Reading corporate tea leaves

Our sunglass friends at OC-based Oakley provided a pretty good clue last Friday afternoon that a takeover was in the works. At least it looks that way today, after the company announced it was being purchased by Luxottica Group SpA in a $2.03 billion deal. Oakley filed an 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission that amended the company's severance plan in the event of a change in control. It's the sort of filing that happens all the time - a spokesman told a Dow Jones reporter that it was a "housecleaning item" and two analysts said it meant nothing (a third analyst correctly surmised that a deal was in the works). Here's the filing. Michelle Leder, who is constantly rifling through SEC filings at footnoted.org, says trying to interpret this stuff is more of an art than a science.

While there were some indications, there wasn’t the same smoking gun that I’ve seen in other deals that I’ve caught pre-announcement in the past, like Golf Galaxy and AtRoad (old ticker: ARDI). And, the fact that the company didn’t include the actual document in the 8K — just a description of the changes — made it hard to parse for the subtle sorts of language changes that I like to hone in on.