What the Sound of Music tells us about bubbles April 11, 2010 NOW stay with me on this one – sometimes, insights into the financial markets come from unlikely sources. In my case, I was reminded of the dilemmas now facing policymakers while enjoying a yodel down memory lane, watching The Sound of Music. It was when I reached one particular verse that it came to me: “How [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING April 8, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES HOLLYWOOD TOP GUNS TAKE SHOT AT REVIVING DEBT-RIDDEN MGM Tony and Sir Ridley Scott have emerged as surprise contenders to steer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer back to solvency after submitting a restructuring plan to the Hollywood studio’s lenders. The brothers, who between them are responsible for Alien, Top Gun and Gladiator, have expressed interest in running [...]
The biggest Mad Man in the world still retains a close eye for detail April 7, 2010 This downturn is evidently really beginning to get on the nerves of WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell. He says: “People’s expectations have shifted. Company profits were down 30 per cent in 2008, now that they were only down, say, 13 per cent last year, they are calling that good. But if profits keep falling [...]
CHINA COULD PUT LID ON US DOLLAR RALLY April 6, 2010 BORIS SCHLOSSBERG DIRECTOR OF CURRENCY RESEARCH, GFT US DATA continues to surprise to the upside, demonstrating that the country is well on its way to recovery and that it should join China as the second driver of global growth in 2010. Although last Friday’s US non-farm payrolls did not exceed the bullish forecasts of 200,000 [...]
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 [...]