re: Anyone buying WMT?

It's WAY out there, but some comments from the investor day are being interpreted as potentially spinning off Sam's Club

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5.Openness to Assessment of Walmart’s Full Portfolio: McMillon was clear-cut about the retailer’s priority toward its businesses in North America and China. At the same time, Walmart International and Sam’s Club were not represented at this meeting, and McMillon and Holley alike voiced their openness to reviewing the role of every piece of Walmart’s portfolio. “Being the biggest and being the best are not the same thing,” McMillon said. “We need to be the best.” Could this mean that strategic announcements on Walmart International and Sam’s Club are on the horizon?

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I added 80 more on Friday and that brought my average to.......

66.66

Not announced with quite as much fanfare as the original "findings" in the NYT, but Wal-Mart Bribery Probe Finds Few Signs of Major Misconduct in Mexico (pay - WSJ).

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In the wake of the articles, which were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism, Wal-Mart said in a Mexican regulatory filing that it had removed its general counsel in Mexico, “in the interests of the investigation,” but declined to elaborate. It also says it undertook an extensive internal probe of the bribery allegations, and has spent more than $650 million on the probe and related compliance upgrades.

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They said the federal findings so far largely match up with the results of an internal probe Wal-Mart launched in the wake of questions from the New York Times.

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The probe uncovered evidence that contradicted some of the allegations in the New York Times articles, said people familiar with the investigation. The five-year statute of limitations made it very unlikely that other instances of alleged misconduct could be prosecuted, these people said.

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Which is good news for WMT and her shareholders.

Original article, The Bribery Aisle: How Wal-Mart Got Its Way in Mexico

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Wal-Mart de Mexico was an aggressive and creative corrupter, offering large payoffs to get what the law otherwise prohibited, an examination by The New York Times found.

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