Varghese World: July 2014

Thursday, 31 July 2014

Urban Poppy

A small fragile poppy growing in a pavement crack.

The Strange But True Tale Of Argentina's Debt Mess

It’s all here — everything from how the crisis could affect global poverty to why a New York hedge fund manager seized a three-mast sailing ship.

Marcos Brindicci / Reuters

On Wednesday, Argentina made international news by defaulting on its debt. The nation of 41 million people failed to make a $539 million payment to bondholders before a deadline, triggering a ratings downgrade, a slump in Argentine stocks, and not a little bit of panic and confusion.

Argentina has defaulted on its debt on more than a half-dozen occasions over its history. But this time it's different, because nobody knows exactly what to do or how to resolve the situation, and lots of people are concerned that this could harm not only Argentina but the whole world economy.

How did Argentina get to this place?

A century ago, Argentina was one of the wealthiest nations on the planet, and considered a serious rival to the U.S. for economic dominance of the new world. The country had a fast-growing economy, agricultural abundance, and lots of natural resources. That didn't work out too well, however. Lots of reasons for it, but the end result is that while Argentina's GDP per capita in 1990 approached that of the U.S., by 2000 it was less than a third as much.

In the 1990s, Argentina borrowed heavily, issuing tens of billions of dollars in international bonds. By 2001, amid a recession, it became clear that the country couldn't keep up with payments and, in December of that year, the government defaulted on north of $80 billion in debt. It was — and still is — history's largest default by a national government.

This had many political and economic implications, but the main one is that the country was largely cut off from international capital markets, meaning it couldn't borrow any more money — or, if it did, it had to pay very high interest rates.

Globe Turner, LLC/Globe Turner, LLC

Argentina's president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, was elected in 2007 and is currently serving her second and final term in office. Her husband, Nestor Kirchner, was her predecessor in the office, and he soon realized that it would be very helpful to all sorts of things if the country could have credit again. So in 2005, his government offered holders of the defaulted bonds a deal: If they'd agree to exchange their defaulted bonds for new ones worth significantly less — like as little as a 30% in some cases — Argentina would promise to pay this time. It might sound like a crappy deal, but something is better than nothing.

In 2010, President Fernández returned to the negotiating table and make a similar offer to bondholders who didn't accept the original offer. Nine years into not getting paid proved enough for a lot of them. By the time the bargaining was done, more than 92% of all the original bondholders had agreed to the exchange. And since then, Argentina has faithfully been making interest payments on the debt.

The other 8%, known as holdouts, have received nothing. And the Argentine legislature passed a "lock law" making it illegal for the country to make subsequent offers to other bondholders. Basically, the 8% who didn't take the offer were frozen out.

Jorge Silva / Reuters

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From the top

Please click on the image. . Jungfrau Railway In the 19th century, the Jungfrau in Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland was a magnet for many railway pioneers. But it was Adolf Guyer-Zeller’s dream, claimed by many to be impossible, which was fulfilled after 16 years on 1 August (Swiss National Day) 1912, when his Jungfrau Railway opened up the spectacular Jungfraujoch–Top of Europe to the general public. The 21/2 hour trip to the Jungfraujoch–Top of Europe starts in Interlaken and winds its way to the Jungfraujoch – the highest-altitude railway station in Europe. From Kleine Scheidegg, high above Grindelwald and Wengen, the route climbs to the Eiger Glacier station and on through a 4.5 miles tunnel hewn through the rock of the Eiger and Mönch. Two observation windows offer breathtaking views of the Alpine landscape. From the Eiger North Wall Station at 9,400ft, passengers can look down to the Grindelwald Valley, Kleine Scheidegg and beyond to Interlaken and Lake Thun. From the Eismeer (Sea of Ice) Station at 10,368ft, the landscape is one of eternal snow, ice and rock.

Storms River part 22

Yawning

Elvevågen Gamvik Norway. Handheld. I am lying on the ground.

Ooh it's Summer

Rhapsody In Blue

Alibaba Is Investing Big Sums in U.S. Technology Companies

By via NYT Business Day http://ift.tt/1ofwTks

The last ear

The IPO Of Bill Ackman

The hedge fund titan’s Pershing Square Capital is set to conduct an IPO later this year, but industry insiders are worried Ackman is sabotaging its potential success with his increasingly bizarre public behavior.

Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters / Reuters

A little more than a week ago, in Manhattan's AXA Equitable Center, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman delivered a bizarre three-and-a-half-hour presentation building upon the case for his Herbalife short, a $1 billion position he's spent the better part of two years and $50 million defending.

The presentation fell flat not just with the media and institutional investors in attendance — Herbalife shares gained 20%, or more than $13, over the course of the day — but also with the handful of potential early investors in the IPO of Ackman's Pershing Square Capital expected later this year. They had come to see the road show before the road show, so to speak, and left, in some cases less than halfway through the presentation, with more uncertainty about Ackman than when they'd entered the auditorium that hot Tuesday morning.

Ackman now admits that the presentation was "bad" and a "PR failure." Had it been an isolated event, it wouldn't have been so bad. But as just the latest in a series of strange public appearances, among them a televised fight on CNBC with rival Carl Icahn, two instances of shedding tears, and a barely legal move to team up with the Canadian pharmaceutical conglomerate Valeant Pharmaceuticals to acquire Botox-maker Allergan, sources said that Ackman has dug himself a deep hole out of which to climb if he is to convince investors that he is fit to lead a public hedge fund.

