March, 2010
Shell, PetroChina and Arrow: the next big resources grab
Another day, and another “unconventional gas” deal. The latest is a $3.4bn joint offer by Royal Dutch Shell and PetroChina for Australia’s Arrow Energy.
Arrow announced on Monday it had received an indicative proposal worth A$4.45 a share in cash,
China tightening? Yeah right.
Here’s an oxymoron.
The world worries that rampant Chinese demand for commodities is pushing prices higher.
Except, according to Reuters, China’s deputy central bank governor, Su Ning, worries that global commodity prices will push Chinese prices higher,
Further reading
Elsewhere on Monday,
- And the 2010 Stock Oscars go to…
- The dangers of deficit reduction.
- Come dance the Swap Tango.
- CDS, defended and demonised.
- The WSJ hypes hedgies? We’re shocked.
Pink picks
Comment, analysis and other offerings from Monday’s FT,
Clive Crook: Stimulus for America — as good as it got
Barack Obama’s administration faces a torrid time between now and November’s mid-term elections,
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Monday,
- Royal Dutch Shell and PetroChina make $3.4bn offer for Arrow Energy – statement.
- Prudential to seek secondary listing on Hong Kong stock exchange – statement.
FTfm on AV
Highlights from Monday’s FTfm.
The challenge of building fixed income indices
Investors should be aware of the inherent difficulties with the passive fixed income investing approach.
Regulations don’t just hurt hedgies
Before regulators hound hedge funds out of Europe they should pause – securities lending,
Newsbreak
Joshua Brown over at The Reformed Broker has a wry post on all the news items that the media (including the blogosphere) remains obsessed with, but which the markets no longer seem to give a fig about.
CDS report: Austerity, the stoic injunction
“So called austerity, the stoic injunction, is the path towards universal destruction”. Some Keynesians might agree, but the financial markets clearly don’t share English painter and author Wyndham Lewis’s aversion to belt-tightening.
Dear Vikram Pandit…
Dear Vikram Pandit,
FT Alphaville was a little bemused by your testimony to the Congressional Oversight Panel on Thursday, in which you blamed your bank’s near collapse on the nefarious activities of short-sellers.
Rally time?
As at pixel time, London’s benchmark FTSE index had scaled 5,600 to hit an 18-month high, the S&P 500 was enjoying its longest winning streak since early January, and those much-anticipated US payroll numbers weren’t all that bad.
China’s monetary belt-tightening…or not?
In a country where official speeches tend to be overtly formal, Wen Jiabao’s economy-themed equivalent of a US State of the Union speech might at least have given us half a clue as to policy intentions in Beijing.
Chart du jour, European soccernomics edition
From our cousins at the Economist, a nifty graphic of Europe’s most valuable football fans:
As the weekly newspaper noted (links ours):
Europe’s most sucessful football club off the pitch, measured by revenues for the 2008-09 season,
Lord Ashcroft welcomes you to the Parthenon…
Friday’s note from Charles Dumas of Lombard Street Research brings a rather neat, if sadly wholly fictitious, catch-all deal for the week’s news. Greece, Goldman, gilts… and Tory non-dom donor Lord Ashcroft:
Non-farm payrolls data in: and the numbers are…
… rather good news. Data released by the US Labor Department on Friday showed consensus-beating numbers for both job losses in February (-36,000) and the overall jobless rate (9.7 per cent).
The flashes,
More speculation about easy yen and the BoJ’s box of little tricks
Straight after analysts dismissed Thursday’s “will they or won’t they” story from Reuters about whether the Bank of Japan was preparing to intervene to bring down the yen, comes yet another round of media speculation about Japanese monetary policy.
Lunch Wrap
On FT Alphaville on Friday morning,
- And now the weather, from Goldman.
- Going for (Barrick) gold.
- Please stop blaming the hedgies.
- Europe is on a roll.
- Stop the Carnival, I want to get off.
And now the weather, from Goldman
Predicting what Friday’s US non-farm payroll data for February will say has been a bit trickier than usual. A light dusting of snow, atop a fragile recovery, atop a historically volatile indicator.
And that’s why the vampire squid has played meteorologist in its comprehensive payroll note this week.
Europe is on a roll
Quite literally.
Just look at the below factoid on European government debt issuance from Dealogic on Friday, (emphasis FT Alphaville’s)
European Government* Debt Issuance:
-European Government Debt stands at $374.1bn in 2010 YTD
-2010 YTD volume ranks as highest YTD volume on record
-$1.73tr was raised in 2009,
Markets Live transcript 5 Mar 2010
Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:14 on 5 Mar 2010. Participants in this chat were: Neil Hume, FT Bryce Elder
NHGood morning
NHHola
NHBonjour
Stop the Carnival, I want to get off
When everyone in the world has got the hots for you, things can get a little overheated. So spare a little sympathy for Brazil’s markets right now, as foreign investors fall over themselves to slobber over the girl from Ipanema.
Refinery slowdown, China edition
Vienna-based energy consultants JBC Energy have turned our attention to an interesting story on Friday.
According to Reuters, Chinese refineries will be scaling back crude runs by a sizeable 5.6 per cent in March.
Indian companies eye the world
At a mere $550m-$600m, the latest cross-border deal by an Indian company is small compared to the $14.5bn that Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries was prepared to pay for Dutch chemicals maker LyondellBasell and the $10.5bn that Bharti Airtel is stumping up for the African telecoms operations of Kuwaiti company Zain.
Please stop blaming the hedgies
So, are the denizens of Mayfair responsible for driving the share price of Prudential lower?
Er no.
From Data Explorers:
As you can see there has only been a small increase in the stock outstanding on loan (from 1.32 per cent to 1.43 per cent) since Pru announced plans to buy AIG’s Asian assets for $35.5bn on Monday.
Not the ‘mother of all carry trades’?
FT Alphaville noted on Thursday how the USD three-month Libor rate had, for the first time since August 2009, moved back above the three-month JPY Libor rate.
It’s worth reminding at this stage what Dr.
Further reading
Elsewhere on Friday,
- The forgotten lessons of 2008.
- So why exactly are banks ‘bad’?
- The activists are back.
- Predatory lending: You can’t cheat an honest man.
- The ‘Great’ Roubini,
Pink Picks
Comment, analysis and other offerings from Friday’s FT,
Gillian Tett: Reasons to be cheerful about UK gilts
This week Greece’s fiscal drama has been in the spotlight again, as Athens tried to stave off a crisis with budget cuts and a €5bn ($6.8bn) bond sale.
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Friday,
- Xstrata says Glencore exercised option to buy Prodeco assets for $2.25bn – statement.
- WPP FY like-for-like revenue down 8.1 per cent – statement.
- Kenmare Resource announces £179m cash call – statement.
The Wall Street Lobby 2.0
You’ve got to admire the digital flair of this flyer distributed by the US Chamber of Commerce, in opposition to the so-called Webb/Boxer 50 per cent bonus amendment. Even if the numbers are suspect. Click to enlarge…
On January 28, a cloudy, drizzly day in Athens…
…Goldman Sachs played host to a hotchpotch group of 10 clients at the Grande Bretagne, a palatial belle epoque hotel overlooking Syntagma square and the old royal palace, now the home of the Vouli, the Greek parliament.