Americas markets wrap: Mexico rises on US data, Petrobras drags Brazil
Rising US retail sales lifted Mexican stocks and the peso today as investors were cheered that Mexico’s largest trading partner may escape a double-dip recession. But Brazil’s Bovespa index was dragged down by concerns over Petrobras’s upcoming share sale. Continue reading »
Brazil M&A heats up
Wall Street’s interest in Latin America continues to blossom. Today brings news that Evercore, the US investment bank, is taking a 50 per cent stake in Brazil’s G5 – and will have the chance to buy the rest of the São Paulo-based boutique bank in 2014.
The US firm is seeking to tap into Brazil’s booming deals market, the FT’s Helen Thomas reports, through G5′s focus on M&A. Continue reading »
Opec’s 50th birthday party: not so easy
How does an ill-fitting family spanning the Wahhabi state of Saudi Arabia and revolutionary Venezuela celebrate its 50th anniversary, which fell on Tuesday?
Well, no-one is saying the party-planning for the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, founded in Baghdad in 1960, has been easy. Continue reading »
Argentina doesn’t care much about being best in class
Room for improvement. If Standard & Poor’s credit rating upgrade of Argentina this week had been a school report, that would have been the message.
Like that rebel student who gets higher-than-expected grades but refuses to study the book, Argentina has significantly reduced its debt – in part through a successful swap of most of the debt still unpaid since its 2001 default on nearly $100bn. Continue reading »
Deal of the day: Severstal buys again, ahead of planned gold IPO
By Rob Hartley of mergermarket
The billionaire boss of Russian steel giant Severstal, Alexei Mordashov (pictured), has long promised an offering of shares in all his group’s gold businesses. He may now have put one of the final pieces in place.
Severstal has paid $215m for a further chunk of Crew Gold, a UK-based company which owns one of west Africa’s largest gold mines. That consolidates Severstal’s place as Russia’s second-biggest gold producer – and allows it to include Crew Gold in the pledged IPO. Continue reading »
Regulator stalls Santander’s Polish bank takeover
Spain’s Banco Santander SA may have won the contest to buy Bank Zachodni WBK, the profitable Polish affiliate of Ireland’s troubled AIB, but Polish authorities are going to make life uncomfortable for the Spaniards before the takeover is completed.
Poland’s financial markets and banking regulator plans to investigate whether AIB violated Polish law by passing confidential information to Santander during the tender, and by tying the transaction to the sale of AIB’s other international assets. Continue reading »
Forget Beijing, head for the back of beyond
Every time you think you have a got a mental grip on emerging markets along comes a report which finds new ways of painting the picture. This is less a tribute to the report writers, smart though many of them are, than to the speed of economic change in the emerging world.
So it is with the Boston Consulting Group’s study, published on Tuesday, into emerging market cities. BCG says that with over 700 emerging market cities with populations above 500,000, companies must switch their attention from well-known ‘mega-cities’ such as Shanghai, Mumbai and Rio de Janiero to a host of smaller places which together form “the world’s largest growth opportunity”. Continue reading »
Sino-Japanese cooperation grows in Mongolia
China’s aggressive efforts to secure natural resources around the world have sometimes made it an opponent of other importing nations, most recently South Korea. But a shared hunger for commodities can bring countries closer to together too.
Take Tuesday’s deal between Mitsui, one of Japan’s biggest trading houses, and Shenhua, the Chinese state-owned energy and mining company. The two groups agreed to work together to develop coal deposits in Mongolia, and perhaps in other countries in the future. Continue reading »
New York headlines
* Wen commits China to stable housing prices
* Cairn says no need for ONGC nod on Vedanta deal
* São Paulo exchange limits intraday price moves
* Russian drought fertile for M&A, says Cherkizovo
* S Africa may revoke mine licenses to enforce charter Continue reading »
Asia markets wrap: Indian stocks gain; markets mixed
Asian markets stumbled slightly on Tuesday, after more positive performance on Monday. India’s stocks continued to rise, on the back the country’s lowest inflation data since January. Deutsche Bank told clients in a note that the region’s stock markets may deliver zero returns, or even losses, over the next year. Continue reading »
South Korea joins the competition for resources with China
South Korea is challenging its bigger neighbours such as China, India and Japan in an aggressive hunt for overseas natural resources as the country steps up efforts to improve its energy security.
The latest example is SK Networks’s plan to buy a stake of between 11 per cent and 14 per cent in Brazilian mining company MMX for about $700m. The deal will mark the largest investment in iron ore by a South Korean company, helping the trading unit of SK Group secure 9m metric tonnes of iron ore a year. Continue reading »
Further reading: smashing heads in Moscow, Asian 21st century, a wired CCP
From the FT,
From elsewhere,
Thailand’s SSI moves closer to buying British steel plant
Asia more usually stands in the dock accused of taking heavy engineering jobs away from the economies of old Europe, but maybe the tide is turning.
The announcement a couple of weeks ago that Thailand’s Sahaviriya Steel Industries has signed a memorandum of understanding to buy Corus’ mothballed steel plant in Redcar for $500m reverses the usual flows of cash and employment. Continue reading »
London headlines
* Wen commits China to stable housing prices
* Cairn says no need for ONGC nod on Vedanta deal
* São Paulo exchange limits intraday price moves
* China to cut fossil fuel to 85 per cent by 2020
* S Africa may revoke mine licenses to enforce charter Continue reading »
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