Wall Street Journal (August 28)
François Hollande, the Socialist President of France, “deserves credit” for taking a hard stance against Syria and the Bashar Assad regime. Hollande “appreciates the strategic stakes in Syria. So does Iran, which is sending hundreds of soldiers and senior Revolutionary Guards commanders to Syria to shore up the Assad regime…. The mullahs know that Syria is their bridge to Hezbollah in Lebanon and their only significant partner in the Arab world, and that their ambitions in the Middle East would be much harder to fulfill without a Damascene ally.”
Tags: Bashar Assad, France, François Hollande, Hezbollah, Iran, Lebanon, Syria
Washington Post (August 27)
“The extent of Arctic sea ice has reached a record low, a historic retreat that scientists said is a stark signal of how climate change is transforming the global landscape.” Typically the summer low comes in mid-September so the ice cover may continue to shrink beyond its current size of 1.58 million square miles. This year, “the ice melted at an unprecedented 38,600 square miles per day during the first part of August.”
Tags: Arctic, Climate change, Record low, Sea ice
The Economist (August 27)
Over 1,000 workers turned violent at the Maruti-Suzuki car factory near Delhi, killing an HR manager and leaving 96 others injured. The company is now reopening the plant, but there is still uncertainty about why the violence broke out. “The picture emerging is that of a young impressionable workforce with an average age of only 25. It was vulnerable to outside influences from political and other groups wanting to create unrest. Neither the shop floor managers nor the trade union officials appear to have had sufficient experience to handle industrial relations crises.”
Tags: Delhi, Factory, India, Industrial relations, Maruti-Suzuki, Violence
Securities Trader (August Issue)
We have moved “from the paper blizzard 50 years ago when average daily volume on the New York Stock Exchange was 14 million shares to today’s “slow” market, when 6 billion shares are traded each day, at a thousandth of a blink of an eye.” Today, “orders can get acknowledged in 310 millionths” of a second and some pre-trade risk controls take place in just two billionths of a second.
Tags: Acknowledgement, NYSE, Risk controls, Trading volume
Bloomberg (August 25)
“The Tokyo Stock Exchange Group Inc.’s purchase of its Osaka rival is off to a rocky start.” Shares in the “Osaka exchange plunged by a record 16 percent yesterday amid speculation the merger will hurt profit.” Many of the concerns center on trading disruptions at the larger exchange, for which executives had their pay docked following a reprimand by the Financial Services Agency.
Tags: FSA, Merger, OSE, Share price, Trading glitches, TSE
Washington Post (August 24)
Slammed by the debt crisis, Europeans are growing impatient with royal spending. Spain provides one example. “Shortly after confiding to his countrymen that he had been unable to sleep at night because of all the young unemployed people in his country, Spanish King Juan Carlos secretly hopped aboard a plane and went on a lavish safari to Botswana, where he shot elephants.” When they found out, “Spaniards were outraged. Newspapers calculated that such hunting trips cost twice the country’s average annual salary.”
Tags: Botswana, Europe, King Juan Carlos, Royalty, Safari, Spain, Unemployed
Financial Times (August 23)
The SEC’s decision on conflict minerals and disclosure of payments to host governments “was long overdue” and “Despite the grumbling, most companies will benefit from a cleaner industry. The SEC has contributed to that. The EU must follow suit with equally comprehensive rules.”
Tags: Conflict minerals, EU, Payment disclosure, Rules, SEC
Institutional Investor (August Issue)
“Morgan Stanley and other banks get serious about sustainable investment.” In April, Morgan Stanley launched an Investing with Impact Platform, which will group sustainable investments (currently some 70 different products) around four categories. UBS is pushing its “analysts to integrate sustainability factors into their company and sector coverage” and now requires “all analysts to include a section on ‘sustainable innovation’ in their annual sector outlook reports.” In addition, Royal Bank of Canada seeded an impact investing fund which it may open to investors next year.
Forbes (August 21)
NASDAQ listed Apple “became the most valuable company in history on Monday in terms of market capitalization” when its market cap rose to more than $620 billion. In inflation-adjusted terms, however, Microsoft retains the crown. On December 30, 1999 Microsoft peaked around $618 billion, approximately $850 billion adjusted for inflation. With a current market-cap of about $257 billion, Microsoft is now valued at less than half of Apple.
Tags: Apple, Market-cap, Microsoft, Nasdaq
Washington Post (August 20)
“The home of the Masters now has green jackets for women. In a historic change at one of the world’s most exclusive golf clubs, Augusta National invited former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and South Carolina financier Darla Moore to become the first female members since the club was founded in 1932.” This marks another overdue milestone for the club which did not have a black member until 1990.“The home of the Masters now has green jackets for women. In a historic change at one of the world’s most exclusive golf clubs, Augusta National invited former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and South Carolina financier Darla Moore to become the first female members since the club was founded in 1932.” This marks another overdue milestone for the club which did not have a black member until 1990.
