Circuit City Plays Coy at Annual Meeting

Forbes has the skinny on Circuit City's annual meeting. Everyone wants to know if the company will be sold or not. But little information came out.

Circuit City Stores Inc. stayed mum on Tuesday about whether a buyout is in the future for the consumer electronics retailer, but an activist investor expects an announcement of a possible sale within the next month.

Mark J. Wattles, whose investment firm holds a 6.5 percent stake in Circuit City, said three companies are in the late stages of conducting due diligence in regard to buying the Richmond-based company.

"The sniffing is over with," Wattles said after the company's annual shareholder meeting.

Wattles declined to identify the companies, but implied that one of those was Dallas-based video-rental chain Blockbuster Inc., which announced a more than $1 billion takeover bid in April with plans to create a chain that would sell electronic gadgets and rent movies and games.