Tomorrow Pearson will release its pre-close trading update for 2015 and markets are understandably reluctant to catch this falling knife before seeing whether the new chairman (Sidney Taurel) has dumped the CEO (John Fallon) and with him, his commitment to maintain the dividend (51p net in 2014 with a 34p final) as his “first priority”. […]
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The vote on the 27 January by Royal Dutch Shareholders on whether to approve the merger with BG that is proposed by its management may have repercussions that extend well beyond the future of this proposed deal. At anywhere near the current oil price, the deal makes no commercial sense as even Shell’s own assessment […]
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There is something very wrong about this chart below. It shows only two things. The price of Brent crude oil and the discount of the BG share price to the offer value from the Royal Dutch Shell offer. The latter data series shows the discount narrowing as regulatory clearances for the merger are received and […]
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Finally, it seems we are seeing some push-back from some Shell shareholders against the impending BG merger which is being voted on by Shell shareholders at the end of this month (27 January). Standard Life has been grumbling for a while, but now finally has gone public. The only question is whether it has all […]
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After the equity market drubbing into the first week of 2016, attention was back on the Fed and whether an expected weak set of employment data for December might provide some political cover to forestall the next upward revision in interest rates possibly due in March. If the Fed holds rates however, it won’t be […]
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When over three quarters of equity trading volume is driven by algorithmic trading, who do you think company press releases are increasingly being written for? If you want your news item or blog to even get ranked you need to follow the SEO rules. If you want the algo bot that is going to decide […]
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Is there an oil price where Shell’s BG offer doesn’t make sense? Listening to Shell’s narrative, the position was initially that the oil price was going to rebound into 2016 and beyond, but then as this got progressively pushed back as prices relapsed, the emphasis was placed on the natural hedge that the share component […]
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For those of you with the GrowthRater web App, the somewhat sorry tale of Pearson will be old hat and you’ll have been out of the path of this train for some time now, as can be seen from our valuation timeline below. Unfortunately for Pearson, media investors seem to be particularly intolerant to disappointment […]
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