Following a quiet summer period for initial public offerings (IPOs) the London new issue market has now come back to life. October saw seven new companies join the main market of the London Stock Exchange, raising a total of just under £1.65 billion. So far this year £6.1 billion of new money has been raised.…
For Standard Chartered bank at 600p (last seen) the Sands of time run out as Winter arrives. Are things as bad as they look or is this really the bottom? This has been the fortnight of Asian bank reporting. We have just had the third quarter results from HSBC (HSBA) which were well received by…
Barely a week goes by in the USA, the UK and elsewhere, without news of job layoffs in the manufacturing sector. Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT), one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of construction and mining equipment, recently announced 5,000 job cuts by the end of 2016. In mid-October Tata Steel (BOM:500470) announced that it was axing…
…and so may activist investor Bill Ackman. Short-seller turned activist investor Bill Ackman has just recorded a $2 billion write-down on his portfolio due to a failed bet on the Canadian drugmaker Valeant Pharmaceuticals. But he promises to fight back, as he still believes he can build value in the company. In the 13F form…
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has produced the following helpful, explanation of its pipeline of product development. Very simply, GSK has the potential to file up to 20 candidate medicines with regulators before 2020; seven of which are in advanced late-stage development, offering, if finally approved, potential market launches before 2020. That suggests potential for plenty of positive…
HSBC has done remarkably well for a bank that has most of its business in China and Asia. Moreover, it looks bombed out in valuation terms and appears, on the current share price, to have more upside than downside. I suspect, that even the near term share price is more likely to be up than…
Last September in a review of the pharmaceutical industry I concluded that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) shares were discounting too much bad news and not enough future potential. Pharmaceutical shares are admittedly a speculative thing, the nature of which regulatory advice constantly warns us. However, all investment involves speculation about the future. If it were any different,…
Rio Tinto (RIO), the mining company, continues to look an attractive equity investment with a good cash position, from which to continue paying growing dividends. I think its long-term prospects of capital appreciation also look reliable. The share price, last seen was 2,401p. My last consideration of Rio was last June, when I penned the…
Figures released last week by Kantar Worldpanel on the Great Britain grocery sector did not make good reading for the London listed supermarkets. While Tesco remains the market leader by some way, its market share fell by 0.7 percentage points to 28.8% in the 12 weeks to 11th October. Morrisons also lost market share while…
Sticking with my Indian theme, I’d like to make the case for a global automotive powerhouse that combines Western technology and branding with Eastern management and ambition. And it’s not often that you get the chance to back British manufacturing with an option on the recovery of a vast Asian market. I’m talking about Tata…
