Well, we have yammered for sometime about Charter Cable tanking and bankruptcy looming in the winds.  It is about time.  These entries are getting old.Not to beat a dead horse, but how can a company backed by the majority stockholder, Paul Allen, let the company go down in flames.  Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft for geepers sakes.  But then again he did leave the company.  That is another head scratcher.

This guy sat on the fence for years watching the company continue to restructure it’s debt to finance further debt.  I guess it was coming as Mr. Allen showed no interest in this St. Louis asset.  Maybe this will finally boot him out and bring in a new management team versus a takeover.  After all, Charter is the third largest cable company in the country offering services like networking, phone, TV, and computer surfing on the Internet.

If they don’t restructure management, the company will be on the auction block for a merger or takeover and the headquarters will move out of St. Louis like other companies have.

Leave it to the banks.  The last I checked the stock was at .08 cents per share.  Let the next chapter begin as Charter continues to write it’s book or saga.  The next chapter is 11.

Sometimes you have to wonder how some companies ever made it. A good example is Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. The US government guarantees these two companies solvency at the tax payer’s expense to the tune of $200 billion dollars. So, in this deal both the tax payer and the stock owners lose. In addition to that, we have the “wing nut” banks that have mortgaged millions of homes to borrowers who couldn’t afford the mortgage in the first place.

Another fine example of “what were they thinking” is Charter Communications. This company needs a serious shake-up. Charter Communications is headed towards bankruptcy. They will file chapter 11 in due time.

Charter’s current debt load is twenty-two billion dollars and less than one billion in revenue. You would think the United States Congress was managing Charter Communications with the amount of debt it carries. The ironic part for Charter is Paul Allen is the CEO and owns 28,531,77 shares as of April 2008. Paul Allen was the cofounder of Microsoft.

Charter is headquartered in St. Louis, MO and grew from a regional cable company into the third largest cable company in the U.S. The growth represents much of the debt for the purchase of other smaller cable companies. Unfortunately, due to the bad judgment of investment the company is headed to the collectors.

The saddest part of this story is the loser. The losers are the current shareholders of the stock CHTR. After an entity files for bankruptcy the shareholders are always last in line for recovery of any (if any) cash. Charter was recently delisted from Nasdaq. Nasdaq delists stock that falls below the value of one dollar.