So you’ve seen the headlines. First Fox’s proposals to consolidate its interests in Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland into BSkyB, described by many as a “tidying up” exercise. Now we are treated to something more substantial to explain the earlier moves; an $80bn (c.$86 ps) plus offer for Time Warner. The newswires are of course […]
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He “made money so plentiful, that interest fell and the price of land rose considerably, And afterwards, as often as large sums of money came into his possession by means of confiscations, he would lend it free of interest, for a fixed term, to such as could give security for the double of what was […]
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Shock, horror. “Publicis and Omnicom agree to terminate proposed merger of equals” 10 months ago when Publicis and Omnicom announced their intention to merge I wrote two articles on this blog. The first was titled ‘Omnicom & Publicis – a marriage not made in heaven’ and was an initial response to the press leaks […]
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Pearson:  Another update (Jan trading statement) and another slippage in underlying expectations as US educational markets continue to decline and with even the 70p per share FY13 guidance relying on some exceptional massaging of the ‘adjusted’ tax rate. Without an early turn in this market cycle and Pearson’s own internal investment programme unlikely to deliver […]
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Still faced with a structural deleveraging in personal and public debt, the policy response by those who ought to know better remains the same – juice the system and hope growth miraculously appears. That’s right, the same strategy as adopted for Greece, Portugal, Spain, France etc, etc, & etc. After the >+10% MoM rise in […]
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Will you be see the collapse in the property market coming? There is an entire industry of vested interests out there to ensure that you don’t. You have a Government whose declared purpose is to juice demand and support funding with its various schemes to encourage the consumer to put themselves further into hock at […]
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WPP’s Q3 revenue numbers today were solid, but with few real surprises. Year on year organic revenue growth of +5.0% maintained the similar rate already reported for July while also being slightly ahead of rivals Omnicom and Publicis. Scanning the numbers being reported there are four main points that stand out. 1) UK organic revenue […]
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My iPhone weather App is like a set of Agency results. It gives me a largely coincidental view of the weather if I don’t want to look out of the window, but is pretty useless as a meaningful forecasting tool. With two of the big four agencies reporting, are we much the wiser? Omnicom edged […]
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