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.
From Irish airline Ryanair, a few weeks back…
In response to media reports today 23 Jan, Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said:
“Don’t believe all of what you read in the press. Michael O’Leary confirmed in Rome yesterday (22 Jan) that there is no aircraft order imminent and none that is expected until perhaps the end of calendar 2013 or early 2014, at the earliest.”
From the newswire on Wednesday… Read more
A new type of list. Not billionaires or executive fat cats or expensive cities, but the top “thinkers” in the world.
Prospect magazine are holding a poll. You can vote for your top three here or you can use the comment box below to strike names off the Prospect long list… Read more
Probably best to just get on and crowd-source the analysis and commentary on this one:
In the UK, that is. Perhaps. Just.
The Markit UK services PMI is out and the headline seasonally adjusted Business Activity index posted 51.8 in February, slightly above January’s 51.5. Read more
Click above to see the survey/competition being run by a German Green party MEP, Sven Giegold. Read more
The question mark in the header is just so as to (reluctantly) give the Bank of England the benefit of the doubt.
Here are the latest stats on the Funding for Lending Scheme, which was supposed to pump ÂŁ100bn into households and businesses in the UK. Six months in, ÂŁ13.8bn has been drawn down by British banks, ÂŁ9.5bn of that coming in the final quarter of 2012. Read more
Courtesy of Goldman Sachs.
We are talking here about Glenstrata, of course, going ex-Mick Davis and cum-Ivan Glasenberg as soon as the last bits of competition authority clearance arrive…
Ivan has already sent industry tongues a-wag with some off-the-grid comments at a BMO Capital Markets conference in Florida, as reported by Reuters:
What we’ve got to do, when the markets do get stronger, no need to keep building a new asset and let’s keep the market tight for a while…
No sooner had Italian stocks soared and bonds tightened (sic) on early exit polls suggesting Pier Luigi Bersani’s centre-left Democratic party might have secured victory in both the lower and upper houses of the Parlamento Italiano, than…
Western markets were all a-jitter on Thursday. Obviously we can blame the Fed. Bickering between central bankers just doesn’t look good, whether they are American, British or continental Europeans.
An immediate question is raised: are we witnessing the end of ‘fast and loose’ policy? The quick answer is probably ‘not yet,’ although yes, it will end, and maybe sooner than some had come to assume. This presents a fresh challenge for policy markets, as noted by Lloyds’ Charles Diebel: Read more
Cheery chap, Tim Morgan, chief economist at money broker Tullett Prebon. Here’s a few charts to warm us all up on a cold February day…
We don’t often write about ferries and transport infrastructure here, but this statement demands an exception.
Eurotunnel is not surprised at the position of the Competition Commission, but will challenge the provisional findings which conclude that the addition of the new operator, MyFerryLink, would be detrimental to competition and could lead to an increase in prices.
You see’s it’s the tone. Snark is our job. It’s not becoming of a listed entity that only exists because of the billions of tax payers ÂŁs poured into it. Read more
There’s been a fierce and fascinating response from the SEC to evidence of clairvoyant dealings in Heinz ahead of news of the Buffett/3G Capital takeover offer. The statement is here and the full SEC complaint is here.
Following reports of unusual activity in Heinz call options on Nasdaq on Wednesday – the day before the Heinz news broke — the SEC has obtained an emergency order freezing assets in a Zurich, Switzerland-based trading account which it reckons benefited to the tune of $1.7m from the Buffett/3G bid. Read more
As part of its worthy attempt to herd the tax authorities of the world towards some form of global coordination on the taxation of multinational companies, the OECD offers us some examples of tax planning structures currently in use.
Skip to page 73 of this document. Can you guess who might be using an “E-commerce structure using a two-tiered structure and transfer of intangibles under a cost-contribution arrangement“? Read more
G7 statement just out on Tuesday: Read more
We shouldn’t scoff. Barclays’ newish man Antony Jenkins has rolled out fullish details of the much-previewed strategic review. Click here for more:
On a generally crappy day for equities and bonds across all the big western markets, Italian stocks stood out:
The question is rhetorical.
Back in December we were able to share a long, angry letter penned by Vincent Tchenguiz concerning the legal dispute between the Tchenguiz brothers and the Serious Fraud Office. Read more
El Pais has a nifty interactive whereby you can search the 14 sheets of manuscripts allegedly penned over 18 years by Luis Gutierrez Barcenas, the party manager and treasurer at the heart of the supposed Rajoy “slush fund” scandal in Spain…
In case you missed the moment earlier on Monday, here’s the yield on US 10 year paper breaking through 2 per cent – albeit momentarily. At pixel the reading stood at 1.99… Read more
So the Bank of England has decided to give its new-fangled biannual Money Market Liaison Group Sterling Money Market Survey (first launched in May 2011) more oomph.
No longer will the results sit, largely unnoticed, in one of the Bank’s quarterly bulletins. From now on the survey will be presented on a standalone basis, with its very own pdf and cover illustration, which looks like this: Read more
Are you in the equities business, needing something to surpress your natural optimism? Ditto ETF traders, those in securitised derivatives, even bonds? Click the following images for the instant, full-sized depressive effect… Read more
The brutalist architecture movement has broken Severfield-Rowen.
This Yorkshire-based structured steel specialists, which counts the Olympic Stadium and the Shard amongst its successful projects, warned on profits on Wednesday and parted company with its chief executive, Tom Haughey. Talks are also underway with the firm’s bankers… Read more
Not a member yet of Alphaville’s walled financial garden? It’s free, but you have to apply for membership.
Some reasons to do so… Read more
Tim Morgan of Tullet Prebon has been threatening this tome for a while. And now it has actually appeared…click to read…
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
