George Frangeskides, Chairman at ALBA, explains why the Pilbara Lithium option ‘was too good to miss’. Watch the video here.
Closed out now. Not sure what the next few days will bring. This Primodos drug story just keeps coming back over the years and now some more docs have turned up that could implicate Bayer/expose them to legal action. http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/pregnancy-drug-may-have-thousands-of-victims/ar-BByo3Fk No longer worth the risk IMHO.
The Spanish economy appears to be on firmer ground now but the Brazilian economy needs to be watched in terms of GDP, interest rates, inflation and Real/$ over coming months. Personally, I suspect SP is nearing a low and sticking with it hoping for a significant SP rise in H2 2016.
Loan loss provisions for Brazil keep on increasing and are taking too much out of net income. On top of that, recent news of world economy slowing don't help balance Brazilian risks anymore. Maybe once commodities are back in demand a few years from now and the Brazilian economy looks better then there'll be a significant turnaround. Only good thing to say is that I believe we are nearing the bottom for this share so there might be some good opportunities to buy into this cheaply over coming weeks... and for those prepared to wait for what could be a few years. Not exactly great opportunities wherever you look.
"it looks as though they are resuming Scrips as dividends if you hold through their service" To confirm, it's not dependent on holding shares through the Santander service. They will issue divis as cash or scrips as they wish and decent brokers will handle scrips. Current policy is 4 divis a year, one being a scrip.
Tommycrowbar, Unless any things altered recently - and I haven't checked for a while - then they issue four divis a year and one of them will have the option of being a scrip divi. If you want the new shares via the scrip then your Broker will need to be able to offer processing of scrips and you will need to tell them in advance that you want scrips when they are offered ongoing. Not all brokers offer this service but first direct and Barclays share dealing definitely do. You don't need to have a Santander account to get them. I'm hoping they change their divi policy back to allowing all divis as new shares. Anyone have a list of non-UK registered companies that offer all their divis as scrips and that operate a ‘scrip dividend programme’ (where it means by having the scrip you don’t pay the local (foreign) tax) ?
The Spanish national elections are over 3 months away and the only real issue there would be if the anti-austerity party gained some power so I'm not sure if that's the reason for the fall in SP. The fragile Brazilian economy and raise in interest rates has increased funding costs so that's maybe more of an issue but the fall seems overdone to me. I think we are quickly approaching a point where this is good value.
I think the change in divi distribution has had some effect unfortunately (that plus the cut in divis from 2015 earnings). 1 in 4 payments now being cash divis rather than new shares means some (like me) now being hit with WHT. In 2015, Feb & May were scrips, Aug was Cash & Nov will be a scrip and t looks like they will follow that model for 2016 too. IMHO it's got great growth potential over coming years which is why I'm sticking with it.