The problems of Deutsche Bank (DB), which fired its own Herr Mueller last week, are not yet at an end. Yesterday an erroneous transfer from the German bank to an outside account went out, to pay the equivalent $35 billion. The recipient was honest and told the bank about the money received so it could swiftly unwind the transaction.
I grouse a lot about the difficulty of making SWIFT transfers from the USA, but probably all that bankerly caution and delay is better than making a $35 bn buck mistake.
Consulting with our bond expert failed to explain a very long and complicated exchange offer from an Israeli company on the bond marketfiled with our SEC. It looks to both of us as if the “note exchange” amounts to exchanging one note for another with identical coupons and duration, so I suspect it involves terms, provisions, and conditions for the loan.
Since the Israeli market is closed until Sunday there is nothing I can now write about. I will get the prospectus when it is issued. The mystery filer for a bond conversion is Teva. The mystery should be solved Monday. This is another reason for caution over TEVA.
More follows from a Friday behaving like a Thursday, with 6 big news breaks, including 3 corporate results plus lots of lesser news. The big news companies are from Sweden, The Dutch Antilles, Panama, China, Ireland, and Argentina, with news also from Hong Kong, Britain, Japan, Israel, Switzerland, China, Belgium, and Brazil.
*Investor, the Swedish holding company we use as a pseudo-Sweden fund, today reports a drop in Q1 profits y/y because its capital gains did not rise by SEK 26 bn kronor (~$3 bn) this year as they did last. So net profit for the quarter was a mere SEK 4.4 bn compared to SEK 30.4 bn. And net asset value went up sequentially all of SEK 8 mn to SEK 440 mn in the Dec. quarter. IVSBF is the Wallenberg family holding for its SEK Bank and other giants including Ericsson, ABB, Mölnlycke, and Atlas Copco. It also owns a chunk of the Nasdaq stock exchange.
It also operates through specialized subfunds like Patricia Industries and EQT.
Its adjusted NAV was flat but NAV growth was boosted by the subfunds. In the quarter it upped its holdings in listed-core investment ERIC-Q to 7.2% of the shares out by investing SEK 12 bn. Patricia acquired 86% Samova, a US healthcare products distributor, for $513 mn.
IVSBF CEO Johan Forssel heralded “the benign climate” and forecast continued upbeat macro growth which “remained healthy in many industry segments and geographies”.
*Schlumberger (SLB) thanks to North American oil patch growth beat consensus in its Q1 results by $20 mn in sales and a penny/sh in earnings. We will take what we can get as today Pres. Trump said he will not accept high oil prices and the price per barrel actually dropped. Somebody believes in Trump’s tweets! Apart from North America sales grew in he Middle East, European North Sea, Asia, and Russia but fell in Latin America and Africa. Note that Russia already was chopping its output to boost prices during the quarter and that its now being subject to sanctions will further boost demand for new supplies elsewhere in the world.
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