Traders who play the shares of W.R. Grace & Co. of Columbia didn't bother waiting for John Kerry's concession speech to start buying the stock.
The Senate results from South Dakota sent the signal they were looking for.
An Environmental Protection Agency contract worker cleaned asbestos contamination from the track at a Montana high school in 2002.
(Robin Loznak -- Daily Inter Lake)
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TV Company Takes a Hit on Stock, Ethics (The Washington Post, Oct 25, 2004)
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I.C. Isaacs Fashions Its Way To Chart's Top (The Washington Post, Oct 11, 2004)
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Democrat Thomas A. Daschle, the Senate minority leader, was defeated by Republican John R. Thune, who got considerable support from business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Daschle's defeat means he will no longer be a roadblock to a $140 billion asbestos bill that is crucial to the fortunes of W.R. Grace and dozens of other companies that once were in the asbestos business.
Grace stock jumped 14 percent the day after the election and closed Friday at $13.36 a share, up 26 percent for the week.
Grace is the instant winner in the Washington Investing election lottery. The voting that returned President Bush to office and strengthened Republican majorities in the House and Senate is expected to bring benefits to a few mid-Atlantic companies and trouble to a couple of others.
Government-chartered mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac look to be the big losers, facing new regulation by the reinforced Republicans.
The two big Baltimore financial services firms, Legg Mason Inc. and T. Rowe Price Group Inc., are on the list of winners, as are the region's defense contractors.
Mutual fund manager T. Rowe Price and the Legg Mason investment firm both could benefit from Bush's proposal to encourage private retirement savings accounts as part of Social Security. That plan faces many political hurdles, but it is widely regarded as a potential source of billions of dollars worth of new business for investment firms.
Conventional wisdom is that Pentagon contractors also will benefit from Bush's reelection, which helps explain last week's bump in the shares of Lockheed Martin Corp., CACI Inc. and SI International Inc.
