On FT Alphaville this morning,
- Friends Provident and Resolution have flipped their merger – a roundabout way to thumb their noses at irksome activist shareholder Hugh Osmond and his Pearl Group.
- There’s worrisome news for the Fed as foreign investors rush to ditch treasuries.
- The ever popular Mr Christopher Wood says equity investors just don’t understand debt in Greed & Fear.
- It’s all ping pong finance in the Middle Kingdom, as the Chinese authorities now encourage local banks to invest in their foreign counterparts.
- The debt markets might be frozen, but at least we can look forward to Climate Change say Merrill Lynch.
- On which note, the IMF is already enjoying the heat. A few mid-size banks going under would be a good thing says Rodrigo de Rato.
-Out of the black box, come the good, the bad, and the ugly. Quants are all over the place this August.
-And finally, does it all matter anyway? $140bn of commercial paper is due to mature before the week is out. We’ve yet to reach the high point of the credit crunch says Deutsche.
On FT.com this morning,
- Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct International changed the habits of its short life as a quoted company by not warning on profits on Monday, when it issued an interim management statement ahead of its first annual meeting.
- The current market volatility is producing “ideal” conditions for brokers, according to Tullett Prebon, the world’s second-largest interdealer broker. The company said on Monday that it had seen “record” performances across all regions in July and August.
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