Wisconsin Energy

Corporate raiders take note: new research finds that financial services company Morgan Stanley and retailer J C Penney Co Inc are among the most vulnerable to hostile takeovers.The two rank among the top 10 U.S. corporations where control is concentrated within a small group of large shareholders, putting the companies at greater risk of losing a potential hostile takeover bid, according to a report released on Wednesday.Rotary Gallop, a Houston-based research and consulting firm, measured controlling influence rather than ownership stakes at 495 of the companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index.Morgan Stanley and J C Penney were not immediately available for comment."What matters is how much control shareholders have in a company, not ownership - the traditional yardstick in contested situations," said Travis Dirks, a trained physicist who is now Rotary Gallop's chief executive."Until now it was more of a gut feeling," he said, referring to the traditional method used by pundits of ...

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