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The FT’s “The Short View” columnist John Authers is blogging for FT Alphaville from Vancouver at the annual gathering of the CFA Institute:

What was the greatest wealth-creating film of all time? Titanic might be a popular guess, More…

Most discussions of oil supply constraints tend to focus on the non-renewable nature of the resource and on refinery capacity.

But David Philips, also known as the 10Q Detective, thinks a significant and often overlooked aspect of this discussion - one which has a direct effect on oil company profits - is offshore rigs, More…

The FT’s “The Short View” columnist John Authers is blogging for FT Alphaville from Vancouver at the annual gathering of the CFA Institute:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb ended his speech by predicting that he already knew what the questions would be. More…

The FT’s “The Short View” columnist John Authers is blogging for FT Alphaville from Vancouver at the annual gathering of the CFA Institute:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is about to address the massed ranks of the CFA Institute, More…

The perceived risk of US and European companies defaulting on their debt retreated on Monday, in spite of shocking results from bond insurer MBIA and significant writedowns at HSBC, Europe’s biggest bank.  More…

It seems to be the fate of bulk shipping markets to be constantly misunderstood. In January, a precipitous plunge in rates for the largest dry bulk carriers led to a panic that this was finally the leading indicator of the end of the commodity boom. More…

The conventional wisdom is that in times of economic hardship, discounters reign - consumers react to tighter credit conditions and job insecurity by hunting for bargains and cutting back on discretionary spending. More…

On FT Alphaville this morning,

- John Authers blogs from the CFA gathering in Vancouver: the smart money talks…

- …and the consensus is to hold tight.

- Not so leisurely times, in S&P’s latest bust list. More…

Markets live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:08 on 12 May 2008. Participants in this chat were: Paul Murphy (PM) Neil Hume (NH) Tom Braithwaite (TB)   PM:Welcome to Markets Live.    More…

Deals “don’t get much more opportunistic than this”, says Lex of Monday’s news that Australia’s Westpac Banking Corporation is in talks to buy smaller domestic rival St George in a move that would create the country’s largest bank with a market value of about A$65bn ($61bn). More…

It’s been billed as a week of banking succour. HSBC kicked proceedings off on Monday.

HSBC’s bad debt impairments in its US consumer lending business were $3.2bn in the first quarter, down from $4.6bn in the final quarter of last year. More…

How sweet. “Consistent with the spirit of the Framework Document,” under which former mortgage bank Northern Rock resides in temporary public ownership, Rock has promised to continue acting like a real, More…

Interesting move by Toyota Motor Corp to sell Islamic sukuk bonds worth as much as 1bn ringgit ($311m) in Malaysia to raise funds for its automobile leasing and loan business there, as reported in Monday’s edition of the Nihon Keizai Shinbun [via Nikkei Net]. More…

UPDATE: 9.44. Chloride rejects approach from unnamed suitor.

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What’s going on at Chloride Group, the old battery manufacturer that now terms itself “an international provider of secure power solutions”?

The stock lit up on Monday, More…

The party’s over. So appropriately enough the default of the owner of the Tropicana casino in Las Vegas brought global defaults to 28 this year, affecting debt worth $18.4bn. That’s against 22 defaults in the whole of 2007, More…

The FT’s “The Short View” columnist John Authers is blogging for FT Alphaville from Vancouver at the annual gathering of the CFA Institute:

One more finding from the poll of CFAs at this week’s Vancouver gathering suggests that they’re still not ripe to make big contrarian plays. More…

The FT’s “The Short View” columnist John Authers is blogging for FT Alphaville from Vancouver at the annual gathering of the CFA Institute:

The smart money has spoken, and it believes that the UK and the US economies will be negatively affected by the global credit squeeze for more than a year before they can start to recover. More…

Elsewhere on Monday,

- Welcome to Helldorado

- “With food riots in dozens of countries, isn’t it time to admit that the whole idea was a giant, if well-intentioned, mistake?”

- Warren Buffett’s Vega games. More…

The latest on Monday,

- BG Group issues update on takeover talks with Australia’s Origin Energy. Statement

- Executives at International Lease Finance Corp, the aircraft-leasing division of American International Group, More…

Comment and analysis from Monday’s FT:

Lina Saigol: M&A can’t get no satisfaction
Are the rock stars of M&A banking an endangered species? It’s certainly starting to look that way. Ask any chief executive of a large global company to name Wall Street’s top dealmakers and they will start to stutter. More…

Australia’s Westpac Banking Corporation is in talks to buy smaller domestic rival St George in a move that would create the country’s largest bank with a market value of about A$65bn ($61bn). Trading in shares of both banks was suspended on Monday ahead of a further announcement, More…

Morgan Stanley will on Monday announce it has raised a $4bn private equity fund dedicated to infrastructure projects – the latest move by a fund manager into sectors and countries that have not been affected by the financial crisis. More…

Vodafone insisted at the weekend it had no plans to make a bid for MTN, a leading mobile phone operator in Africa and the Middle East, reports the FT. The UK group last week reviewed the case for bidding for MTN after Bharti Airtel, More…

The UK government has ruled out selling British Energy to a lone bidder, reports the Daily Telegraph, despite the fact that France’s EDF was the only party to make a bid for the owner of Britain’s nuclear reactors by last Friday’s auction deadline. More…

Citigroup is considering selling its Japanese consumer finance company CFJ KK or cutting the unit’s business significantly as part of its plans to shed assets, Japanese daily Nikkei reported on Sunday, More…

News Corp has dropped out of the running for Newsday, the Long Island tabloid being sold by Tribune Compay, making Cablevision and the Dolan family the most likely candidates to acquire the paper. News Corp originally submitted a $580m bid for the paper, More…

China Merchants Bank has joined the bidding for Wing Lung Bank in a deal that could value the Hong Kong company at about $5bn, as China’s sixth-largest lender seeks to increase its presence in the city. More…

First-quarter results from Iceland’s three leading banks in the past week suggest that the Icelandic banking storm of 2008 may finally be blowing itself out and that, by most internationally accepted measures, More…

Banks and companies raised $20bn on the world’s equity capital markets last week, in a sign of growing investor confidence that the worst of the financial crisis may be over. Activity in equity capital More…

Central bank interventions have helped drive a sharp rally in bonds backed by good-quality mortgages although conditions are not yet strong enough to boost new mortgage lending. The safest UK residential mortgage bonds have seen the biggest moves, More…