We'll tell you this much — Kirk Kerkorian knows how to play the auto industry like a fiddle. The man can turn a quick buck out here in Detroit like a street corner vendor selling Red Wings championship gear. Long-term success? Ha! Who needs it? Not when you can parlay a stock price up high enough to pull in double-digit returns in a few days. True, it'll make mince meat of the company by potentially sending it into a navel-gazing tailspin. But what does that matter when you've dropped some extra coin in your pocket. The latest example from KirkKerk's "Greed Is Good Guide To Making Phat Car-Maker Cash" is his tender offer of $8.50 a share for Ford stock. The water-testing...
...apparently drew in offers from more than one billion of the company's shares. KirkKerk's Tracinda will now buy 20 million shares for about $170 million — bringing the total ownership stake up to the magical over-5% number. Why so magical? It's what's needed to drop Jerry "What Is Your Bidding, My Master?" York onto FoMoCo's board and give Kerkorian an opportunity to do a flip-n-fuck on the shares. This looks be a sweet summer indeed in Dearborn. Well, at least for Kerkorian. [via Automotive News (sub. req.)]