Thursday 21 June 2012

Broken spokes in France, Australia and HK . . . and something for charity

What a day! I'm just back from a little town in France by the name of Machilly. Why was I there? Good question. A broken front spoke on my Easton EA90SLX's left my wheel completely out of true . . . . meaning that it was so off center that it kept hitting the bike fork prohibiting me from riding. My support crew is without a car at the moment, but thankfully Mrs IB Cyclist was able to use her French and call me a taxi. I'm very lucky to have her as my French wouldn't have been able to describe my location, let alone the fact I needed a car that could handle my bike.

Earlier in the day I had been bidding (via EBAY) on items donated by the Giro d'Italia to UNICEF. While bidding a good friend of mine called to chew the fat over a couple of things he'd seen during trading hours in Asia Pac.  After my blog yesterday where I mentioned the slowing of sales figures at Proctor & Gamble it was not surprising when he mentioned the disaster befalling former retail darling Billabong. Back in February Blackstone, KKR and TPG had been making overtures to buy the company out. The talk at the time was of a t/o price close to $6, but the board seemed to think it was worth multiples of that and therefore broke-off negotiations. Lately the number floated was $3.30, but whatever it was it was too much.


Well now comes the news that the company will issue new shares to existing shareholders at a 44 per cent discount to current prices. Talk about a joke. A board passes on 6, then passes on 3.3, then goes crawling to the shareholders offering stock at a buck! Goodnight and goodluck to those men and women.

Maybe north Asia felt neglected because of the goings on at Billabong, so HK came up with its own version of wealth destruction in the form of Evergrande (3333.HK). Check out this chart:


Notice the volumes? This is another one of those possible fraud situations we've been seeing over the last couple of years. An LA based stock blogger said: . . . Evergrande is . . . 

“essentially an insolvent company that has consistently presented fraudulent information to the investing public.”

Nice one. Obviously the company denied it, thus the afternoon rally, but shareholders and traders alike must have been looking forward to a cold San Miguel at the Captain's Bar at the Mandarin after the market closed. Recently he company made headlines by setting a land-price record in Guangzhou at a government auction, paying 80% more than a rival developer had paid for a parcel of land in the same area in 2011 according to Marketwatch. Talk about things that make you go Hmmmmm. There's a disconnect here and I for one will be watching what happens. 

Oh, I just remembered I didn't tell you what happened at the charity auction. Well I'm happy to report that I'm the proud owner of Maglia tecnica del leader della classifica a punti firmata dai corridori che l'hanno indossata durante il Giro d'Italia (G. Thomas, M. Cavendish, M. Goss and J. Rodriguez Oliver) or in English . . . Technical Giro d'Italia Red Jersey worn by point classification leaders (G. Thomas, M. Cavendish, M. Goss and J. Rodriguez Oliver).


Mrs IB Cyclist is a Cav fan, so having the world Champions signature on it made the internal transaction at chez IB Cyclist very smooth indeed. I'm looking forward to framing it and putting it on my workshop wall in Sydney. Obviously I won't be wearing it . . . I doubt it would fit over my head.

Ciao!
 



2 comments:

  1. FYI, a story on the slowdown in china is front page of saturday's new York times.

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    Replies
    1. Roger that. And dodgy economic numbers . . .

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