Global Investing

Turkey’s ceasefire last month with the Kurdish militant group PKK could boost its trade partnerships multilaterally, as increasing prospects for stability in the region bring economic opportunities in the Middle East and Africa.

The halt in the decades-long armed campaign came on March 21 after the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Abdullah Ocalan, sent a letter with the announcement from the island prison cell where he has been held since 1999 when he was arrested for treason.

Although the main pro-Kurdish party has recently poured doubt on the veracity of Ocalan’s statement, the prospect of greater stability in the troubled border region with Iraq could pave the way for greater trade security and pay dividends for investors.

Now that the Turkish economy is pacing along, perhaps not with so much gusto as  a few years ago, but with a young and increasingly tech-savvy population and inflation levels at relatively low levels, peace progressions with the PKK could also help the country’s prospects.

Part of Turkey’s trade is made bilaterally to the West, but increasingly it is made multilaterally with Africa, the Middle East and in particular Iraq, the second largest destination for Turkish exports in 2011, according to EU data.

Investment banks have been dismayed this year by the slump in first-time share listings across emerging markets, the area they had hoped would yield the most growth (and fees). But as we pointed out in this story, emerging IPO volumes fell 40 percent this year. And equity bankers have seen lucrative IPO fees dry up – they almost halved this year from 2011  and are a third of 2007 levels.

One market that has possibly disappointed investors most is Russia.  Its plan a few years ago to privatise large swathes of state-run companies via share sales had bankers salivating — estimates for the proceeds ranged from $30-$50 billion. The pipeline is still alluring, with all manner of companies up for privatisation, including shipping company Sovcomflot and the Russian Railways monopoly.  The Kremlin did raise $5 billion this year by selling a 7.6 percent stake in Sberbank, the banking giant, but not much else has come to pass.  In fact, 2012 saw the state tighten its grip on the energy sector, as government-controlled Rosneft bought oil producer TNK off BP, forking out $12.3 billion and some equity.

Sberbank analyst Chris Weafer estimates Russian companies raised $2.5 billion this year via IPOs, including a $1.8 billion offering from mobile operator Megafon- that’s almost half last year’s levels. Actually, the picture is not that dismal. Weafer points out that total equity issuance to the market, including strategic stake sales by shareholders, came to  $12.8 billion (the total was bumped up by the $5 billion Sberbank deal) and that is up from last year’s total of $9.9 billion.

Checking background for our Special Report on Glencore, "The Biggest Company You Never Heard Of", I stumbled on the novel “The Fortunes of Glencore” by Charles Lever. On a whim I read it. There were some intriguing parallels between the 20th-century company and the book, even though that was published in 1857.

The further I read, the more I asked myself if this little heard-of scrap of 19th-century literature couldn’t be used as some kind of coda. It sounds crazy, but maybe you can understand the temptation. Glencore is a secretive, controversial Swiss-based commodities trading and mining giant, and even though it may soon be quoted on the London and Hong Kong stock exchanges, it works hard to maintain its mystique. Could this little novel be some kind of “Da Vinci Code” for Glencore?

MYSTERY AND EXILE

The Glencore of the book is a mysterious figure to all those around him: “Little, or indeed nothing, was known of Lord Glencore...” it says. “‘Who is Lord Glencore?’ people would say. ‘What is the strange story of his birth? Has anyone yet got at the truth?’”

Nobody ever got poor betting on Chinese demand for gambling, though the big players in Macau have seen a few busted flushes along the way. With more than a billion fatalists eager to hit the tables, and only one place to do it (Macau is China's only legal gambling venue), it's not hard to see the case that Wynn Macau and Las Vegas Sands are making for Hong Kong investors. It's the same story Hong Kong and Macau magnate Stanley Ho has made for decades.

Wynn Macau's $1.63 billion Hong Kong IPO, the sixth-largest in the world this year, was considered rich, despite the hype and that "sure thing" ring. After all, the colony is covered with half-finished projects and other remnants of the last time this too-good-to-be-true investment turned out to be what it was.

Wynn Macau shares ended 6 percent higher on Friday, valuing the casino giant at $6.9 billion. The solid debut bodes well for rival Las Vegas Sands, which plans to raise up to $2 billion in a Hong Kong offering for its Asia assets, most notably in Macau.

    Buying ABN AMRO may have bankrupted Royal Bank of Scotland and Fortis, but it has proved another coup for Spain's Santander whose chairman Emilio Botin has shown his eye for a bargain.
    After flipping Italy's Banca Antonveneta for an impressive profit before the ink was even dry on the contract to take it over from ABN, Botin is now looking to float Banco Santander Brasil, including another former ABN asset, Banco Real, once part of the Dutch bank's Latin American empire.
    With Brazilian valuations riding high and the IPO market flourishing, Citigroup reckons BSB could be worth as much as $30 billion. If so, the partial sale would again demonstrate Botin's ability to spot a good deal.
    Brazil is far too important to Santander -- it accounted for 18 percent of the bank's first half profits of 4.5 billion euros -- for Botin to give up control. But a flotation of 15 percent of the Brazilian bank could raise $4.5 billion of scarce capital while giving Botin another currency for shopping in South America. lt is already Brazil's third-largest bank by assets.
    Santander has been able to keep buying through the financial crisis, becoming the biggest bank in the euro zone as a result. Botin has also picked up Sovereign Bancorp in the U.S. and Alliance & Leicester, along with the remains of failed former building society Bradford & Bingley, in Britain.
    Floating the Brazilian business would crystallise its value. It might also boost Santander's own share price, but risks investors taking the view that a global roll-out of the bank's name and brand means the parent is becoming a conglomerate rather than an integrated group.
    The possibility of attracting a conglomerate discount won't have escaped Botin, whose family still owns nearly 2.5 percent of the $115 billion bank.
    Unlike his colleagues in the banks which have failed, Botin has his family fortune tied up in the business he runs. This, surely, is a powerful reason why Santander has avoided plunging into areas where the risk was far greater than the executives knew or cared. The bank has the strength to take advantage of the fashion for things Brazilian, and he can reflect that the acquisition which sunk RBS has done him no harm at all.

A web-based survey of more than 40 European institutional investors by investment bank Jefferies shows most -- 83 percent of those who responded -- are not expecting a re-opening of the IPO market in the UK and Continental Europe before the middle of 2010.

Only 23 percent of the analysts, portfolio managers and dealers surveyed reckon the IPO market will re-open by the end of this year.

Seems the world is still split on what type of companies will be floated though:

Got a company to set up? Better go for a simpler name.

That is what psychologists at Princeton University found in a  survey when they studied data from two major U.S. stock exchanges on initial public offerings.

They found that people are more likely to purchase newly offered stocks that have easily pronounced names than those that do not. After the IPO, investing $1,000 in companies that have easy-to-pronounce names generated $333 more than investing in the 10 hardest to pronounce companies.

In one case, an initial investment of $1,000 yielded a profit of $112 more after one day of trading for a basket of fluently named shares than for a basket of “disfluently” named shares.