DoubleLine has come out with their latest quarterly commentary and given that they are the largest bond house in the world is worth a read. In the quarterly letter a lot spoken is things that we already know i.e. USD strength, China etc..but it’s just interesting to note their viewpoints on high yield debt, other currencies and emerging market bods, have a look at it over here. (Source: DoubleLine)
Californiaaa WOW – This wonderfully silly company perfectly exemplified short term funding to cover long term costs andddddd had an owner that siphoned away a decent amount of cash. A post about this company back in the day led to my first 100+ viewed posts on this blog (my how time flies). So now the Anti-Money Laundering Office has frozen seized 88 million baht in land owned by CAWOW b/c “The examination of the company’s financial transactions found they transferred 1.69 billion baht, or 99% of all transactional activities, to individuals both in Thailand and abroad from 2000-2011 while reporting operating losses.” Pol Col Seehanat said. (Source: Bangkok Post)
BIGC will be in the news a lot over the coming three months with news that Groupe Casino is going to sell both their holdings in Thailand and Vietnam. Who are the players here? Well the usual locally: Central family, CP Family, Charoen’s Family, internationally it looks like Lotte (korea) and AEON (japan) are in the running for it. Who is going to win? Well Central already have shares in BIGC but they aren’t known to pay stupid valuations for assets, CP – if they can get the financing then they’ll go crazy, Charoen – a hit/miss here, depends upon his mood, he’s done OK so far with F&N and isn’t too heavily leveraged anymore either, Lotte – I doubt they can compete here…AEON – ahhhhhhhh the wild card it all depends how much they want it…also its interesting to note that the market cap of Groupe Casino (look at the CAC) is lower than that of BIGC, why not just buy that instead? Anyways don’t be surprised to see valuations pushing high 200’s b/c bankers will try to justify that valuation with the hope that several assets can be sold to a REIT for THB 50-100 bn (nuts isn’t it?)
Corporate income taxes @ 20% are here to stay! It’s confirmed and if you ever doubted that, go ahead and bang your head against the wall (Source: Bangkok Post)
Stock manipulation – two stories here, first the continuing saga with CPALL as KSAM has sold off their entire position (they were the #14 largest shareholder) in CPALL b/c of corporate governance (Source: Bangkok Post) and the SEC has gone after the “SLC 11” for manipulating shares…now we all know about Shine Bunnag, he’s openly admitted in interviews on how he “controls” share prices and what’s the worst that’s going to happen to him? CPALL’s exec’s were only fined THB 33mn together…. (Source: Bangkok Post)
