Miscellaneous 'Shoe

-- Starbucks head honcho Howard Schultz owns less than 5% of weight loss and nutrition business Kinetix Living, and he's giving his employees an opportunity to enroll  (while the article does not say if it is free for employees, I assume it's at least offered at a discount). "By the end of September, about 500 Starbucks employees will have completed Kinetix's eight-week program. The 53 employees who started in May lost a combined 319 pounds of body fat, or roughly six pounds per employee, during an eight-week stretch, said Jamie Brunner, co-founder of Kinetix." Good for employee retention and morale, and maybe for health care costs, but six pounds in eight weeks? I've got to question the effectiveness of the Kinetix program. Meager.

-- TheStreet.com reported that Target may sell its credit card business. This shows the positive influence investors can have on a company. "Target's shift comes less than two months after William Ackman's Pershing Square Capital revealed a 9.6% stake in the nation's second-largest discount retailer. Pershing's nearly $2 billion stock purchase kindled speculation that the firm would look to pressure Minneapolis-based Target to shed its credit card operations and real estate portfolio to focus on retailing." Retailer Sears found benefits in selling its credit card division. Since divesting the unit in July of 2003, its stock is up 435%.

-- Slate on private equity firms' purchase of bank debt and bonds. "Private equity firms are raising money from investors, which they will use to buy the loans made by banks to private equity firms, who are using money raised from earlier investors to buy companies. One interpretation of this dynamic: Wall Street is an efficient self-correcting machine. There is a vast supply of bank debt for sale, and the private equity firms are providing a chunk of the demand.The best metaphor I can think of is this: You pay your friend a few dollars so that you can host a small party while she's out of town. You leave the pool filled with garbage, beer cans, and human waste. The next day you show up dressed as a pool cleaner and charge your friend a few bucks to mop up the mess you made."