Sony could (hypothetically speaking) be looking to gain liquid assets for a large number of reasons ...
I was emailed an article from a financial analyst the other day who was encouraging investors to get out of investments where the company was heavily involved in big-ticket luxury items. The analysis was (fairly) straight forward and what he was suggesting was that the dropping of housing values across North America combined with more difficult to access credit was going to reverse the trend of people taking out home equity loans to buy big ticket luxury items; his expectation was that most of these companies were going to face dramatically lower profits in 2008.
Now, consider what Sony produces? That's right, primarily big ticket luxury items. Hypothetically speaking, Sony could be looking to have cash on hand to ensure that their electronics division has the necessary funding to keep operating when it is losing more money.
(Please note, this is just one of 100,000,000 theories of what could be happening)
