Shares in Microsoft Corp. rivals reacted quickly to news a U.S. appeals court on Thursday overturned a lower-court order that would have split the world's No. 1 software maker in two. AOL Time Warner Inc Red Hat Inc and VA Linux Systems Inc. all dropped after the seven-judge appeals panel without dissent threw out a finding by District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson that Microsoft had tried to monopolize the market for Internet browsers. ``America Online is one of their biggest competitors and will be one of the most impacted stocks'' by this decision, said Max Sasso, portfolio manager and analyst at City National Investments, a unit of City National Bank in Beverly Hills which oversees $3.8 billion, and includes Microsoft as one of its 'bigger' holdings.
|