Truly stunning news broke yesterday when the mysterious wizards behind the curtain of our favorite annual music festival in the desert decided to announce just weeks after this year’s event that Coachella 2012 will be held over not one, but TWO weekends. Oh, and tickets for both go on sale this FRIDAY, as in two days from today.  This is peculiar for a number of reasons, but mostly because advanced notice isn’t really Coachella’s thing, and if you recall, didn’t even announce last year’s festival dates until the middle of August. Keep reading for all the details on yesterday’s major Coachella 2012 revelations and how to not be SOL with your ticket situation. More»

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Following quarterly earnings reports this evening, both Motorola Mobility (MMI) and Qualcomm (QCOM) held meetings with the Street to go over the details.
Motorola
Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha reiterated the company’s expectation to ship its Atrix smartphone and its Xoom tablet by the end of February, while a version of Xoom pre-packaged [...]

Article courtesy of BARRONS.com: Tech Trader Daily

via guestofaguest.com: Last night was the debut of Chloe Sevigny's line for our beloved Opening Ceremony in NYC with a launch event at the store followed by an after party at Don Hill's. Keep reading for all the details and photos from the night. MORE>>[...]

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Apple (AAPL) executives fleshed out the details of a better-than-expected fiscal Q1 report during a conference call with analysts this afternoon.
Chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer projected Q2 gross profit margin of 38.5%, the same as Q1’s gross margin. That is higher than the current estimate of 38%.
Oppenheimer said the company [...]

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Auriga Securities analyst Chandan Sarkar this morning reiterates a Buy rating on shares of Sprint (S) and a $6 price target after digging into the details of the company’s announced wind-down of its iDen operations.
The $4 billion to $5 billion investment in new base-station technology that Sprint proposes could pay [...]

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Quick question– was something going on last week? About…insider trading-or something? Which might’ve suggested uh– wait, it’s on the tip of my tongue– that the government was looking into some stuff on Wall Street? Did that happen?

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed today that the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation related to trading on Wall Street. In response to questions about the probe of insider trading, Holder said an “investigation is ongoing” and described it as “very serious.” Holder was questioned at a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington.

“I don’t want to get into the details,” he said. The investigation is being conducted by the U.S. attorney’s office in New York, he said.

Holder Confirms Justice Department Investigating Wall Street [Bloomberg]

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Looks like it isn’t just employees who are cashing out on their Facebook shares. TechCrunch reported earlier today that Accel Partners sold “very significant chunks” of its staks in the company (while also holding on to the vast majority of its shares), and I’ve confirmed with the news with a source.

My source said that Accel sold its shares at a $34 billion valuation, and that those shares added up to less than 20 percent of Accel’s total stake. Contrary to TechCrunch’s report, my source told me that Accel remains the largest venture shareholder in Facebook.

I couldn’t get any information on the who was doing the buying. TechCrunch doesn’t sound too sure about the details, but says it heard that Technology Crossover Ventures bought $200 million worth of shares, while Andreessen Horowitz bought $80 million.

Whatever the details, with this sale, Accel has clearly had a huge return on its $12.7 million investment in Facebook’s first round. And that will be dwarfed by how much the firm will earn if it keeps the rest of its shares until Facebook’s initial public offering.

Both Accel and Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment.

Tags: cashing out, liquidity

Companies: Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Facebook, Technology Crossover Ventures

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

The private equity firms TPG and KKR are in talks to buy Seagate (STX) for about $16 a share, according to Bloomberg, which cited “people with direct knowledge of the discussions.” The disk-drive maker yesterday disclosed that it was hold talks on going private, but gave no other details. The [...]

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Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) in early 2011 will introduce new smart phones based on the WebOS software it now owns via the $1.2 billion Palm acquisition earlier this year, HP senior VP Eric Cador said today at an industry event in Barcelona, according to Reuters.
He gave no other details on the new [...]

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Cuts going down circa now.

Apparently “exotics is in the process of getting hosed, though not everyone in the group knows it.” That is all we know so if anyone’s got any other details they’d like to get of their chest, feel free to do so at this time.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker