January, 2011
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Tuesday,
- Burberry expects annual profits to be at the top end of expectations after sales rise 30 per cent in Q3 — statement.
- RBS agrees the sale of Priory Group to Advent International — statement.
Eurogroup – Live
It’s the event of the week — the European finance ministers’ meeting in Brussels.
Tune in and find out if there’s been an agreement on increasing the size of the EFSF, or even allowing it to buy sovereign bonds.
Further further reading
For the commute home or your day off,
- An expert take on a US sovereign default.
- “Incentives reward luck instead of skill … Examples include sports, gambling, investing, and wide swaths of business.”
China. Rock. Inflation. Hard place.
Michael Pettis has a blunt way of describing the China predicament, after Friday saw the People’s Bank raise required reserve ratios for the seventh time over the past year, in an effort to rein in inflation and curb lending by the country’s banks.
‘A conscientious job’ in Chinese markets
1. Create a favorable public opinion climate for the two holidays [including Spring Festival] and “two meetings” (NPC and CPPCC). Do a conscientious job of channeling [public opinion] on such hot topics as income distribution,
More Spanish banking negativity
RBS is recommending a cautious stance on Spanish banks on Monday.
It’s nothing to do with provisioning for legacy assets or impairments, however.
Like UBS analysts before them, the RBS move is down to diminishing new business margins — and an increasing cost of funding — which,
What fresh basis the ECB hath wrought – yet again
Did ya know?
The European Central Bank — via its Securities Markets Programme — now owns almost 20 per cent of the outstanding government bonds of Greece, Ireland and Portugal.
Unsurprisingly,
Bigger is not necessarily better in private equity
Size really does matter — but not how you think it might, according to one view of the private equity world.
As FTfm reports on Monday, new research from the Edhec-Risk Institute, an arm of France’s Edhec Business School,
Markets Live transcript 17 Jan 2011
Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:29 on 17 Jan 2011. Participants in this chat were: Neil Hume, FT bryce.elder NHHola NHand welcome to another week of ML
Rзflзctions on BP’s Russian dзal
It’s not just US Congressmen who are concerned about BP’s Global and Arctic Strategic Alliance with Rosneft.
BP’s partner in Russia is also worried.
From the FT:
BP’s landmark deal with Rosneft,
On EFSF government bond purchases [updated]
The future’s already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.
– William Gibson
You could say the same thing about fiscal transfer between core and periphery in the financial markets of the eurozone,
A guide to eurozone bond auction styles
How much do you want to know about eurozone bond auctions?
How much do you really want to know about eurozone bond auctions?
Given what we’d suggest is a highly premature rapturous reaction to Portuguese and Spanish sales of debt last week,
Breaking up Smiths Group
BP’s share swap and Arctic exploration deal with Russia’s state oil company Rosneft might have stolen all the headlines but it is Smiths Group which is the stand-out feature in the FTSE 100 on Monday morning.
Further reading
Elsewhere on Monday,
- Can Europe be saved?
- The solitary pursuit of investment ideas.
- The only economic datapoint to worry about this week.
- Marc Faber, what are you worrying about?
- Historical oil shocks.
Pink picks
Comment, analysis and other offerings from Monday’s FT,
Clive Crook: A daft way to tackle America’s debt
All too memorably, the Republican party now taking over in Congress promised to cut $100bn from spending in the current fiscal year,
Snap news
Breaking pre-market news on Monday,
- Nord Gold announces intention to list on London Stock Exchange — statement and statement.
- VimpelCom and Orascom agree terms of revised deal — statement.
- Richemont sales rise sharply on Chinese demand — statement.
FTfm on AV
Some highlights from Monday’s FTfm
Big buy-out firms poor performers
The world’s largest private equity groups deliver the worst returns for investors, according to an analysis of 7,500 investments over the past 40 years.
Further further reading
For the commute home,
- Bank walkaways add to the housing crisis.
- “Can policymakers fill the gaps in their knowledge about the financial system?”
- Five highlights from JP Morgan’s earnings.
Debt ceiling attitudes
If you polled FT Alphaville’s seven bloggers and asked whether we’d like to hire a dedicated group of interns to do our photocopying and fetch coffee and think of great ideas that we could shamelessly steal,
China: it is big and it is clever
America, an apology: perhaps we were too quick to worry about the 47 per cent of you that believe China is the world’s foremost economic power.
They may have read this cogent post from Peterson’s Arvind Subramanian,
BP and Rosneft announce share swap [updated]
Scroll down for updates.
Fresh out of Reuters, via Kleinman:
LONDON Jan 14 (Reuters) – Oil major BP Plc (BP.L), recovering from its Gulf of Mexico oil spill, is to announce an exchange of shares with Russian state-controlled oil company Rosneft (ROSN.MM) on Friday,
Charting CPI
US CPI data for December is out, with a 0.1 per cent rise in the core index contrasting with a healthier 0.5 per cent rise in the headline number.
According to the BLS, four-fifths of the increase in the headline number came from a rising gasoline index:
Sneaky Citi, tricksy bailout
It’s November 21, 2008.
Lehman collapsed some nine weeks before and the US government is struggling to contain the fallout. They’ve started Tarp and injected funds into ailing financials, but it’s having little effect.
China-Japan analogy du jour
Quite a lot of the Chinese economy, as we know, is terribly addicted to easy credit.
The question, though, is who’s actually going to be made to suffer tightening first? And who can pull the proverbial political strings to get by?
Enter…
Oil shock-ed
Via Sean Corrigan at Diapason Commodities Management, here’s a chart showing the Continuous Commodities Index (CCI) versus US manufacturing wages:
That’s a spike back to those 2008 — and even 1970s oil shock — levels.
Intel builds a $9bn deathstar to kill the rebels
Perhaps Jim ‘Mad Money’ Cramer is right and chip designer Arm Holdings really is significantly undervalued.
In the wake of Intel’s forecast-busting earnings overnight, shares in the Cambridge-based company charged to their highest level in a decade on Friday: