The Pfizer/AstraZeneca story might be just about to get even more interesting if this suggestion that Elliott Associates has been building a stake is accurate. Elliott Associates, for those who don’t know, is run by activist investor Paul Singer, and Mr. Singer is not a man to be pushed around. Elliott has made a substantial share of its profits […]

Overview JP Morgan Chase is a multinational banking and financial services holding company. It is the largest bank in the US and has $2.4 trillion in assets. JPM operates in four main businesses: Consumer & Community Banking Deposits, credit card issuance. Target annual net income $1800m Corporate & Investment Bank Fixed income market revenue, equity, […]

There is no copyright on investment ideas and the news that Neil Woodford has been buying into HSBC will cause a few people to cast an eye over the much-loved financials sector. Woodford famously sold out of banks before the crisis and so is worth paying attention to on this subject. I do remember him making a […]

I admit it. When I first heard that Pfizer had made a move to take over AstraZeneca, I did feel a small burst of satisfaction as I realised that I had paid less for something than it was worth. Since that naïve, short-sighted and selfish reaction I have come to see the error of my ways and I […]

One of the companies that caught my eye in Jeremy Siegel’s list of top-performing firms, is Tootsie Roll Industries. This company makes a range of confectionary including: Tootsie Rolls, Charleston Chew, and Andes Mints. After a quick look on Morningstar I thought that it looked potentially worth investigating, because of its sector, size and longevity, but a Google search revealed […]

“We don’t comment on market speculation or rumors,” said Andrew Topen, a Pfizer spokesman. A sound policy but, fortunately, we have the Sunday Times to tell us that Pfizer in recent weeks made an informal approach to buy AstraZeneca for around 60 billion pounds. At a 27% premium to AstraZeneca’s current market value, that would provide […]

IBM IBM reported quarterly earnings that disappointed Wall Street again on Wednesday evening. Revenue weighed in at $22.48 billion against an expected $22.91 billion, containing a 23% drop in hardware revenue. Flat revenue, with a lot of the EPS growth coming from buybacks is an old story with IBM. Nevertheless, it ploughed on with its […]

I bought a few more IBM shares on Wednesday. At a time when new companies that earnestly tout their “cloud” credentials are floating with little more than hot air, IBM are already waiting on the battlefield armed with their trusty inventory of new patents, which are still being collected by them at a faster rate than by any of their […]

Everyone knows that the last 15 or 16 years have been a roller coaster for the stock market. The dot com mania, when geeks became rock stars, was followed by the inevitable crash, when they were demoted to being geeks again. After that we had the “Financial Crisis” when it was the bankers who lost the social popularity contest, having caused damage […]