After the thing made a loss of $100m, most of it on Black Monday, Comdisco Inc no longer feels that its risk arbitrage subsidiary is a suitable home for the surplus cash generated by its computer leasing business (CI No 801), and the Rosemont, Illinois company has therefore decided to close the thing down. We didn’t feel it was fair to subject our shareholders to that kind of volatility, the company said. The unit was formed to buy shares in takeover plays – typically as soon as the market got wind of a bid coming – and yes, it does hold shares in Telex Corp (see front page for the latest on that). Comdisco plans to run the unit, which employs a mere seven people, down over a mat-ter of months as painlessly as possible. It says that losses from the unit could lead to an overall loss for Comdisco’s fiscal first quarter to December. Losses from the unit, Comdisco Equities, will not be known before close of business on December 31.