Online financial news
Northern Rock sale: The end of a sorry tale of British banking
The eagerness to join the queue to buy Northern Rock never came close to matching the rush to line up outside its branches to pull savings out.
But at least the sale means that the beginning of the end of a disappointing British banking saga has arrived.
Northern Rock stood for all that went bad in the UK’s banking system, as those who should have known better bundled recklessly into a headlong rush to throw money at borrowers, believing that the days of easy credit could never end and house prices could never fall.
Eurozone Bonds for a Breakdown
The Eurozone continues to dominate the mood of the market and it will do so until it breaks apart. The European Central Bank is under mounting pressure to buy unlimited amounts of Italian and Spanish bonds to keep the Eurozone together.
Apparently that will fix things. But the problem is these countries’ competitiveness relative to the German economy. Bailing them out and forcing reforms that call for internal devaluation to restore competitiveness just won’t work.
But that won’t stop self-interested politicians from wasting billions more euros in trying. German chancellor Angela Merkel is even prepared to sacrifice German sovereignty to Brussels to help ‘solve’ the crisis. We wonder what her people think of that?
The European leaders are like a bunch of two year olds trying to jam a piece of the puzzle in where it doesn’t fit. An adult needs to come along and tell them to go and play outside where they won’t hurt anyone, or themselves This is a slow-motion train wreck of epic proportions.
Measuring the Year Ahead
Given the abundance of unresolved issues left over from last year, perhaps it is no wonder that the range of forecasts for 2012 seems unusually polarized. Expectations seem to be clustered at either end of the spectrum, with little middle ground. Stocks are expected to produce either strong returns or sharp losses. The question of corporate earnings growth and its meaning illustrates the point.
One of the places many investors begin in their determination of whether or not stocks are attractive is the market’s price-to-earnings, or P/E, ratio. But admittedly, this metric is problematic, since for every one of its positive aspects there seems to be a corresponding negative. For example, assuming fourth quarter earnings projections for the S&P 500 are accurate, the market ended 2011 with a trailing P/E ratio of 12.9 based on its closing price of 1258. This represents a significant discount to the market’s thirty-five year average trailing P/E ratio of 16.8, according to Bloomberg. Ove Read more…
Cardio3BioSciences raises €3.1M in non-dilutive funding
The Belgian biotechnology company, Cardio3BioSciences, a leader in the discovery and development of regenerative and protective therapies for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, today announces it has secured a total of €3.1 million in non-dilutive funding from the Walloon Region and the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).
The Walloon Region funding takes the form of recoverable cash advances and will be used to industrialise a number of Cardio3 BioSciences projects including establishing a new bioreactor for the production of the Company’s lead product, C3BS-CQR-1 (C-Cure®), a highly innovative stem cell approach for the treatment of heart failure. Th
Learn from our Deal of the Year
Outline of our Deal of the Year
The following events occurred over 30 days and shows that solving problems and being creative is more important than having a lot of money. I chose to outline the event chronically as the deal evolved, because it shows how investors can earn large profits by being flexible and keeping their eye on the prize.
Day 1:
While performing my daily scan of the Fresno MLS I identified a 10-Unit apartment building listed at $220K. The pictures and the MLS description showed that the property was currently vacant, in disrepair and needed a new owner.
My original thoughts were this property is priced way too high and might be worth only 120-150K if it needed a cash buyer. I found the property interesting and added the listing details and agent contact info to my list of calls to make the next day. Remember I am not an agent and I have no special access to the MLS. Every
Revenue and profits down for life insurers
Total revenue for Australian life insurers has fallen from $23 billion in the year ending September 30 last year to $15.4 billion in the corresponding period this year.
The latest figures from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) show the drop in revenue also hit insurers’ profits.
After-tax profits for the year ending September 30 this year were down 12.3% to $2.5 billion, compared to $2.8 billion in the corresponding period last year.
Net premiums to September 30 were $27.7 billion compared to $27.3 billion in the corresponding 12 months last year, and net policy payments were $30.7 billion this year compared to $26 billion.
Volatile global investment markets have also dramatically reduced this source of income for life insurers.
In the year ending September 30 last year, investment income was $11 billion, but this has fallen to $2.4 billion in the most recent period.
The life insurance industry had total assets of $228 billion at September 30, compared to $234 billion 12 months previously.
The fall in investment income and assets can be attributed to insurers holding 46% of their portfolios in equities and 33% in debt securities on September 30 this year.
In addition, 9% of portfolios were held in cash and deposits with 7.3% in investment properties.
Total expenses for life insurers in the 12 months ending September this year were $11.8 billion, compared to $11.1 billion in the corresponding 2010 period.
Commission on winning new business in the year ending September 30 were $1.47 billion, while trails for the period were $1.9 billion. T