Breakingviews

Apple’s bite out of market seeds IPO appetites

By Jeffrey Goldfarb
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist the opinions expressed are his own.

By taking a big bite out of the American stock market, Apple is inadvertently seeding the appetite for equity. While the iPad maker’s recently supersized $50 billion buyback program may be unique in its scale as the largest of all time, it also typifies one of the big challenges facing investors seeking to deploy their money.

ENRC board needs to summon its poker skills

By Kevin Allison

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

ENRC’s independent directors need to practice their poker skills. They face the task of recommending or rejecting a possible bid for the hapless miner from a consortium of its biggest shareholders. The directors’ hand is weak, but they shouldn’t just fold.

Man Utd about to discover Fergie’s true worth

By Peter Thal Larsen

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Alex Ferguson’s retirement should worry Manchester United’s fans and investors as much as it delights long-suffering rivals. His triumphant 26-year reign has gone hand-in-hand with the soccer club’s equally impressive financial rise. Ferguson’s departure will reveal how much of that value depends on the manager.

It’s about good governance, not Jamie

By Rob Cox
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Another day, another pressure point for JPMorgan. The latest rebuke of the U.S. bank’s board arrived on Tuesday from proxy adviser Glass Lewis, which like Institutional Shareholder Services helps investors make up their minds about how to vote at the annual meetings of companies. Both firms are now arguing for JPMorgan to split the roles of chairman and chief executive.

Lufthansa governance farce marks new low point

By Olaf Storbeck

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Europe’s largest airline in the last 24 hours has gone through a series of self-inflicted turbulences that raise doubts about the quality of its governance. On Monday morning, the nominated new chairman of Lufthansa, a former chief executive of the company, unexpectedly announced that he would not be available for the task. One day ahead of the annual shareholder meeting, Wolfgang Mayrhuber, 66, seemed to cave in to pressure from international investors unhappy with his candidacy. Then, a few hours later, he changed his mind once again, and decided to run after all.

BMC deal shows how activist playbook brings profit

By Robert Cyran
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Elliott Management has once again pushed a technology firm into selling itself. This time BMC Software is going for $6.9 billion to a private equity group led by Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital. At $46.25 a share, the 2 percent headline premium over Friday’s closing price may seem tiny. But that’s more than a 30 percent return for Elliott, adding to its record of similar successes at Novell, Packeteer and Blue Coat.

PepsiCo resistance against activists looks futile

By Robert Cyran

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

A PepsiCo breakup looks like a matter of time. Investors with a hankering for corporate restructurings have taken stakes in the $128 billion snacks and drinks conglomerate. Splitting the two operations in some way would be straight out of their standard playbook. Though the company has opposed such efforts in the past, the success of Nelson Peltz at Cadbury and his interest in another food biggie, Mondelez, may be hard to resist.

Unsure voters could dim lure of Malaysian assets

By Andy Mukherjee

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)

Malaysia’s upcoming general election looks set to be a close-run affair. The big risk for investors from the May 5 poll is that neither of the two competing coalitions – the ruling Barisan Nasional or the opposition Pakatan Rakyat – may be able to claim a decisive victory.

Former junk bond king has more leverage than ever

By Jeffrey Goldfarb
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Former junk bond king Michael Milken has more leverage than ever. Three decades after mastering the art of raising money, the man whose indictment on securities violations brought down Drexel Burnham Lambert now trades more heavily in intellectual capital.

Alibaba spots pricey treasure in Weibo’s network

By Peter Thal Larsen

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)

Alibaba has spotted hidden treasure in Sina Weibo’s social network. The e-commerce giant is paying a punchy price for roughly 18 percent of China’s microblogging phenomenon, a business that has not yet celebrated its fourth birthday and is still working out how to generate revenue.