Paul Murphy is the founding editor of FT Alphaville and an associate editor of the Financial Times. He joined the FT in London in 2006 as development editor of FT.com, concentrating on the expansion of the online business. Prior to that, he served as the Guardian’s financial editor for seven years. He has also held senior positions in business journalism at the Sunday Business newspaper and the Daily Telegraph. Murphy is a graduate of the London School of Economics.
No, not the radioactive variety. The financial market type, instead.
Here’s the (illiquid) progress of uranium futures over recent months… Read more
It’s a big theme: investors of all colours have reportedly been pouring money into equity funds of late. In fact, over the past week money has been flowing into stocks at the fastest rate since September 2007, according to EPFR.
Which should give all investors pause for thought. Read more
H/T to Martin Malone of Mint Partners for this vivid illustration of how the differential between “core” and periphery sovereign yields has tightened.
We are going to lay the blame for this — right up front — on the idiotic Financial Markets and Services Act. (Or at least the utterly dumb implementation of such by Lord Sants and colleagues.) The “markets abuse regime” has led us to…where do we start?
Okay, with this chump: Read more
What should we make of this? The CBOE VIX, the barometer of choice for those monitoring market volatility, dropped like a stone between Xmas and New Year. And the trend has continued in the days since…
You really do wonder how long this trend can be allowed to continue. From Eurostat on Tuesday…
Bloomberg states that Turkey’s new Capital Markets Law, enacted at the turn of the year, promises harsh punishment for… Read more
It’s the first day of dealings in the new-fangled Japan Exchange Group following the slow-motion merger of the previously unlisted Tokyo Stock Exchange and the listed Osaka Securities Exchange, slated to create the world’s third largest bourse. And the first day has proved to be un-clever, with stock number 8697 down 9.42 per cent at the close in Japan… Read more
An unlikely beneficiary of the fiscal fudge, perhaps. Here’s Spanish 10 year paper, the yield on which was threatening to drop back below 5 per cent on Thursday. Read more
Via John Hempton’s Bronte Capital…
Amidst a general fiscal-fudge-relief-rally on Wednesday, one sector stood out…
You just knew it was coming: chaotic brinkmanship, followed by a half-baked compromise that sees substantially all contentious issues kicked off to another day. Last minute Congressional agreement over tax rises, simply offers up spending cuts and the debt ceiling as the next two crisis points for US legislators.
So it’s Rally Time, but only sort of. Asian stock markets were up sharply, but that was at last partly down to the latest positive PMI data from China. In London, the Footsie — much more of a barometer for the US — was up 1.5 per cent or so at pixel. Read more
Here’s embattled agriculture combine Olam on Tuesday morning:
Don’t ask the SFO, or accountants Grant Thornton, for that matter.
Here’s a long, angry letter sent by the Vincent Tchenquiz camp some months ago to Grant Thornton, forming part of the furious legal dispute between the Tchenguiz Brothers and the SFO.
At the bottom of page 19 you’ll find a section headed “Sainsbury’s proceeds.” It is allegedly the case that when the financial cops pounced — acting on information from GT, who were handling the unwinding of Iceland’s Kaupthing — neither the SFO or GT really understood how the modern stock market works. Read more
The Bank of England has published the first data from its new-fangled Funding for Lending Scheme. At first blush, the numbers look pathetic: net lending grew a paltry £500m in the three months to end-September, while total drawdowns from the FLS amounted to £4.5bn, against a potential pot of £100bn.
But that would be us jumping to conclusions, prematurely. As the Bank says: Read more
Click for details.
Maybe this was inevitable after the Qataris said they would approve Xstrata’s merger with Glenstrata, but would abstain on the retention bonuses. But the raw numbers of shareholders here saying payments to management were excessive suggest a very aggressive mood amongst institutions. Remember, this is a revised incentive scheme, where shareholders were supposed to have been listened to…
The result from Xstrata’s shareholder meeting on Tuesday… Read more
There are so many aspects surrounding Greece’s ongoing refinancing needs still up in the air, it should come as no surprise that the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting of European finance ministers has reportedly been shrunk to addressing how an immediate €15bn gap can be bridged through to 2014. A further €17.6bn seemingly required to take the country through to 2016 can be discussed later. Read more
Subject to the vote of Xstrata shareholders later on Tuesday, of course. And one or two regulatory hurdles remain. But while we wait for the XTA vote, here are the voting results of the Glencore shareholder’s meeting… Read more
This is a euphemistic statement header, to say the least…
PREMIER FOODS ANNOUNCES FURTHER STEP TO BUILD VALUE IN BREAD Read more
There’s a corporate finance wheeze known as a “cashbox”. It’s a way of getting around certain rules, regulations and conventions associated with being a London-listed stock.
NOTE — see the update at the bottom of this post, along with the comments. Read more
The US initial public offering of a little wireless kit maker on Friday confirmed what everyone already knew: the IPO market is dead – or at least deadly dangerous.
Everyone knew this, except the lead underwriters of Ruckus Wireless – Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche bank. Read more
Not a good day for financial cops. Hot on the heels of the FSA losing what it probably thought was a slam-dunk insider dealing case, the SFO has now received a withering “Judgement on Costs’ over its toe-curling execution of the Tchenguiz case.
The brothers get substantially all their legal bills paid. Here’s the judgement. Click to read. Read more
Moscow-based financier Stephen Jennings is finally giving up control of Renaissance Capital, the investment bank he founded 17 years ago, to his Russian billionaire partner Mikhail Prokhorov.
While Lagarde and Juncker go at it in the policymaker equivalent of hammer and tongs over timetables, there’s a risk here of people forgetting the numbers involved. Because they don’t add up.
Consider these two tables from David Mackie at JP Morgan. Click to enlarge. Read more
You know the script here. X company announces that it is acquiring Y; a few days later news of a class action law suit ticks across the wires, typically alleging the directors have failed in their fiduciary duties in some manner; thereafter, silence…
Research by Robert Daines and Olga Koumrian at Cornerstone suggests that such litigation has become the norm since the onset of the financial crisis. Read more
Early viewers of what promises to be a trashy little mini-series with a stale mix of guns, drugs, sun-soaked beaches and tax cops, were left with one stand-out question on Friday:
Does HSBC really have just 4,388 Brits holding offshore accounts on this Channel island? Read more
At Thursday’s ECB press conference, Mario Draghi unveiled plans to introduce a new series of euro bank notes. And there was a little video to accompany the news… Read more
Head to the East Midlands.
Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) today announced that Paul J. Taubman, currently co-President of Institutional Securities, has informed Morgan Stanley of his decision to retire at year-end. Mr. Taubman will retire after a 30-year career at Morgan Stanley. Colm Kelleher, currently co-President of Institutional Securities with Mr. Taubman, will become President of Morgan Stanley’s Institutional Securities division effective January 2013. Mr. Kelleher will continue to report to Chairman and CEO James Gorman.
