Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
@alex1978uk "But he will want Odesa"
Yer, and he probably wants Kyiv as well, but he knows full well that's an unrealistic prospect for the near and medium future. What he primarily needs is a border he can easily defend, like the Dnieper, but that would require a major push which would weaken his military further, so I suspect 2024 will be a period of rearming.
Well he would say that wouldn't he.
Thing I don't get when these sort of rumors get published is why the person publishing them cannot be said to be either part of a conspiracy to manipulate the price or part of a conspiracy to leak inside information. Either way, shouldn't they be liable for prosecution? Maybe American law is different in this regard?
From a purely legal perspective this is very interesting. At issue is how do Ukrainian courts confiscate assets in cases where the individual being pursued has chosen to wrap their Ukrainian assets up in a UK registered public company.As I see it, the court seems to be going down the route of forcing the Ukrainian entity to pay the fine, and for them to then take the same from the individual being pursued, eg by cancellation of shares in their name, however how that can be applied under British law is the key question. It would clearly not be just for all shareholders to pay a fine attributed against one shareholder, so I suspect a solution will be found. If anyone knows of any comparable incidents I would love to hear them.
No more American money. EU now the only backer. No one can afford a continuation of the conflict. Ceasefire by April, but it won't last more than 2 years. All out war within 10 years unless Europe manages to kick out the groupthink neocons and actually elect some independent thinking leaders with true integrity.
Come on Fres, time to relist in New York. The FTSE has no liquidity and is no longer fit for purpose. Silver is traded in Dollars and Mexico and America are part of the same trade pact, so surely a move the New York makes sense.
What is also obvious is how fundamentally important good telecoms is to the economy of a country. This can only occur if countries create an environment that is friendly for investment. For this reason I am extremely confident the merger will go ahead and that contrary to the fear mongers, the UK will continue to be business friendly towards telecoms. The share price is low in my opinion because of fears for the UK economy and labour tax rises, but even Labour can see that telecoms is an essential sector that needs protection and that any tax rises will need to come from elsewhere.
Cashflow easily covers debt interest. Chance of a small dividend cut, sure, but given the size of the cashflow no chance of any liquidity issues. Growth may not be spectacular, but has anyone looked out of the window lately, the UK and Eu have both been hit hard so you would hardly expect to see the sort of growth figures seen 10 years ago. Yes they may have overspent in the past, but the share price has dropped far further than the fundamentals justify. Fully expect this to be back up above 90p within 2 years, and 100p with 3, by which point the economy will have improved and shares will be back in popularity
I said BRICS money, that means Chinese and Indian money. By setting the precedent that money can be seized from nations because you don't like the way they are behaving you break the notion of London as being a safe place to hold your assets. Let's say things escalate between India and the Maldives and the British government decided to use the law change to take Indian assets. If the law stays as is this can never happen but if the law changes suddenly you have overseas investors questioning how safe is London after all, maybe I should sell some of those gilts, buy silver and fly it back to India.
US and UK are talking about changing laws to allow for the seizing of Russian assets. The unintended consequence of this will be a flow of BRICS assets out of the reaches of both. IMO The spot price of precious metals will rocket as this money seeks to find new safe homes. Another consequence IMO will be a fall in both the dollar and the pound, so inflation will rebound as a consequence.
This won't end well. Those he wants to conscripted are currently in school or haven't even been born yet, though I suspect 20 years away is actually code for 20 months.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12981021/Nato-braced-war-Russia-20-years.html
@Smoothbrain. Talking in absolutes is going on on both sides. If Nato gets its way we'll end up sending British Troops in and it will be 1919 all over again: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/07/a-nasty-little-war-anna-reid-review-the-west-chaotic-campaign-to-undo-the-russian-revolution
@Smoothbrain. As long as western money keeps flowing into Ukraine and Russia maintains political stability there will be no peace treaty. These peace treaty talks are just shows of with us or against us diplomacy. This is now a war of attrition between the West and Russia, and sadly the death count will continue to rise on both sides indefinitely. The west is hoping that Putin gets overthrow due to hardships endured because of the war, Putin is hoping the west stops funding the war, either because of political opposition or because it's strategists see that all of this is just assisting Chinese dominance, by draining the west while enriching China with russian resources at 30 percent discount prices.
Companies or people who decide to take legal action should ensure they are either covered by insurance or have the appropriately sized pile of cash they are prepared to loose. Sadly emotion takes over and cases get brought that end up ruining the plaintiff
If it doesn't then it will be up to the next government to approve what happens to 3 and Vodafone in terms of asset sales to whom. Heaven forbid if 3 were to be sold to a big Labour donor.
Jax05. The vast majority of British customers just want cheap rates and fast data and never ring customer services, which is pretty much what your averaging African user wants. Vodafone coverage is one of the best. There problem is economies of scale mean they desperately need this merger to happen. If not they will slowly wind down their UK business and ultimately sell there assets to the duopoly. Maybe this is what the Westminster lobbyist want and maybe this will happen, but it sure ain't a good advertisement for UK plc. 50 years of failure and counting, it's just now people are waking up to the fact that Britain is going bankrupt
Vodafone is by no means the only company struggling in the FTSE at the moment. Looking at the relative growth in the S&P, DOW and DAX against FTSE100, 250, 350, All share, it is obvious money is flowing out of London markets and into S&P, DOW and DAX, amongst others. The government have to wake up to the fact that either they slash corporation tax and employment costs (I've tear up the rule book) or there won't be any profitable companies left from which to tax and the Argentinian downward spiral isn't that far away. Sadly the current conservative government know they are out next year and won't do anything to even try and fix things before then, meaning labour will get in and make the situation worse. I give the country less than 10 years before it's begging for imf bailout, and half the international companies on the FTSE have listed elsewhere. Vodafone should definitely be looking to do so, especially if the government block the merger.
Question is, does the UK want three large operators, or a duopoly. Imo If the merger is blocked both 3and Vodafone will continue to divest from the market, it not being worth their while to invest at current economies of scale because as they have stated, the cost of capital is higher than the rate of return. I'm sure a duopoly would make BT shareholders happy as it would allow them to charge more once the car competition was thinned out. In addition, blocking the merger would be another nail in the coffin of the overseas investor who look at the witch hunt sermons being made by MPs and think, nah, think I'll give the UK a miss and put my money in a country which welcomes overseas investors and doesn't tar and feather them when the opportunity arise. As stated, Hutchinson HK will have ,49% of the shares post merger, and as such will get 49% of the dividends, but when it comes to day to day operations, their location will be based on operational factors, not share ownership.
Rich investors don't pay fair value. They buy bonds at discount and then take over the company via debt restructuring. Long term assets are always discounted when there are short term liabilities to pay
I wouldn't be surprised that the government's championing of consumers over large companies doesn't result in the whole UK Telco industry ending up in the hands of a few very rich men like has happened in India and Mexico. After all, it's very rich benefactors that parties need not solvent middle class shareholders.