"I'm just not aware of any situations where someone has tried to go public and had such bizarre behavior, so that's going to hurt the IPO," said Dan Weaver, professor of finance and an IPO expert at Rutgers University.

A representative for Ackman and Pershing Square declined comment for this story.

CNBC

Ackman, it could be argued, made his personal IPO to the world in 1995 when he and a Harvard classmate launched a very public bid to buy Rockefeller Center via their Gotham Capital investment firm. Though they lost the bid, Gotham went on to amass more than $500 million in assets in its first six years by making prescient investment bets, and later shorting bond issuer MBIA, among others.

After closing Gotham and striking out on his own with the founding of Pershing Square in 2004, Ackman took on such high-profile targets as Wendy's and, no pun intended, Target. Later came activist stakes in Canadian Pacific Railroad, J.C. Penney, Borders, and Allergan, among others, some of which he publicly won big, such as the $800 million he made off of Canadian Pacific, and some of which he lost even more publicly, as with J.C. Penney, which lost thousands of jobs and his fund of $500 million under his watch.

Ackman is perhaps known best, if not admiringly, for his attacks on nutritional supplement company Herbalife, calling it a massive pyramid scheme and crying fraud over its practices of targeting mostly poor minorities with its health and weight-loss regime for the last 18 months.

In addition to Icahn, Ackman's Herbalife zeal has also pitted him against well-liked and well-respected investment banker Ken Moelis. Moelis served as an early adviser to Herbalife after Ackman took his stake, and went so far as contacting Ackman's clients and telling them to pull their money out of the hedge fund. Incensed, Ackman publicly attacked Moelis around the time of the pricing period for the IPO of his eponymous Moelis & Co., boutique investment bank and has spent the last few months going after him in the press, going so far as to call his firm "not a real investment bank" during last week's presentation.

Ackman's attack on Moelis is not exactly a smart move ahead of his own fund's impending IPO, said one hedge fund manager who requested anonymity.

"If he's worried about his own IPO, attacking the biggest private investment IPO when it happened was not exactly sensible," this manager said. "Moelis has more access to rich people and people who buy IPOs and who price these things than anyone in the country, and it's just nuts to attack him."

A representative for Ken Moelis had no comment on Ackman.

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To Lift Sales of Smaller Cars, G.M. Turns to Discounts

By AARON M. KESSLER and BILL VLASIC via NYT Business Day http://ift.tt/1nXWDb9

Popular Prepaid Money Card Opens Path to Fraud Schemes

By MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN via NYT Business Day http://ift.tt/1quQ8K6

Target Chooses an Outsider as C.E.O.

By THE NEW YORK TIMES via NYT Business Day http://ift.tt/1oQ2azB

Adidas Issues Profit Warning Tied to Ukraine Crisis

By JACK EWING via NYT Business Day http://ift.tt/1s6D53o

Morning Agenda: Bank of America and U.S. Far Apart on Deal

By SYDNEY EMBER via NYT Business Day http://ift.tt/1m0GBay

Hibiscus

Miracle Sky Fall !

Miracle Sky Fall ! It was an amazing moment with natural miracle of the raining and sunlight before raining during I got back from Siem Reap province . Photo by: Mardy Suong Photography Date: 30th July, 2014. Place of photo: Kampong Cham Province, Kingdom of Cambodia. Website: www.500px.com/Mardy http://ift.tt/1oe8LSn I am Mardy SUONG, I am from the one of Cambodian Photographers. I wish to extend my heartfelt welcome to all international visitors and photographers to Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder. As one of the fastest growing tourism destinations in Southeast Asia, Cambodia’s rich heritage, cultural and natural resources offer a full range of cultural and eco-tourism sites that are both dynamic and sustainable. Highlights include Phnom Penh, the Angkor Wat and the Mekong River Dolphins, just to name a few. The Kingdom’s capital is a dynamic city where visitors are in the mood for shopping, dining, sightseeing and more. As Cambodia’s hub for commerce, politics and tourism, Phnom Penh is also home to many important institutions and monuments such as Wat Phnom, the Royal Palace and the National Museum. The magnificent Angkor Wat and Preah Vihear, Heritage of Humanity and World Wonder, is probably the most exotic tourist destination in the world and the renowned yet very rare Mekong River dolphins can also be found in Cambodia. During your staying here, do visit and relax on Cambodia’s pristine beaches, explore the coral reefs around many of our beautiful islands and trek through lush mangrove forests. The bay of Cambodia has been inducted to the Most Beautiful Bay of the World Club. Regards and thanks!

Royal Dutch Shell, ENI and BG Report Strong Earnings Growth in Second Quarter

By STANLEY REED via NYT Business Day http://ift.tt/1odHdcO

FTI Consulting Names New C.F.O.

By SYDNEY EMBER via NYT Business Day http://ift.tt/1s6q7DU

Dreamy

Air Show

Two Ospreys watching a flock of birds perform aerobatic maneuvers.

GetYourGuide, a Tourism Start-Up, Raises $25 Million in Financing Round

By MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED via NYT Business Day http://ift.tt/1qrpCRQ

Balfour Beatty Calls Off Merger Talks With Rival Carillion

By CHAD BRAY via NYT Business Day http://ift.tt/1odFGDM

Credit Suisse Facing Regulatory Inquiries Over Dark Pools

By CHAD BRAY via NYT Business Day http://ift.tt/1n6dulW

My desktop wallpaper

I love the lotus. For my PC, I tried to create a wallpaper of lotus. It is a wallpaper in the ratio of 16: 9. For the icon, I have kept only a little left edge.