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FT Alphaville
- It was a US Treasury triumph at the FT Alphaville Pub Quiz in Washington DC February 7, 2025Could you have done better?
- FTAV’s Friday chart quiz: wristwatch special February 7, 2025Chart-time lover
- Remembering the ‘left tail’ February 7, 2025How to say you’re worried without making everyone mad
- Weinstein’s awfully small UK adventure February 7, 2025Smol Boaz energy
- You’re invited to FT Alphaville’s Art of the Chart show on 27 February February 7, 2025Join us in London’s oldest parish church for marimekkos and merriment
- It was a US Treasury triumph at the FT Alphaville Pub Quiz in Washington DC February 7, 2025
Monthly Archives: August 2014
An outlaw story
We all like a good outlaw story, whether a western bandit, a gangster or a spy. Fortunately, in finance, we also have outlaws. One guise of them is insider traders. Unfortunately, most of them are neither very likeable, neither very … Continue reading
What’s in a name ?
You probably all know EasyJet, the British low-cost airline. What you probably don’t know, is that it doesn’t own its brand name. Its founder, the young Greek-Cypriot businessman Stelios Haji-Ioannou (in the meantime Sir Stelios), has kept the name for … Continue reading
Posted in Corporate governance, Intangibles
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What do you do with $ 30 bn cash ?
On October 10th, it was revealed that Google is developing a self-driving car and that it had already tested it over 140,000 miles of public roads. I also learned, reading that article, that Google is sponsoring a prize for landing … Continue reading
And another great graph on the pre-history of the financial crisis
As always, we are so much wiser after the event. The Economist(Oct 2nd, 2010 edition) has again published a great graph on the impressive deviation from historical norms that preceded the financial crisis. This time it’s about the Spanish banks … Continue reading
Posted in Financial crisis
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The limits of covenants
On October 5th 2010, the Flemish business paper De Tijd published a short article entitled “Banken blijven noodlijdend technologiebedrijf Option steunen” (Banks are obliged to go on supporting the technology company Option). Option is a Belgian company manufacturing mobile modems. … Continue reading
Posted in Choice Debt Equity, Debt structure
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Conflict between shareholders and lenders: the perfect example
For years, I have been explaining to my students that there is a potential conflict of interest between the owners of a company and the people that lend money to it. Indeed, shareholders have the chance to get an upside on … Continue reading
Posted in Choice Debt Equity, Equity
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Oops ! Michelin decides to launch a rights issue
On Tuesday Sept 28 2010, Michelin announced a surprise capital increase of € 1.2 bn … and the stock price immediately dropped by 10%, wiping out about the same amount from the pre-money market capitalization! What’s going on here? At … Continue reading