Goldman Sachs sinks spurs into Zebra; Now No. 2 shareholder in bar code tech firm.(Goldman Sachs Group Inc. acquires Zebra Technologies Corp.)(Wal-Mart Stores Inc. technology application of radio frequency identification)(Brief Article)

Crain's Chicago Business, November, 2005 by MURPHY, H. LEE

Byline: H. LEE MURPHY One of the best-known names on Wall Street is making a sizable wager on Vernon Hills-based Zebra Technologies Corp. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. paid $139 million in the third quarter to add 3.1 million shares of Zebra, bringing the firm's stake to 5.2 million. With 7.4% of the bar code technology company, Goldman is the company's second-largest shareholder.

The firm added as other investors sold: Zebra's shares are down 20% this year, closing at $45.05 Friday. Zebra's profit of $83.3 million for the first nine months of this year is down 6% from 2004. Goldman wouldn't comment, but other analysts say the stake is a bet on the future of radio frequency identification (RFID), which uses radio waves to encode and read merchandise tags....

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.