Archive for April 29th, 2010

Greece is still the word, but listen to the words of two experts from Investec Asset Management for the definitive analysis of the defining fallout story of the financial excesses of the last decade. Parts 2&3 will be available on friday… »

After a tentative start, the JSE rallied like a champion and closed on its highs. Why? Graeme Korner from Alpha Equity tells us, with numbers from I-Net… »

MTN Group recorded 123,580,000 subscribers at 31 March 2010. This is a 7%
increase for the quarter from 116,025,000 subscribers recorded at 31 December
2009.
The attached analysis is presented on a regional basis. The three regions’
subscribers continue to grow at marginally different rates although, when
compared to December 2009, the relative subscriber contribution between the
regions remains unchanged. South… »

Why does Greece’s debt crisis matter to the rest of us? The answer, in a word: contagion.

If Greece defaults or crashes out of the euro it will send an almighty shockwave through the global capital markets. First of all, French and German banks, which are estimated to hold up to 70 per cent of Greece’s… »

SA Mar PPI +3.7% y/y (exp 3.9%) (4)
Johannesburg, Apr 29 (I-Net Bridge) - South Africa’s producer price index (PPI) registered growth of +3.7% year-on-year (y/y) in March from +3.5% y/y in February, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) data on Thursday showed.
The PPI increased 0.2% on a monthly basis after February’s monthly increase… »

What is the point of the credit rating agencies? Greece is only the latest example of how badly they trail events. Only now has Standard & Poor’s recognised the near certainty of some form of default by assigning junk status to Greek government debt. In every significant financial crisis I can recall, they’ve been left… »

Aquarius Plat MarQ net profit triples to US$23.3m
Johannesburg, Apr 29 (I-Net Bridge) - Aquarius Platinum (AQP), the world’s fourth-largest platinum producer, on Thursday recorded a significant financial improvement by posting a net profit of US$23.3 million for the quarter to end March 2010 compared to a net profit of $6.5 million for the same quarter… »

Some warning bells are still ringing, even if only faintly. Greece, one of the smaller countries in the European Union, has asked for a à 45bn aid package from its European partners and the IMF. In the US, Goldman Sachs, Wall Street’s leading investment bank, is being charged with… »

IF A sense of panic has started to grip Europe over the potential for Greece to default on its debts, and the contagion to spread rapidly to the continent’s other struggling economies, it has not yet struck Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council. He insisted on Wednesday April 28th that there was… »

Investors are abandoning the euro at a rate not seen since the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. as Europe’s worsening fiscal crisis threatens to splinter the 16-nation currency union.

Pension funds and banks sold euros this month at the fastest pace since the second half of 2008, when the currency tumbled more than 25 percent… »