Evil Knievil: Life moves on

Late last week Beximco Pharma (LON:BXP) announced a partnership with the Serum Institute of India, a large vaccine developer and manufacturer, to develop a vaccine to cope with Covid. BXP will have an exclusive distribution in Bangladesh. It is far from clear as to what money is and will be involved here but these are serious organisations and in effect gives BXP yet again a higher profile.

For some reason the Bangladesh government has given BXP the right to buy in BXP’s own stock and even at current levels the share price is still cheap. Unfortunately, BXP has not so far been allowed to buy in its London GDRs. But yet again the London share price is highlighted as much cheaper than that in Bangladesh. BXP’s growth projections, after a slight hiccup caused by Covid, are satisfactorily set on track. I could not possibly sell any of my family’s shares.

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Manx Financial (LON:MFX) gave a positive interim update last week and, on the face of it, is cheap at 9p. The problem is that nobody knows what the bad debts generated by Covid will prove to be. So I did not buy more. I may regret this.

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We now learn that Plus500 (LON:PLUS) has turned its mind to offering agency broking. This is of course entirely different to its current business which still strikes me as deeply questionable. Why anyone would trust PLUS is not clear to me.

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Corals start to wake up. A PR person contacted me last Friday to advise that Corals are looking into my refund of £1,200 due by them to me. And about time too.

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The trouble is that nowadays businesses have been segmented such that there are no longer any personal relationships. Chief executives like it that way since it means that they never have to monitor performance of employees. The trouble is that the way is thereby cleared for wholly dishonest practices to creep in. And sometimes they gallop in.

In a sense, it is improper to go back on past matters, but readers will have noticed the current advertising campaign conducted by Charles Stanley based on invitations for readers to go and see Jim or Louise or Bill or whomever to discuss their affairs. But after my experience with Charles Stanley (my family’s accounts had been with them for twenty-five years) I would not touch Charles Stanley with a bargepole.

Eventually of course somebody will sober up and stop all this nonsense. But that moment will presumably be after the dreadful current management of Charles Stanley have sold the business to Mr Giant Sucker.

One problem is that the FCA has in effect excluded stockbrokers from being interested in investment since they are not allowed to talk to their clients about investment ideas. As a result, typically, stockbrokers have come to know nothing, and their lives are empty through being stripped of purpose. I think the FCA and the investment industry should stop and think about this.