Under The Radar News - Wednesday

Looks like 1.75% is on the way. Fed funds futures price in an 88% chance for another 50 BP cut to 1.75% on April 30.

Pair shops Bear. Former Bear Stearns (BSC) CEO Jimmy Cayne and billionaire investor Joe Lewis -- who each lost over $1B in Bear's collapse -- are quietly looking for an investor to top JPMorgan's (JPM) $276M, $2/share buyout offer. The pair have contacted private-equity firms J.C. Flowers and KKR, as well as overseas banks including Barclays (BCS), HSBC (HBC), Credit Suisse (CS) and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), along with sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East. Lots of Street insiders think the duo's efforts are just a pipe dream.

JPMorgan - more bargain hunting? JPMorgan's (JPM) $2/share bid for Bear Stearns (BSC) may be just the beginning. Washington Mutual (WM) and SunTrust banks (STI) are both rumored to be takeover targets; Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC) have enough trouble of their own to likely preclude any bid, but based on WaMu's and SunTrust's depressed prices, investors think JPMorgan is still on the hunt.

Good news for Google, bad news for search. Preliminary comScore data on the Internet-search market for February: Y/Y growth in core search volume declined to 15% from 23% in January. Google (GOOG) increased share of U.S. search market to 59% while Yahoo's (YHOO) share declined.

Verizon Wireless flies fast. Verizon Wireless (VZ) (VOD) says its open network will be "open for business" towards the end of 2Q. In a strong show of support for the "open concept," the #2 U.S. wireless provider is opening its network to third-party developers, hoping to spur the creation of new services and revenue streams.

AP and Dow Jones to part ways. AP and Dow Jones Newswires are ending a 41-year-old news partnership, due to a "disagreement over financial terms." Dow Jones will add about 20 positions, apparently in order to make up for the shortfall. It also announced a deal to distribute news from AFP. The decades-old partnership gave AP access to DJ's business and financial news, while Dow Jones used AP stories on politics and global affairs.

Two governors... "The Greenspan Fed never cut the funds rate by more than 50 bps at once," UBS writes, "and the Bernanke Fed has done it twice in two months."

Boeing story doesn't fly. Don't expect deliveries of Boeing's (BA) 787 Dreamliner before the end of September 2009, Steven Udvar-Hazy, founder of Boeing's largest customer, International Lease Finance, says. Udvar-Hazy says the 787 "power-on" isn't possible until June; a first flight in the fall; and then another year for certification. Boeing has said it intends to "power on" at the end of Q1, and make its first deliveries in early 2009.

Boeing says it will win $35B contract back. The manager of Boeing's (BA) tanker program says he's confident the company will win its dispute of the Air Force's decision to grant a $35B billion contract to Northrop Grumman (NOC) and EADS, although he admits it will be "an uphill battle." Boeing claims the Air Force "repeatedly made fundamental but often unstated changes to the bid requirements and evaluation process."

Grounded. Pakistan International Airlines is grounding its entire Boeing (BA) 747 fleet due to the increased costs of operating the aircraft. It's unclear whether the grounding is permanent.

To blog or to sell. TechCrunch says it would rather merge with other leading blogs, raise capital, and more aggressively compete against CNet (CNET) than to sell itself to the media network. "Someone needs to pony up a big round of financing around an existing blog, or perhaps a new entity, and then start rolling them up into a big fat CNET crushing $200 million/year in revenue business," Michael Arrington says. He also notes Silicon Alley Insider and PaidContent are looking for $3-5M in capital, and that PaidContent would like to sell itself for $15M.

ABC says online ad revenue rocks. Albert Cheng, executive VP of digital media for Disney-ABC TV (DIS), says the unit's advertising rates are "very healthy." "We always have continued interest from advertisers, primarily because of the interactive ad model we have, and the sponsorship," he says. Advertisers have included Nissan (NSANY), Sears (SHLD), Wyeth (WYE), PepsiCo (PEP), DirecTV (DTV) and Allstate (ALL). ABC's ads can't be skipped, but Cheng says viewers like their interactivity. "People can play a game in that 30-second time frame."