The Great Debate UK
from Breakingviews:
Buffett’s crisis bets outrunning his freight train
Warren Buffett's annual missive to Berkshire Hathaway's shareholders is out. Among the usual folksy nuggets, the Sage of Omaha notes that he funded Goldman Sachs, General Electric and others at the height of the crisis.
The $21 billion invested is now worth a quarter more and yields 10 percent annually. Short term at least, that's more than Buffett's bet on railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe is likely to deliver.
Berkshire has deployed a similar amount of cash to buy BNSF -- some $22 billion. It has also issued stock. That's why Buffett's latest letter is partly a primer for the 65,000 new shareholders the deal added to the half million or so that Berkshire already had.
Even Buffett, though, admits that the decision to buy BNSF in November was a "close one". The generous $34 billion price tag for the rail company's equity looked even higher from Buffett's point of view because he paid partly in stock. He and his investing partner Charlie Munger like issuing shares "about as much as we relish prepping for a colonoscopy", the 79-year-old Buffett writes.
from Breakingviews:
Russian IPO rush means investors can be choosy
Russian initial public offerings are set for a comeback. Some $20 billion of Russian share sales are forecast this year, including dozens of IPOs. With plenty of options, investors should be able to drive a hard bargain.
Following a two-year lull in activity, bankers are excited at the prospect of a return to the heady days of 2006 and 2007, when Russian companies raised some $37 billion in 42 international share issues. Media group Profmedia plans to raise $500 million in April with a London listing, while iron ore miner Metalloinvest and coal miner SUEK are mulling billion-dollar IPOs in 2010.
from Breakingviews:
Bank of New York pays full price for small gain
By Rolfe Winkler
Bank of New York Mellon is growing – at a price. The giant trust bank on Tuesday agreed to buy PNC Financial Services' back-office operations for $2.3 billion. That works out to 23 times annualized fourth-quarter 2009 earnings. That is a heady multiple for only a marginal boost in market share.
PNC’s shareholders seem to be getting the better end of the transaction. The sale of the PNC Global Investment Servicing (GIS) unit boosts its capital and should help it repay $7.6 billion of bailout money received from the government.
from Commentaries:
Cazenove’s yield may muddy JP Morgan deal
As your friendly neighbourhood investment bank rarely tells you, something like 80 percent of deals don't pay off. So why do one if you don't have to?
That is the question facing the mighty City of London firm of Cazenove. Five years after Caz poured its investment banking business into a joint venture with the U.S. bank, JP Morgan <JPM.N>, it has to decide whether to go the whole hog and sell the remainder -- or to hang on.
