DoCoMo to bid $1 bln for a stake in Mobifone

NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan's biggest mobile phone operator, expects to bid at least US$1 billion for a stake in Vietnam's No.2 mobile phone carrier and is eyeing investments in other Asian countries, an executive said...
http://vietstocknews.blogspot.com/2007/11/docomo-to-bid-1-bln-for-stake-in.html

Docomo has many bright, hard-working, elite MBAs on its staff but even so Docomo has a history of making notoriously bad overseas investments. It lost over US$12B at the beginning of this decade in 1 investment in the U.S. market and then several more billions, US$6 or 7B later in Europe. I hope their latest venture does better but most analysts are underweight Docomo.

Docomo's next move

Now that Docomo has lost it's dominant market share in Japan, it is resorting to desperate measures: changing it's logo from a well known artistic one to a bland, run of the mill one; and it has announced that it will take measures to keep its remaining customers from changing to another carrier. ☝

This is kind of like saying we're not so outstanding and closing the barn door after the horses have fled. Makes me wonder where the president of Docomo learned about business. It also makes me want to short Docomo stocks and go long on KDDI and Softbank. Is it possible to sell stocks short on the TSE? Well, I don't have the extra cash anyway. But this sounds like an almost sure thing--worth borrowing some to gain extra leverage.

O.D., stock guru