Member Info for Dinoken

Thx Pantherax, will look at the II offering.
Just to rub salt into the wounds, WRES has had a belter of a week.

Vampire Squid acquire 6% stake provided they play their instruments. Why have they acquired them and what will they do with them is the question. IMO expect another bid.

Peel Hunt today downgrades its investment rating on Marston's PLC (LON:MARS) to add (from buy) and cut its price target to 115p (from 125p).

JS at BARC :
1) the famous whistleblowing episode - serious personal failure of judgement not in keeping with an employee at any level.
2) taking personal control of CIB - surely something a Group CE should delegate.
3) BARC and Deutche mentioned in same breath - tagged as failing peers.
4) future capital requirements brought under the microscope - very worrying.

Bring on the Branston - even a jar of pickle could do better than this. Bramson is not a banker, but his influence on the board could only improve things IMO.

And this is not April 1st ...

Apparently, MARS will power the 400 electric vehicle (EV) chargers across its UK estate with 100% renewable energy. Think they have missed the point. All EV car owners want is cheap electricity - not expensive renewable.

Been a recovery play for the last 10 years. Time for a divi than acquisitions IMO.

Fine - revenue and orders up, china implemented, move to AIM sensible. Moving in right direction IMO. Wondering what acquisitions RNO is mulling over ...

Pantherax - even as of this week I have been let down by this joke of a system. Wanted to place a limit order on WRES which is quoted in pence to 4dp. You've guessed it, Dumb investor can only manage limit order to 2dp, and nobody was sure exactly how the 2dp would work ! In the end, I missed out on the latest rise in WRES. Which platform would you recommend ?

Morbox - beggars belief that they accepted an offer substantially lower than the 'low ball' offer made last year. IMO has everything to do with them keeping their jobs (at shareholders expense). Hoping for a counter bid or regulators kicking this into touch.

Morbox - thx for pointing out the Telegraph article.
Got past the paywall and can scarcely believe the content. Conclusion is that this is not a done deal whatsoever. Highly likely this will drag on for ages and there may well be another (US fund) bidder or even no deal at all.
Key points :
a) "US and UK security and technology watchdogs are gearing up for MONTHS (yes MONTHS) of scrutiny amid heightened sensitivities over critical communications".
b) Deal to be reviewed by secretive branch of the US government (clearly not so secret) known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), which ­derailed Broadcom’s $117bn (£90bn) offer for Qualcomm last year over concerns about Chinese involvement.
c) Whitehall to assess impact of a private equity takeover on Britain’s industrial strategy (what strategy ? thought strategy was to flog everything off) given ISAT’s investment in hi-tech research.
d) one regulatory expert believes “There is still time for another bidder to enter the process. There are plenty of large US funds that could do this deal by themselves and would be less of a risk to CFIUS”.
e) The Federal Communications Commission is also due to investigate.
f) ISAT ownership of scarce radio spectrum in the US, as well as US Navy reliance on its network, is likely be flagged by security officials.

Excellent result for Dovatis. Bad news for Gilead, great news for GSK.

aka Dumb Investor to employees. Worse than awful. Cannot believe how they screwed up what was previously a half decent offering.

What a difference a day makes - GENL now qualifies as a constituent of a high yield portfolio ! Of course, it has yet to pay a cent. You could not make it up ...

Interesting times ahead … From Reuters :

Brian McNamara, CEO of GSK Consumer Healthcare, told Reuters that the UK drugmaker and US peer Pfizer were on track to create the world’s biggest consumer health business by the second half of the year. The venture, which will be majority-owned by the FTSE 100 group, will become a stand-alone company within three years of closing the deal, and will be led by McNamara.

He further told Reuters that the US and China were “two of the key value drivers of the deal,” with Pfizer having “critical mass and a significant amount of their key brands”.

Good stuff. Shape of things to come. Surprised RBS in IT vanguard for a change. From FS Tech :

RBS and Barclays have participated in global trial of blockchain technology which cuts the buy-sell period from three months to less than three weeks.

The lenders joined 40 global financial and professional services firms to test the application of distributed ledger technology (DLT) developed by Instant Property Network (IPN), a property transaction network.

The trial, which was also facilitated by enterprise blockchain software firm R3, ran end-to-end transactions using test data through a new distributed ledger to simulate property sales over a five-day period.

It is estimated that if these efficiencies were applied to the global property market it could equate to an annual saving of approximately $160 billion, according to IPN.

The company said the positive results of the trial signal that tokenisation could fundamentally change property market transactions in the coming years.

The trial enabled firms to move property transactions from paper and email-based systems to a single digital platform which uses DLT to form an immutable trail of transactions. The blockchain platform also allows companies to transact directly while keeping data stored in their own systems, without the need to transfer data onto IPN’s platform.

Dan Salmons, director for mortgage innovation at RBS, said: “We see real potential for blockchain to transform the process, and so have been delighted to take part in the innovative IPN trial.

“As a result we can see the potential for a network of this kind to improve transparency and speed for customers, and reduce cost and complexity for all involved,” he continued, adding: “IPN has given us our best view yet of what a future end-to-end journey could look like.”

FSTA going into orbit today - no obvious reason why. Wonder if this might read across to MARS.

Poor Ross McEwan - everyone's just woken up to fact that he is earning more than Fred the Shred and with a bigger pension !
From the Guardian ...
Ross McEwan's £350,000 pension payments are out of line with the rest of the RBS workforce, being worth 35% of his £1m salary, compared with the rest of his staff, who are offered 10% on their peanuts.
The Investment Association (IA) and ShareSoc are recommending that shareholders should vote down the forthcoming renumeration report.
You could not make it up ...

Over. From beeb ...
Offshore industrial action in a dispute over rota changes has been called off.
The workers, employed by contractors Petrofac and Aker, had voted for industrial action on three Total-owned North Sea platforms.
The Unite union said most members had now signed up to new contracts.
Unite regional industrial officer John Boland said: "With members now agreeing to the new contract the dispute is ended and planned industrial action cancelled."
It involved the Elgin-Franklin, North Alwyn and Dunbar platforms.

The Echostar bid was regarded by most observers as being lowball. However, it was significantly higher than current bid such that Echostar could easily return with a lower bid than last year which is still at a premium to what Apax are offering. Cannot see current bid not being topped IMO

Must have been taken out by RBS for an extremely liquid lunch. Buy 489 !!!