So he decided to bite the bullet, do the right thing for shareholders and merge the company. At those prices, Mobil might have been able to prosper on its own. But there was no way for Noto to have known that at the time he did the deal. Meanwhile, the old Mobil is rapidly disappearing. A company that had prided itself on its panache and creativity had to embrace an Exxon known for starched shirts and rigidly efficient accounting systems.
Timing is everything, in business and in life.
And it's nice to know that it's not just the little investors who decide to sell at the bottom of the market. The cleverest businessmen, like Noto, sometimes do the same thing. The volatile Wall Street swings of the past month have been a reminder just how capricious markets can be. The sudden decline in technology stocks made no more sense, really, than had the earlier stratospheric rise. The price people are willing to pay to own a share of a particular asset or stream of income can change wildly from month to month.