The following appeared in the November issue of Business Diary Botswana:

Despite the IMF’s recent projection that Botswana’s economy will contract 10.3% this year, the lender expects a 4.1% uptick next year such that emergency funding would not be required. Back in June the country tapped a $1.5bn “budget support loan” from the African Development Bank–the largest such facility ever granted by the Bank–in order to finance part of a budget deficit then estimated at around 13.5% of GDP, and since revised to 14%. The IMF cited a renewal of demand for diamonds as a central facet of its optimistic forecast. Furthermore, it predicted, GDP growth across sub-Saharan Africa will rise to approximately 4% next year and 5% in 2011, up from 1.1% in 2009. “We think it should be possible for sub-Saharan Africa to recover quicker this time around and have a ‘V-shaped recovery,’”

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AES Corporation (AES) is heading into its next report on rising estimates and good valuations.

Company Description

AES provides energy to 29 countries with energy through generation and distribution. The company has diversified portfolio of thermal and renewable fuel sources.

EPS Rises

On Aug 7 the company announced quarterly earnings per share of 28 cents, 3 cents higher than last year and 8 cents higher than the Zacks Consensus Estimate.

All types of cash flow increased dramatically, including a $181 million jump in Consolidated Cash Flow, to $495 million.

Raising Guidance

During the same release the company raised full-year EPS guidance to between $1.05 and $1.10. The bottom and top end of the range rose 8 cents and 3 cents, respectively.

Solid Growth

Analyst estimates are coming in near the middle of the AES's forecasts, which would yield earnings growth of 9% this year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate is now $1.23,

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Yahoo! (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz is bent on refocusing the business, improving its image and bringing in some cash. Management has taken a number of actions to position the company for achievement of these objectives. The first was the disposal of non-core assets and acquisition of small-business targets that could help it augment its new business focus. To this end, the company has disposed off its 39% stake in China ’s largest e-commerce company, Alibaba.com, for $150 million. It has also put up for sale the Yahoo Small Business assets. Rumor has it that the company expects $350-500 million for the business, which has been the main hurdle so far. Renewed talk indicates that the sale could be completed soon. The small business division provides domains, email, Web hosting and other merchant services to customers. The company has made a couple of acquisitions this year. ...

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Thursday August 27, 2009

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Leading video game developer BioWare(TM), a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS), has secured a star-studded voiceover cast for its upcoming blockbuster game, Dragon Age(TM): Origins. Featuring Tim Curry, star of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Broadway’s Spamalot, as well as Kate Mulgrew, well-known for her role as Capt. Kathryn Janeway in “Star Trek: Voyager”, Dragon Age: Origins also includes notable cast members Tim Russ (”Star Trek: Voyager,” “Samantha Who?”), Claudia Black (”Stargate SG-1,” “Pitch Black”) and Steve Valentine (”Estate of Panic,” “Crossing Jordan”). Dragon Age: Origins marks BioWare’s return to fantasy, created from the ground up to take players

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Regular readers need to accept my sincerest apologies…updates for the next week will be rather itinerant due to a taxing MBA orientation schedule.

In the meantime, I’d like to mention that Silk Invest CIO Daniel Broby, a friend of the blog whom I consider to be an (the?) authority on frontier market investing, will be presenting a paper entitled “The case for frontier market fixed income” that he co-authored along with Silk’s Director of Fixed Income, John Bates, at the “Challenges of Globalising Financial Systems” conference to be held at the Hashemite University in Jordan on October 21-22, 2009.

The paper, which Daniel allowed me a sneak preview of, and surrounding which Mr. Bates was kind enough to answer some of my questions, posits that frontier fixed income “should be included in strategic asset allocation using a technique known as reverse asset allocation,” in order to benchmark the

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This post is a guest contribution by Rebecca Wilder*, author of the of the News N Economics blog.

Today I plan to rant just a bit about consumption because I was reading Yves Smith’s article today, and she referred to “debt-fueled consumption” - the now pejorative phrase that just rolls off the tongue. She says:

“no where does the article [referenced WSJ article in her post on the consumption share] acknowledge that the consumption level was unsustainable and debt fueled.”

And this is where I get just slightly irked, because it seems to me that the phrase “debt-fueled consumption” strikes the following chord: every American household was loading up on home equity debt just to buy big ticket items like Hummers and large sofa sets with cup-holders galore from Jordan’s Furniture (a discount furniture shop in the

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Jordan’s top energy resources regulatory agency – the Natural Resources Authority (NRA) – said that the government’s multi-billion dollar oil shale agreement with energy major Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDS.A) has come into force this week. Shell's subsidiary, the Jordan Oil Shale Company B.V., is currently in the process of setting up offices and ordering equipment, while preparing for the project’s first stage, comprising of three years of shale exploration activities. Last month, the Jordanian Parliament approved the project, under which the Anglo-Dutch company will explore and extract oil shale reserves from an area encompassing 22,000 square kilometers in the north, south and northeast regions of the kingdom. Shell is expected to spend around $340 million on exploration, assessment and designs of the project and pay some $150 million to the Jordanian government over the three stages of the exploration, which entails the firm's patented ...

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Tuesday August 18, 2009

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Lazard Ltd (NYSE:LAZ) announced today that Tom Tuft, one of the leading bankers in equity capital markets, will join Lazard as Chairman, Global Capital Markets Advisory, and a Vice Chairman, US Investment Banking in November. Mr. Tuft, based in New York, will join Lazard from Goldman Sachs & Co., where he most recently served as Chairman of its Equity Capital Markets group.

UDR, Inc. (NYSE: UDR), a leading multifamily real estate investment trust (REIT), today announced that it has extended the early tender deadline in respect of its previously announced cash tender offer and consent solicitation (the “Offer”) for its

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National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD), the country’s second-biggest bank by assets ($45 billion), will open branches in Jordan and Hong Kong before the year’s end, given the fact that there exists a strong contingent of citizens from said countries in the UAE. The Bank will also expand into Libya (one branch next year), Oman (three branches by 2010) and Egypt (twenty-two branches by 2013), according to Qamber al-Mulla, senior general manager, International Banking Division, who noted that further growth may lead the firm into the banking sectors of Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon and Turkey. The Bank beat analysts’ estimates earlier this week when it reported a 9.5% drop in second-quarter profit. Moreover, it told Bloomberg that it expects its loan book to grow to 15% in 2009 after a rise of 11.1% between June and December. That said, non-performing loans (NPL) across Gulf banks

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Earlier today, Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDS.A), one of the world’s largest integrated oil and gas companies, gained approval from the Jordanian Parliament to explore oil from the country's vast shale deposits. Jordan’s top energy resources regulatory agency -- the Natural Resources Authority (NRA) -- said that lawmakers endorsed the multi-billion dollar production sharing agreement that could churn oil by thousands of barrels. In May this year, the Jordan government approved the project, under which the Anglo-Dutch company will explore and extract oil shale reserves from an area encompassing 22,000 square kilometers in the central, southern and north-western regions of the kingdom. Shell is expected to spend around $340 million on exploration, assessment and designs of the project and pay some $150 million to the Jordanian government over the three stages of the exploration, which entails the firm's patented ‘in situ conversion process,’ under which the ...