HMV confirms bid
31 Jan 2006 [0 Comments | 75 views]
Imagine a dog chasing a cat chasing a mouse. The latest takeover talk reminds us of that scenario, not that the company at the bottom of the chain is a mouse, in fact we rather like Ottakar’s. Yesterday, HMV confirmed it has received a bid. The rumour mill was grinding away long before the HMV [...]
Arcelor launches long planned defence for surprise bid
31 Jan 2006 [0 Comments | 41 views]
Imagine the scene, you are having a nice lunch with the boss of a rival company, and just in passing, while you are taking a sip of your aperitif, your companion lets it slip that he is thinking of buying you out. “How’s £13bn?” Why, what an affront! It must have spoilt your meal! And [...]
US consumers spend more than they save – crisis number one for new fed boss
31 Jan 2006 [0 Comments | 49 views]
Do you remember the Autumn of 1987? Blightey got hit by a hurricane and the stock market crashed. No doubt Alan Greenspan remembers that time well too. He hadn’t been governor of the US Federal Bank for five minutes when shares went a tumble. In fact, a change over at the Fed often seems to [...]
Exxon Mobil: biggest corporate profit ever
31 Jan 2006 [0 Comments | 103 views]
The record has gone. The largest ever annual corporate profit was made by Exxon Mobil last year. For much of the year, and frankly, at the tail end of 2004 too, many were saying the high price of oil is just a temporary phenomenon, that there’s a $10 terror premium built into the price, and [...]
UK works harder for less gain
30 Jan 2006 [0 Comments | 68 views]
In its recent report, the Institute of Fiscal Studies, in addition to looking at Gordon Brown’s golden rule, uncovered some interesting facts on productivity. And alas, it was bad news for the UK. After giving the UK a score of 100, the report found that productivity in the US per worker was 22% higher and [...]
The man from Luxembourg, he says no
30 Jan 2006 [0 Comments | 53 views]
Brace yourself for some surprising news. France doesn’t like it when foreign companies try to buy out its own. And France certainly does not like the sound of Mittal’s bid for Arcelor. Not that Arcelor is specifically French. While it employs 30,000 workers in France, if any country can claim domain, it’s little Luxembourg. The [...]
UK grows faster than US
30 Jan 2006 [0 Comments | 61 views]
It happened with barely a whimper, with no publication we are aware of noticing it, but in the fourth quarter of last year the UK grew at a faster pace than the US. The US economy grew at the annualised rate of just 1.1% in the quarter just completed, compared to 4.1% in the quarter [...]
Google “does evil?”
30 Jan 2006 [0 Comments | 85 views]
The UK press do like to build you up and knock you down. But normally, that approach is reserved for celebrities and the gossip pages. But now even the business pages seem to be going that way. Google is getting the treatment, thanks to its agreement to provide a censored search engine for the Chinese [...]
Oil set to rocket.
30 Jan 2006 [0 Comments | 52 views]
The talk is that oil could go through another rise in price soon. The Observer reported on the opinion from the commodities editor of the economist intelligence unit that oil could hit $90. But on the CNN site, the predictions were even worse. According to Bill Browder, who manages the Moscow based Hermitage fund, which [...]
First time buyers leave the chain
30 Jan 2006 [0 Comments | 88 views]
We have often argued that in the property market every chain needs a beginning. If that beginning does not come from First Time Buyers, then it must come from Buy to Let investors- or maybe purchasers of second homes. The recent report from the Halifax that first time buyers are now at their lowest level [...]
