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  1. Photo: Anthony Harrington

    Update on the Greek tragedy

    One of the most insightful commentators on macroeconomic policy, Joseph Trevisani, chief market analyst for the foreign currency trading house FX Solutions, nailed the eurozone’s “Greek problem” in his latest commentary. At bottom, it is not about whether the Greeks have been too profligate (they have) or whether the Germans and French are being unrealistically hard-nosed (they are). Rather, the real problem Europe has in holding together…

  2. Photo: Ian Fraser

    UK’s uncertain outlook clouds stockpicking picture

    The man who took over the reins at Fidelity International’s Special Situations Fund from the legendary investment manager Anthony Bolton has been outlining his investment vision. Sanjeev Shah said that his preference is for companies capable of “generating solid underlying organic growth”—largely because of his suspicion that UK economic growth will remain muted for some time. Even though the UK recession officially ended in…

  3. Photo: Anthony Harrington

    SEC on dangerous ground with short selling rule

    Despite all the evidence pointing to the role of the banks and the mispricing of risk as causal factors in the 2008 credit crunch and financial meltdown, some US politicians still can’t resist playing to public opinion and blaming “wicked short sellers” for the crash. “It was the speculators that did it,” is a venerable cry of outrage that dates back to US stock crashes over the last century. Unfortunately, with US regulatory institutions now very much under the microscope, the risk of…

  4. Photo: Ian Fraser

    Greek tragedy’s happy ending—A European Monetary Fund?

    The Greek crisis has brought the structural flaws in European Monetary Union (EMU) into sharp relief, as well as weakening the euro and the credibility of the euro. But out of the furnace of the sovereign debt crisis an eminently sensible proposal has emerged. Instead of unseemly internal bickering over the extent to which richer eurozone states should dig into their pockets to bail out fiscally irresponsible partners, plans are being drawn up for a new institution that should help…

  5. Photo: Anthony Harrington

    US economy, signs of hope?

    The challenges facing the US economy are so large and deep-seated that it is often difficult, in fact close to downright impossible, to believe that all may yet be well. Take a deficit of $1.5 trillion this year, unemployment above 10%, massive surplus capacity and a consumer market that is just not spending and you have all the ingredients for a disaster that could run and run. There are those who are predicting that another huge wave of housing foreclosures is just around the corner…

  6. Photo: Ian Fraser

    Beijing unlikely to go MAD any time soon

    Americans (some Americans anyway) remain deeply anxious about China’s ownership of $1–2 trillion of their country’s debt. The fears that these massive holdings leave the US vulnerable and expose intensified on February 15 when it was reported Beijing had dumped some $34.2 billion of US Treasury bills. There are fears, for example, that Beijing might suddenly offload its circa $1.5 trillion holding of Treasury bills and, in so doing, spark an economic version of mutually assured destruction…

  7. Photo: Ian Fraser

    Buffett advocates more stick, less carrot to ensure bank bosses shape up

    Legendary Omaha-based investor Warren Buffett often uses his annual letter to shareholders in Berkshire Hathaway group to impart some homespun financial wisdom and disseminate a few trade secrets. The letter accompanying the conglomerate’s 2009 annual report, released on Saturday, doesn’t disappoint. Perhaps Buffett’s most pertinent recommendation, concerns the corporate governance of large financial institutions. Buffett, 79, strongly believes that…

  8. Photo: Anthony Harrington

    Is the West mispricing emerging market assets?

    While the bottom of a global recession is hardly the moment that companies in developed economies can be expected to go on a worldwide acquisition spree, there is little doubt that we will see acquisitions being made in both directions, from West to East and vice versa in the year ahead. This raises an interesting question. Asian sovereign wealth funds, who are likely to be doing the vast bulk of the East to West buying, enjoy transparent pricing of Western assets…

  9. Photo: Anthony Harrington

    PwC report predicts revival for FS M&A

    There was good news and bad news for M&A watchers in the latest report on European Merger Activity in the financial sector from PwC. The bad news was that 2009 was a year when deal-making in the banking sector dived to its lowest level in the seven years PwC has been compiling this report (excluding deals by governments to prop up failing banks, of course). On the up side, insurance deal values were at a comparable level to 2008…

  10. Photo: Ian Fraser

    The wider consequences of Greece’s tragedy

    It’s time that institutional investors woke up to the wider repercussions of the Greek tragedy and rethought their attitudes to risk as well as their approaches to asset allocation. Obviously investors are aware of the way in which the credit crisis has accelerated the shift in the balance of economic power from the developed and towards the emerging world, a shift that has obviously been influenced by the fiscal irresponsibility of the former…

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