBC as much as I do, you can relate at the amazement for how many companies are being taken private this year - it's unreal. Further, it includes healthy and unhealthy companies, as opposed the 1980's where only unhealthy or depressed stock value companies were taken private. The really ironic thing is, Fortress just had their IPO and was the first hedgefund to go public. The neat thing about a stockholder owned hedge fund is that the fund gets more money to invest, but doesn't necessarily have to tie those influxes of cash into a particular investment the firm makes, and thus won't have a payback schedule. I wish FEC the best, as the Fortress folks will be a demanding lot to work for. They aren't railroaders, they're strictly numbers people. What would have been really ironic was if Cerberus, recent purchaser of Chrysler, would have bought FEC - our old friend the Snowman is Chairman at Cerberus.
The new Acela: It's not Aveliable.
