Member Info for Jimbo1122

37% of people have a mortgage/loans while 27% of the population have no mortgage or loans. The 27% are benefitting greatly with the increase in interest rates on their savings which is keeping spending and inflation high. In short, raising interest rates is not the effective tool everyone in finance thinks it is in dampening inflation. As for Lloyds, I am genuinely surprised that people are still holding on to this consistently underperformed share when they can now get a guaranteed 5.45% return on 5 year fixed rate bonds.

Wetherspoons have a huge debt and it is not great to have debt when interest rates are going up. Also the energy bill will increase significantly across all their premises. The only solution I can see is for Wetherspoons to significantly increase their prices across the board. To charge 1.25 for a coffe with unlimited free refills is plain crazy...increase it to 2.00 and the punters will still come in. Increase drink prices by 15 to 20% and they will still go to Wetherspoons and the same with food. Finally, I cannot understand the rationale behind the decision to sell 32 pubs....who is going to buy any of them if Wetherspoons couldn't even make them a viable proposition.

Don't forget that Tui is one of the most indebted companies on the stock exchange and therefore any increase in interest rates will cripple it further hence the dramatic fall in SP. If the interest rate goes up by 0.25 then you may see a small rebound but most experts are expecting a rise of 0.5 at noon today.

A bit of an anti-climax. Fortress bid 1p over and CDR then bit another 1p over and Fortress threw in the towel. I was expecting bid increments of 5p and more of a battle. A lot of Shareholders will be a bit miffed because they could have sold on Friday for around the 295p mark.
It is my wife that has the shares through the companies Sharesave scheme (17 payments of 350.00 buying at 154p per share plus she will get a goodwill bonus of 3 months profit (c.900 pounds) so it would be quite churlish to complain it didn't go higher.

Amazon could probably buy Morrisons by looking behind the sofa at Amazon HQ after Bezos sat on it.

I had originally thought that CDR had timed themselves out but another poster corrected me by stating the time limit had been extended due to a rival offer being made.
Its obviously going to be good for shareholders if a bidding war takes place but I hope at the end it is the Fortress group that succeeds due to a track record of running companies as they are and not assets stripping them.

CDR are too late now. They had until 17th July to declare whether they were still in or out.

Jed,
The SP will not fall to 250p ish . Fortress / Apollo will end up making an offer around 265p because they need shareholders to approve the takeover. Why would Shareholders accept a bid of 252 +2p when they could sell right now for around 262p.
Bidding 265p will not be an issue for a combined investment group.
Its actually a very clever strategy by Apollo as they will gain a foothold in Morrisons with a lower financial commitment and also avoid getting into a bidding war.
Media companies bidding for Football rights should take note.

Its quite hard to work out what will happen to the SP on opening. My best Guess is that with the added funds available between the two groups and the fact the SP is currently higher than Fortresses offer of 254p a slightly higher offer will be made around 265p to appease shareholders and make up for the inevitable change in commitments that Fortress have already made. It is also possible that another investment group will enter into the bidding for MRW. Overall I don't think the SP will move much on opening but may go down slightly later on in the day if shareholders decide that a price of around 265p is the best that will be achieved and sell up.

I don't personally own any MRW shares but my wife is in the Sharesave scheme. She is paying £350.00 per month and buying them at 154p. She is only about 13 or 14 months into the 36 month period so is unable to sell them at the current price.
If I owned shares I would definitely sell at the current price and be highly content with the profit achieved. If anybody makes a higher bid it will be one of the investors that will asset strip the company and load it with debt and this would lead to huge ethical and political issues. I think MRW BOD's will get a slightly better offer from Fortress than the 254p already submitted but not enough to justify holding on to the shares at the current price.

I agree that they could have sold for more but I can only assume that they have agreed a lower price because of the assurances that Fortress have given about the future of the company and its employees. To be fair the SP was stuck at the 180p mark for an eternity and showed no signs of moving so I suppose 254p is not too bad all things considered.

My wife has just received a company email that was signed off by David Potts.
Basically, they have rejected the bid as it undervalue the company and it is business as usual.
Significantly though, they did not say that the company is not for sale so either expect a new revised higher bid or perhaps it will push Amazon into action.
To be honest a bid of 230p was never going to be enough as it has been at that price previously.
I believe a bid around 280p to 300p would probably do it.

The Supermarket chains have been out of favor for a while during which time the City have been concentrating more on the sectors that will bounce back from the Covid-19 induced recession. Its now getting to the stage when the City will start parking their money in the Supermarket sector again as it is a safe haven. Morrisons are doing as well as could reasonably be expected and there is always the background prospect of Amazon deciding that it would be a good idea to simply buy Morrisons in order to maximise profit and future growth in the food retail sector. Definitely one to put in a drawer for the medium to long term.

There's a very real danger that TUI will need to either re-arrange or refund every single booking made for the Summer and up to the Autumn. If this happens then TUI are doomed. TUI are burning through an absolute fortune at the moment with the costs involved in maintaining their infrastructure (Aircraft fleet , Shop costs, Hotels maintenence etc etc) ,staff wages for those not on furlough and TV/Media Advertising. They also have huge debts that need to be repaid. If holidays are cancelled then they will not only have no money coming in but the money they have received as deposits and staged payments will no longer be available to prop them up. All the money spend on staff taking bookings and Advertising costs will have been completely wasted . I'm sorry to feel the need to point out the obvious but there are a lot of people who are completely in denial when it comes to this company and the situation it finds itself in.

Maverick--Can't see this rising. The Analysts were expecting a loss of £35M not £600M plus. Anyway, we will find out shortly.

If anybody is looking for a positive - - it will be a good buying opportunity today once the SP settles down.

This is why--M&S have just announced that their store in East Kilbride is closing. This store is in the largest indoor shopping centre in Scotland and if you were to choose a store location within this shopping mall it would be where the store is currently located. If M&S are unable to turn a decent profit in this store then they really do have serious issues to address.

Morgan--you say that Tui did their best.
That is simply wrong and Andrew Flintham even had to apologise for the many mistakes they made.
Let me remind you that in law travel companies have to refund cancelled holidays within 14 days.
Tui deliberately made sure that no mention of cash refunds were offered just vouchers. No - one could contact Tui by email and the only way you could get a cash refund was to wait for a refund voucher code and then you had the almost impossible task of actually speaking to someone on the phone to get the cash refund. It was only after the threat of legal action by the Governments Commerce department did they give customers the opportunity via their website to claim the cash refund but only when Tui saw fit to send the refund voucher code. Even with the code and applying for the cash refund you get a message saying the refund would take up to a further 4 weeks. As I said on my previous post just look up the comments on Trust Pilot because these comments are from actual Tui customers.

I have used Thompsons /Tui for many years and don't even look at other travel companies when booking a holiday.
That has now changed given the way they handled cancelled holiday refunds.
They had to by law give refunds so they had a choice--pass the refund to customers in a way in which they would retain company loyalty or delay the refunds and p everybody off big time. Guess what the dummies at Tui decided to do. Now literally tens of thousands will never use Tui again. If anybody disputes this then why not go to trust pilot and see what a complete mess they made of the whole process.

All the Supermarkets are up. Looks as though the City are transferring money back into defensive stocks on fears of a second wave of Covid-19.