Business

New York, October 1 -- Bill Gates has topped the Forbes list of billionaires, while the economic meltdown effected the rich, and tore down their assets.

My friend Seth Jayson, co-advisor of the Motley Fool Hidden Gems
service, was chatting with me the other day at Fool global
headquarters. We were talking about what is probably the most hated
sector today -- health care, a sector I'm quite familiar with as the
Fool's online editor for biotech and pharmaceuticals. And why is it so
hated?

Boy, how the times have changed! ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) the unquestioned king of the Big Oil jungle -- and the owner of a string of corporate earnings records -- has slid back to the land of the Lilliputians.

On Friday, a district court judge in Massachusetts overturned the Web content delivery specialist's 2008 patent infringement victory over Limelight Networks (Nasdaq: LLNW), voiding a $45 million jury award for damages. Akamai, not surprisingly, has already promised to appeal.

New Jersey-based Honeywell International (NYSE: HON) joined a Friday parade that included conglomerate 3M (NYSE: MMM) and oilfield services king Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB) in disclosing soft March quarters and little optimism for what lies ahead for the remainder of 2009.

Noble's Still Looking Regal

Content isn't king at Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO). In fact, it may not even be fit to be a jester. It's more like the messenger getting slain, if we go by the struggling online titan's move to close down its GeoCities site.

Offshore contract driller ENSCO (NYSE: ESV) tends to keep its earnings releases brief, but there are usually all sorts of goodies contained in its quarterly conference calls. To get a sense of the global state of offshore drilling, there may be no better place to turn.

This pirate thing is getting even further out of hand. The aggression and the disruption of business off the Horn of Africa must not stand. Er, float.

Pity the short-seller? How about "pity the press-release writer in a strong-dollar world"?