February, 2010
Ryanair and Gatwick guessing
Ryanair could shift many of its flights from Stansted to Gatwick if the Sussex airport’s new owner lives up to promises to improve its services and keep charges down . . .
That’s from the Evening Standard earlier this month,
Of princelings, turtles and Chinese private equity
It’s all on for “princeling”, “turtles” and even foreign private equity groups in China’s fast-growing buy-out industry, as Carlyle Group on Wednesday unveiled yet another agreement with a Chinese partner — this time to launch a local currency fund focused on smaller company investments.
Further reading
Elsewhere on Wednesday,
- Questions and answers about the financial crisis.
- So is this one worse than the Great Depression?
- When were stocks last undervalued?
- Why Greece shouldn’t worry about its CDS.
Pink picks
Comment, analysis and other offerings from Wednesday’s FT,
Martin Wolf: No easy way out of the mire
Anybody who looks carefully at the world economy will recognise that a degree of monetary and fiscal stimulus unprecedented in peacetime is all that is prodding it along,
Operation drano
The market, it seems, was still digesting the potential repercussions of “operation drano”on Tuesday.
What we know is that, starting tomorrow at 11.30am in Washington, the US treasury will conduct weekly auctions of $25bn in 56-day bills as part of the so-called Supplementary Financing Program.
Is the Spanish charm offensive working?
The answer would appear to be “yes” if the following chart from Lombard Street Research is any guide:
The Spain/Germany spread in 10-year yields has tightened by some 30 basis points over the past fortnight – moving back to levels last seen before Christmas,
CDS report: Confidence ebbing away
Markit’s Gavan Nolan wrote this CDS report
European credit markets experienced a difficult afternoon as the weakness of the US consumer became apparent. The Markit iTraxx Europe index finished the day over 3bp wider at 86.5bp,
Anil Ambani goes hostile
Anil Ambani, the billionaire owner of India’s Reliance ADAG, has sparked a bidding war for Fame India, a film distributor in a country where hostile takeovers are rare.
Reliance MediaWorks has offered to buy 62 per cent of Fame,
A debt crisis wouldn’t be a debt crisis…
…without Argentina.
Right on cue, Argentina’s bonds slumped to a five-month low on Tuesday following speculation that Amado Boudou, the country’s economy minister, could be about to resign.
His departure would delay the country’s plan to revive its fortunes through a multi-billion dollar debt swap and is the latest episode in a series of high-profile political spats.
US commercial real estate prices rose in December, Moody’s says
Here’s a fresh and relatively rare bit of good news from the US commercial real estate market.
According to the Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Indices (CPPI), US CRE prices rose 4.1 per cent in December,
A discreet draining operation?
And we aren’t talking about Dyna-Rod here.
But this, which is hot off the John Kemp wire at Reuters:
TREASURY SAYS TO RESUME SUPPLEMENTARY FINANCING PROGRAM FOR FED
TREASURY SAYS EXPECTS BALANCE IN SFP TO INCREASE TO $200 BILLION FROM CURRENT $5 BILLION LEVEL
TREASURY SAYS AUCTIONS WILL BE IN FORM OF EIGHT $25 BILLION,
Is Gazprom buckling on long-term contracts?
A tip of the hat to Nick Drew over at the Cityunslicker blog for drawing our attention to the following gem of a natural gas market story.
As reported by Reuters late last week:
MOSCOW, Feb 19 (Reuters) – Russia’s Gazprom (GAZP.MM) has agreed to supply some of Europe’s gas at spot market prices in a bid to defend its shrinking market share after three decades of oil-indexed pricing,
Walking away, datapoints du jour
Which would you choose to walk away from? Plastic or property? Cards or cribs?
From a Tuesday statement by the company behind the benchmark US consumer credit score, Fico:
MINNEAPOLIS, Feb 23, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — FICO .
US consumer confidence *fail*
This wasn’t in the script.
From Reuters on Tuesday:
The Conference Board, an industry group, said its index of consumer attitudes fell to 46.0 in February from a revised 56.5 in the prior month.
ECB to start lending covered bonds?
Here’s an interesting story from this week’s issue of The Cover, a trade publication focused on the covered bond market.
According to the weekly title, the European Central Bank may soon begin lending out the covered bonds it purchased under its €60bn programme to help secondary market liquidity.
People familiar with the lobbying effort…
Out of the blue this one: the Volcker rule, whereby banks in the US would be banned from proprietary trading, is going to be replaced by a simple requirement that banks hold more capital. Apparently.
From the New York Post,
Hamp on steroids
Barry Ritholtz has got his hands on something interesting — Hamp on steroids.
Readers of FT Alphaville may remember that the US Treasury’s Home Affordable Modification Program, which aims to keep borrowers in their houses by reducing interest payments,
Sugar-coated losses
Monday turned out to be quite a day for ICE raw sugar prices. According to Reuters, the soft commodity suffered its worst single-day loss in nearly two years on liquidation pressure from investors following a run-up to 29-year highs over the last year.
JPMorgan’s incredible shrinking big-fee case
For investment bankers nervous about any debate or accusations about excessive fee-charging, the anticlimax of the month — if not the year to date — might be the self-induced, near-collapse of the case being fought by Australian mining company Consolidated Minerals against JPMorgan Chase’s Australian arm.
Lunch Wrap
On FT Alphaville Tuesday morning,
- Inflating the output gap at the BoE.
- THIS WAY TO THE ATHENS STOCK EXCHANGE –>
- The Swiss can’t help intervening.
- Nitel and China Unicom: yes,
Corrigan or Eurostat: whom would you believe?
Eurostat, the European statistical agency, has maintained something of a difficult-to-swallow position regarding its knowledge — or supposed lack thereof — of Greece’s use of Goldman Sachs and the currency swap market to burnish its books.
Vogue finance
Whom would you rather see in the pages of Vogue?
The upcoming April issue of the American style bible features one of those financial faces — that of US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. In an interview,
Go Greece tightening…
Barclays Capital has run a useful exercise on Greece to try and understand the magnitude of the problem facing Europe.
Rather than looking at the country’s outlook based on the fiscal adjustments currently being implemented,
Markets Live transcript 23 Feb 2010
Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:20 on 23 Feb 2010. Participants in this chat were: Neil Hume, FT Bryce Elder
NHGood morning
NHand welcome to Markets Live
Nitel and China Unicom: yes, no, maybe, err…
Perhaps this is the most one can expect from the world of Chinese and Nigerian telecoms M&A, but as Alice would say, it just gets “curiouser and curiouser”.
China Unicom, China’s second largest mobile operator,
Inflating the output gap at the BoE
. . . the risks to the Committee’s central view of a gradual recovery of output remain to the downside.
That’s Bank of England governor Mervyn King testifying to the UK Treasury Committee about the February inflation report.