US US equities enjoyed significant gains in the week just past us after trading sideways for most of the summer. The S&P 500 was 1.25% above its closing value last Friday, closing now firmly above the 2,000 level at 2,010. The index clocked in its largest gains mid-week, on the Read more…
IPhone 6 officially hit Apple Stores this weekend in 9 key markets; it was very welcomed with 4 million preorders (double those of iPhone 5) and tremendously long lines of fans: outside Apple flagship store of 5th Avenue people flocked in a line 12 blocks long. The new model of Read more…
Intercontinental Exchange Inc, Market Cap (as of 19/09/2014): $23.45bn Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE), announced on September 5, 2014 that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire SuperDerivatives, a leading provider of risk management analytics, financial market data and valuation services. The acquisition will accelerate the expansion of ICE’s Read more…
Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, Market Cap (as of 19/09/2014): Market Cap €143bn SABMiller PLC, Market Cap (as of 19/09/2014): Market Cap €73bn Heineken NV, Market Cap (as of 19/09/2014): Market €34bn Beer brewing was historically a local business, with only few brands having a global presence in the estimated $600bn market. Read more…
AbbVie Inc., Market Cap (as of 19/09/2014): $94.63bn Shire plc., Market Cap (as of 19/09/2014): £31.12bn In its attempt to become one of the global leaders in the rare diseases market, AbbVie successfully got the approval from Shire’s board of directors for its $54bn acquisition. This approval came after two Read more…
Burger King Worldwide Inc., Market Cap (as of 19/09/2014): $10.96bn Tim Hortons Inc., Market Cap (as of 19/09/2014): $11.75bn Burger King, the US-based fast food restaurant chain, joined the list of the controversial tax-avoiding companies when on August 26 it formally reached an agreement for acquiring the Canadian coffee maker Read more…
Cobham plc, Market Cap (as of 23/05/14): £3.3bn Aeroflex Holding Corp, Market Cap (as of 23/05/14): £532m On May 20th, 2014 the British aerospace and military contractor Cobham announced a USD920m acquisition of its New York-based rival, Aeroflex, with the goal of getting more exposure to growing commercial markets and Read more…
AT&T Inc. Market Cap. (23/05/2014): $183.4bn DirecTV Market Cap. (23/05/2014): $42.3bn The US telecommunication conglomerate, AT&T, has reached an agreement to acquire one of world leading providers of digital television entertainment services, DirecTV, for a price of $48.5bn. AT&T is the US’s second largest provider of mobile telephone, leading provider Read more…
Pfizer Inc, Market Cap (as of 23/05/2014): $188.37bn AstraZeneca PLC, Market Cap (as of 23/05/2014): $91.78bn In its bid for AstraZeneca, Pfizer, the famous Viagra producer, failed to make a satisfactory offer and turned the potential biggest foreign takeover in UK corporate history into failure. It all happened on May Read more…
JD.com (NASDAQ:JD), China’s second largest e-commerce company after Alibaba, floated for the first time on the Nasdaq last Wednesday, raising $1.8bn. The company headquartered in Beijing, but registered in the Cayman Islands, placed 93.7m shares at $19 instead of the initial range $16-$18 per share, valuing the company at about Read more…
On May 18, Deutsche Bank has announced a plan to raise € 8bn ($ 11bn) in new capital. The increase will consist of € 6.3bn in a rights issue and a further € 1.75bn from the Qatari royal family. The capital increase will be the second largest ever launched by Read more…
Internet domains are an important alternative asset class in the web industry: lots of companies and investors use them for speculative reasons (a good domain name could be sold for million) or in order to avoid domain “hijacking” from competitors (although the trademark legislation covers also domain names). The valuation Read more…
[edmc id=1778][/edmc] US Equities closed at record highs in the week just past us; the S&P 500 in particular closed above 1,900 for the first time, gaining 1.29 percentage points from the week’s open. Such good performance, which was also echoed by the Nasdaq Composite (which retraced some of its Read more…
Seven years after the global financial crisis, collateralized debt obligations and mortgage backed securities are back and in good health. According to the latest data, sales of both CLOs (CDOs with loan collaterals) and CMBS (Commercial mortgage-backed securities, the pools on which CMOs are based) are expected to exceed pre-2007 Read more…
1. What’s Going On In Greece 1.1 Global Financial Crisis, Sovereign Debt Crisis and the Troika Greece is a country that witnessed big changes in the last years. 2008 was the year when the Global Financial Crisis exploded, changing the world for all of us. 2009 saw the burst of Read more…