Archive for July 23rd, 2009

HONG KONG – Another Hong Kong IPO mania is in the making.Beijing’s largest cement supplier BBMG Corp on Thursday raised 768 million in an initial public offering in Hong Kong. BBMG’s new shares were 770 times oversubscribed by retail investors. But BBMG is the tip of the iceberg: at least 19 companies, including China’s largest… »

T. Rowe Price, the celebrated Baltimore mutual fund company known as a pioneer in growth investing and also as a low cost shop with a good reputation for shareholder stewardship reports earnings Friday and business looks good. T. Rowe took in 2.3 billion in new assets in April and May. Analysts are forecasting nearly 5… »

So far this season with write-downs mostly behind them, banks with large investment banking operations have been falling into two categories: banks like Goldman Sachs saw revenues rising across the board, whileothers such as JP Morgan have seen their successes fall mainly in the fixed income category. Despite a still sluggish equities market, Credit Suisse… »

News that a group of bondholders had saved CIT Group with a 3 billion loan sent the lender’s shares soaring this week. No longer worried that the federal government’s refusal to bail out CIT spelled bankruptcy, investors pushed its shares up 84% from July 17, until they fell 15% on Thursday. Credit markets, however, told… »

Schlumberger’s managers will have to prove their tenacity on Friday to be able to navigate through tighter margins, fewer operations, and a dim outlook for oil prices.Since the beginning of the year Schlumberger ‘s stock has grown 36.1%. Even so, Wall Street analysts expect the firm’s second quarter earnings to be about half of the… »

British publisher Pearson has so far left competitors eating dust. Pearson’s Financial Times circulation sales have grown steadily and the publisher has gained steady market share in its education business in the U.S. But the picture of a solid business might be very different for the second half of the year, some analysts warned on… »

Existing home sales in June gave Wall Street hope the troubled market is on the mend. The real test will come Monday when the government reports new-home-sales figures, which don’t benefit from mortgage foreclosures.Abiel Reinhart, an economist at JPMorgan Chase, believes new home sales in June grew moderately to 350,000, in line with expectations. The… »

The housing market is back, or haven’t you heard? On Thursday, the National Association of Realtors said existing home sales climbed for the third month in a row. The increase spanned the nation and came with a smaller percentage of foreclosures on the market. There are many ways to read housing data-volume, prices, number of… »

China’s largest state-owned construction company has just trousered 50 billion yuan from investors. That is 1 billion more than it was expecting. China State Construction Engineering Corp raised that sum by way of an initial public offering of 40% of its A-shares on the Shanghai exchange. The offering was priced at the top of the… »

Swine flu is still the epidemic of the moment and GlaxoSmithKline is cashing in on the temporary yet rapidly growing market for treatments. Its Swiss rival, Roche Holding, maker of Tamiflu has a head start, but its earnings aren’t dependent on this latest viral fad. Roche increased its guidance and now expects double-digit core earnings… »