LOLz

 Yeah but isn't that what explains HSBC's $2 trillion asset  worth vs its $180 billion market value?

Buying Sony for any western company would be close to impossible anyway seeing how half the company's stock is owned by Japanese institutions or individuals which would be very unlikely to sell to a western company.........

Are you guys serious?

You see the world differently because you played Killzone and MGS?

I understand seing things differently after Simcity and Civ since they both provide info on things that affect their daily life... but how in the hell have chopping up some dude with giant axes and stealth killing some poor security guard changed your worldview? 

It's actually kind of scary...

There's no such thing as "SCE stocks", as SCE is not a company, just a division.

That's why I previously said that Sony's investors are the only ones who can force Sony to sell SCE. If Microsoft made an offer which Sony's investors wanted Sony to accept, it could happen.

I don't think it's very likely though, unless Sony's profits tank much more or SCE makes big losses. If that happens, Sony could be forced to sell off unprofitable parts of the company.

I know that!  I'm pointing out that the original point is valid for all companies and was presented without any strong reason why Sony would want to sell its entertainment division or how MS would go about buying it.

Its a pure speculation piece and not news as such... not only that but I'd aruge the same logic applies in reverse.  MS in total has made zero from entertainment divison and is under threat in its core business from other companies and it could be argued on overall performance MS should sell its entertainment division and perhaps even more urgently than Sony.

 A bank's assets has little relationship to its market value as banks have huge liabilities in term of loans for example ( every bank has huge loans with others banks).

If you want to have an idea of the real value of HSBC independantly of its market value you have to look at its book value.( which is sometime called net assets, it's assets minus liabilities and depreciation).

Looking only at total assets is like saying you are worth 300k $ because that is what you paid for your house but forgetting to mention you have a 250k mortgage to repay :p

In that case your book value would be 50k.( that is overly simplified but you get the idea).

Most banks have actually a market value that is fraction of their book value ( 80% or so), it's lower these days.

The main reason is that banks have assets whose value is very hard to guess ( that's the reason of the current financial crisis among other things).

Even without going into exotic bonds, you could have 10 Billion $ of Sony stock, but if you decide to sell it all tomorrow, you won't get 10 Billion for it..........( another closer to reality would be bonds, a lot of bonds are actually very hard to trade, so the bank could have a lot of money in bonds but their value is only somewhat exact if the bank keeps them till their term, if it was to decide to sell them before that time, the price really is hard to guess for something that does not trade often...)

 Basically  the big issue is that for a lot of assets, the bank say that is what they are worth and there is noone to be able to validate that so you have to take the bank's worth for it, which is one of the big reason all the banks are doing so bad on the market right now....

That is what explain the huge losses you see coming from banks the last year or so. What happens basically is the bank suddenly tells you that those 10 Billion worth of bonds it had on its book are now really only worth 5 Billion so it takes a 5 Billion loss without having really done much except suddenly change the value of one asset.....

No, look at HSBC's stock price in the last year (market cap is just stock price times number of stocks):

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=HBC#chart1:symbol=hbc;range=1y;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined

Their liabilities may have increased, but not that much. It's normal for the market cap to be quite below the assets value.

The thing is that to buy Sony's gaming division they would have to get Sony (or the majority of their shareholders) to agree to that.

This is about as likely as Sony buying MS.

Anyway, since Sony has $117 Billion as assets listed and it's market cap is $40 billion, buying it would lose their shareholders about $77 Billion dollars. They'd have to be clinically insane to even consider it.

Thats strange. So HSBC is basically devalued and currently can be sold for much cheaper than it's worth?