Phew! What a lucky escape for the world’s stock exchanges and the companies that use them. The planned merger of the French, German and New York exchanges caused panic among their rivals that made them consider some very silly deals.
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For proof that there is another technology boom look at Vodafone (LON:VOD). The mobile operator is back as Britain’s biggest quoted business. When it was top of the stockmarket in 2000 it was so large that the FTSE 100 (INDEXFTSE:UKX) considered capping its weighting.
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Smaller businesses for decades turned to 3i Group plc (LON:III) for finance: now 3i knows what it is like to be a smaller business. It has shrunk so much it has been kicked out of the FTSE 100, relegated to joining the other minnows as a FTSE 350 company.
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What’s the first thing to do in a financial crisis? Blame speculators. France is the latest country to think the problem is the people who sell rather than the reason they are selling.
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Cash-rich companies are giving away money because they can’t think of anything better to do with it. Dividends are back to levels last seen before the financial crisis.
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Don’t assume the London Stock Exchange (LON:LSE) will be taken over just because its bid for the Canadian stock markets has collapsed. History shows mergers in this sector are more likely to fail than succeed.
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Corporate history is laden with companies that launched takeovers but ended up being taken over. Could the London Stock Exchange have fallen into that trap? And does it matter?
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If the merger of the London and Toronto stock exchanges does collapse it will be more Canada’s loss than Britain’s. It will allow the London Stock Exchange to forge a link with a major exchange – New-York/Paris, Nasdaq or Frankfurt – while Canada looks ever inward.
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There is only one opportunity in a generation to change public pensions – so Lord Hutton must not be allowed to get away with doing half the job. The half he’s recommending – higher contributions and later retirement - is good, but replacing final-salary with average-pay calculations is a fudge.
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Why are investors expected to run the companies they invest in? A new stewardship code for shareholders is being prepared by the people who already thrust a corporate governance code onto companies. Do we really need it?
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