IPOs Heating Up Markets

by Martin Denholm, Senior Editor

What would you do with $3.5 billion?

While you decide between a luxury beach house on your own private island in the South Pacific, or a Swiss-style log cabin in the Alps, Corporate America is mulling over an option that isn’t nearly as sexy, but is hugely important.

Pumping some of it into the IPO market.

Today kicks off a busy week, in which eight deals are on the table, worth a combined $3.5 billion. Among them is Chinese media firm, Shanda Interactive (Nasdaq: SNDA), which has raised $725 million to spin off its Shanda games division.

Eight deals in a week – the most since December 2007 – evokes memories of the heady days of the mid 2000s when companies were falling over themselves to hit the stock market. Already, the pace of new offerings

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I will be in Slovenia next week as I am taking a group of South African business people on a fact-finding mission to this uber-beautiful country. I am leading the delegation in my capacity as Honorary Consul of Slovenia for South Africa. (Click here for the Consulate’s website, including photographs of some of the most beautiful spots in the world.)

If you happen to be in Ljubljana on Monday, September 7, let’s get together at a special day the Slovenian Chamber of Commerce and JAPTI have organized to facilitate interaction between our delegation and Slovenian business people. Numbers are filling up quickly, so please let me know as soon as possible if you are interested in joining us. You can reach me via the “Contact” button in the top-right hand corner of the Investment Postcards site.

Blog posting will be slow (and totally absent

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A number of readers have asked me where I was travelling at the moment. The first week of my European rendezvous was spent in fairly-tale Slovenia (click here for a short description), from where I travelled to Veysonnaz, a small, idyllic mountain village, in the canton of Valais - the sunniest region of Switzerland.

Veysonnaz, with only 470 inhabitants, is 1 hour 45 minutes from Geneva and 15 minutes from Sion, the capital of the canton Valais and the oldest town in Switzerland. Located at the crossroads of several valleys, the village is blessed with exceptional panoramic views of the Swiss Alps and Rhône Valley. Veysonnaz, situated at an altitude of 1 400 m, is one of the four links (together with Verbier, Nendaz and Thyon 2000) of the Four Valleys ski area, the largest in Switzerland with 400 km of slopes.

The key words relating to this

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I will find myself in Slovenia and Switzerland over the next two weeks, taking a break and soaking up some Northern Hemisphere sun with my wife Isabel and two kids, Monique (10 years) and Jean (8 years).

Blog posting will be slow (and totally absent on some days) while I am on the road and “Words” from the Wise” will take a break for the next two Sundays (June 28 and July 5). The normal blogging service will be resumed on my return to Cape Town on July 11.

However, I will be “tweeting” regularly throughout my trip. For those not familiar with the concept, a Twitter feed has been added to the sidebar of Investment Postcards where I post short comments (maximum 140 characters) on topical market issues,

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Author: toronAdded: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:50:13 -0800Duration: 238

Toron Managing partner arthur Heinmaa examines the growing concerns of deflation in the Canadian economy and what the risks might be for 2009. 

Dell unveiled their new ultraslim, the Adamo, a few days ago. The new laptop is a 13.4 inch “luxury” portable featuring no optical drive, a long life sealed-in battery, edge-to-edge glass screen, and a solid state hard drive comes at the very affordable starting price of $1999. Does this sound familiar? A MacBook Air, perhaps? To a lesser extent, the HP Voodoo Envy 133? 

One can’t fault Dell for wanting to keep up with Apple and HP. HP has maintained its stranglehold on worldwide notebook marketshare for over two years. In North America, Dell’s “home territory,” marketshare has fallen below 2006 levels while Apple and HP continue to capture the bulk of sector growth. 

Data courtesy of Gridstone Research. Apple bars represent “Total

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pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/-Gb4DZlL6YZX8HuZFSHh8L-dwjU/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/-Gb4DZlL6YZX8HuZFSHh8L-dwjU/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pLast week you noted that consumer and a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);" href="http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/03/consumer-pessimism-receding-investors.html"investor confidence were up significantly/a. But taking a closer look at the data reveals just how significant the confidence bounce was.br /br /In fact according to the archive of a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/indexes/rasmussen_consumer_index"Rasmussen Confidence Index data/a, it only took five days last week for a href="http://legacy.rasmussenreports.com/rasmussen_index.htm"the daily index/a to make up almost all of the ground it had slowly lost over the past five months. (Click to enlarge chart)br /br /a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jlRX6zR7UgM/ScG_xpHp-aI/AAAAAAAAAUU/MAYFqHcJ4Oo/s1600-h/5days.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 398px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jlRX6zR7UgM/ScG_xpHp-aI/AAAAAAAAAUU/MAYFqHcJ4Oo/s400/5days.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314739894846355874" border="0" //abr /You've seen how a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);" href="http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/03/retail-growth-is-indeed-leading-us-to.html"consumer spending drives recovery/a. Here's just one more data point leading us out of the winter doldrums into a much a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);" href="http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/02/evidence-points-to-recessions-end-by.html"cheerier spring and summer./adiv class="blogger-post-footer"div/div No Gloom here. Only Good ...

The markets continued to rally as the Dow Jones ended up 1.23% at 7486.58 while the S&P and NASDAQ closed up 2.09% and 1.99% respectively. The 10 year saw yields shrink as news that the Fed will increase its open market purchase pushed prices up. Yields closed around 2.55%. Gold and oil settled up at $49 and $929.50 as investors pushed funds into these commodities.

Big news from the tech sector today as International Business Machines [IBM: 91.95, -0.96 (-1.03%)] is in talks to purchase the ailing hardware maker Sun Microsystems [JAVA: 8.89, +3.92 (+78.87%)].  The two Companies have not outright stated anything, but sources close to both sides say an agreement is fast approaching. Could this be a strategic maneuver for IBM as competitors are beefing up their offerings in the data center space?   After all, CEO Palmisano did say he is now on

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      As the fallout in the financial markets continues to unwind, a number of companies have bolted down balance sheets and insured some cash flows by cutting their once attractive dividends.  In the past month we have seen the likes of General Electric [GE: 10.32, +0.32 (+3.20%)], JP Morgan Chase [JPM: 27.11, +1.97 (+7.84%)], Bank of America [BAC: 7.67, +1.40 (+22.33%)], Pfizer [PFE: 14.25, -0.01 (-0.07%)] and Alcoa [AA: 5.48, -0.11 (-1.97%)] all cut these coveted yields, proving that this trend has extended into and beyond the financial sector.  However, one sector that has maintained their healthy yields has been the utilities sector.  While equity prices in the sector have been beaten down with the overall market, there is still a basket of companies that have the means to continue redistributing lucrative cash flows to investors.  By no means are

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