Rate hike puts the Aussie on track for strong gains in 2010 April 6, 2010 THE fact that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) hiked interest rates by 25 basis points to 4.25 per cent yesterday will not have come as much of a surprise to currency traders – a move either this month or next was widely anticipated and given that the May meeting falls just days before the [...]
Five tips for traders in the second quarter April 5, 2010 THE first quarter of 2010 was a rocky one. We had confirmation that the British economy exited recession in the last three months of 2009 but political polls increasingly pointed towards a hung parliament come the general election. The Eurozone suffered dreadfully from the Greek fiscal crisis and fears grew that its woes could spread [...]
Greece gears up for $10bn bond in May March 31, 2010 GREECE will try to diversify its investor base and get a better price for its debt by tapping international markets for a dollar bond of up to $10bn (€7.4bn, £6.6bn) in May. Finance minister George Papaconstantinou is expected to lead a roadshow in the US and Asia in late April to whip up interest in [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING March 30, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES M&A SURGE IN ASIA WHILE THE US AND EUROPE SUFFER Mergers and acquisitions boomed in Asia in the first quarter in sharp contrast to a slump in deal volume in Europea and the US, underlining a global shift in activity in the wake of the credit crisis. The value of global M&A overall [...]
Miners cheer at prospect of higher prices March 30, 2010 ANNUAL iron ore fixed-price deals look to be teetering on the edge of extinction following BHP Billiton and Vale’s completion of a shorter quarterly contract with Asian steelmakers. The quarterly contracts were settled at $110-$120 (£72-79) a tonne next quarter, a substantial increase from the 2009-10 annual contracts, which were settled at around $60. Steelmakers [...]
Weaker dollar is behind the mining sector rally March 29, 2010 IT IS a sign of the optimism flooding the mining sector at the moment that Rio Tinto’s share price was able to rise yesterday even as a Chinese court jailed four of its staff for between seven and 14 years for taking bribes and stealing commercial secrets. The heavyweight miner was able to shrug off [...]
What Westfield tells us about UK Plc March 28, 2010 IF you want to understand what is happening to the economy, you could do worse than to check out the Westfield shopping centre in West London on a weekend. The place was packed to the rafters on Saturday afternoon, with long queues in front of every single one of the dozens of restaurants and cafes; [...]
Ford agrees sale of Volvo March 28, 2010 THE Chinese carmaker Geely has agreed to buy Volvo from US giant Ford for $1.8bn (£1.2bn) in the country’s biggest overseas car purchase to date. The takeover highlights China’s arrival as a major force in the global automobile industry and ends nearly two years of talks over Volvo. Geely said it had secured all the [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING March 25, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES CHINESE COMPANIES DEBATE LINKS WITH GOOGLE A wave of Chinese businesses are reconsidering their ties with Google in the wake of the US internet company’s move to confront their government over internet censorship. The decision for companies like Sina, the web portal, or China Mobile, the telecoms operator, on whether to stay with [...]
FOREX FLASH March 23, 2010 RATES FORCE JAPANESE TO LOOK ABROAD Japanese households are choosing to send their savings overseas at the fastest pace since 2007 as they seek out higher yielding assets. With benchmark interest rates only 0.1 per cent in the Asian country, investors are choosing to buy Chinese stocks and Brazilian bonds to gain exposure to high-yielding [...]