Pre-Open Movers 3/24: Bear Stearns (BSC) Surges On Reports of Higher Bid, Sherwin-Williams (SHW) Lower on Guidance

March 24, 2008 9:29 AM EDT

StreetInsider.com Pre-Open Movers:

Bear Stearns (NYSE: BSC) 63% HIGHER; Reports JPMorgan was in talks this weekend to raise its offer for Bear Stearns, citing people familiar with the matter. The paper said JPMorgan may be willing to pay $10 per share for Bear, up from the initial $2 offer that shocked Wall Street last weekend.

Fremont General (NYSE: FMT) 59% HIGHER; entered into a definitive agreement to sell the mortgage servicing rights to mortgage loans currently held in certain securitization trusts sponsored by an affiliate of Carrington Capital Management, LLC to Carrington Mortgage Services, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CCM.

Digimarc Corporation (Nasdaq: DMRC) 20% HIGHER; L-1 Identity Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: ID) entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the ID Systems business of Digimarc Corporation in a stock and cash transaction valued at approximately $250 million.

CIT Group, Inc. (NYSE: CIT) 16% HIGHER; Reports the company is in talks with oversea banks for refinancing. Also, Stifel upgrades saying company could be an acquisition target.

Tiffany & Co. (NYSE: TIF) 10% HIGHER; reports Q4 EPS of $1.27, ex-items, versus the consensus of $1.21. Revenues came in at $1.05 billion, versus the consensus of $1.05 billion. Tiffany sees 2008 EPS $2.75 - $2.85, which compares favorably to the Wall Street consensus of $2.49. The company sees net sales growth of approximately 10%.

Aircastle Limited (NYSE: AYR) 9% LOWER; The company's Board of Directors has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.25 per common share, payable on April 15, 2008 to shareholders of record on March 31. This dividend represents a reduction in the Company's previously issued quarterly dividend of $0.70.

Sherwin-Williams Company (NYSE: SHW) 6% LOWER; lower guidance. For the quarter, the company expects to achieve a low single digit percentage increase in consolidated net sales over the first quarter of 2007. The previous expectation for consolidated net sales in the quarter had been a low-to-mid single digit percentage increase. Diluted net income per common share for the quarter is expected to be in the range of $.56 to $.61 per share. The January expectation for the quarter was $.72 to $.80 per share.

PMC-Sierra Inc. (Nasdaq: PMCS) 5.5% HIGHER; Lehman upgrades to Overweight

XM Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: XMSR) 5% HIGHER; New hope regulators could approve merger with Sirius Satellite (Nasdaq: SIRI)

Monsanto Co. (NYSE: MON) 3.5% HIGHER; UBS upgrades to Buy

Bankrate Inc. (Nasdaq: RATE) 3% HIGHER; Positive Barron's article

Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH) 1.4% LOWER; Oppenheimer downgrades Lehman Brothers from Outperform to Perform, citing protracted challenging capital markets environment.

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[LJ]

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• UBS
• JPMorgan
• Bear Stearns
• Lehman Brothers

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