Westfield shops for premium with $28 bln carve-up
By Una Galani
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.
Westfield is shopping for a premium with its A$30.3 billion ($28 billion) carve-up. Just three years after its last big reshuffle, the shopping mall giant is separating assets in Australia and New Zealand from outlets in the United States and Europe. The cleaner structure may allow Westfield to command a higher valuation.
Amazon’s drone promise is yet more jam tomorrow
By Robert Cyran
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Amazon is promising yet more jam tomorrow – this time from drone deliveries. Jeff Bezos, the online retailer’s chief executive, expects to be able to use unmanned aircraft to deliver small packages within a few years. It’s a striking vision, but it seems as overly optimistic as investors’ expectations of the company overall. Amazon’s market value has ballooned to $180 billion despite big profits always hovering in the future.
Giant Interactive’s $2.9 bln buyout hard to resist
By Una Galani
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.
Giant Interactive’s $2.9 billion buyout is hard to resist. Chairman Shi Yuzhu is leading a consortium with Baring Private Equity Asia to take the U.S-listed Chinese computer gaming group private. At almost 13 times this year’s earnings, the group’s offer to buy the 53 percent that it doesn’t already own is a chunky premium to peers. Besides, independent investors have few alternatives.
Royal Mail risks are as real as ever
By Robert Cole
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Royal Mail has cleared its first hurdle as a public company. But deep-seated challenges remain, and the UK postal firm’s current market value looks too rich.
How Cinda squares China’s debt triangles
By John Foley
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
China Cinda has spotted a clever arbitrage. The Chinese “bad bank”, which is revving up for a Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO), has recently been doing brisk business by borrowing cheaply from other banks and using those funds to buy up companies’ short-term loans to each other. In doing so, it has found a way to square China’s dreaded “debt triangles”.
Asia’s fear of Fed is now infecting more economies
By Andy Mukherjee
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
After a rough summer, Asian markets are calm once again. But beneath the surface, the fear of what the Federal Reserve may do next is beginning to spread beyond India and Indonesia.
Equity optimists may fast create a crowded trade
By Swaha Pattanaik
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.
Many large institutional asset managers expect developed stocks to march higher next year. They predict that companies will ramp up capital expenditure and fiscal policy will become less restrictive. That may well happen. The risk is that too much money is chasing the same idea. Crowded trades are rarely safe bets.
Aussie dairy battle needs cheap debt to stack up
By Ethan Bilby
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Australia’s dairy battle needs cheap debt to stack up. Three bids in as many days for Australia’s Warrnambool have lifted the price tag above A$500 million ($469 million). Local cost savings and projections of China’s thirst for foreign milk help justify the frenzy. But the investment case rests on low borrowing costs.
The ‘Abe put’ will keep Japanese equities buoyed
By Peter Thal Larsen
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Say sayonara to the “Bernanke put” and hello to Shinzo Abe’s alternative. While the Federal Reserve chairman developed a reputation for supporting the price of bonds, the Japanese prime minister’s reforms are designed to push up stock prices.
Snapchat bid triples Facebook’s desperation
By Robert Cyran
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
Facebook’s Snapchat bid shows triple the desperation. The social network shelled out $1 billion for no-revenue Instagram a little over a year ago. Now it’s said to be dangling as much as $3 billion to lure in a mobile app that sends self-destructing digital images. Facebook’s apparently escalating need to buy off marauders at its moat suggests its defenses may be scalable.