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Normal Board - The Whole shebang
Prompt Board Next day settlement
Expert Board All you need re an Individual stock.
The Latest Daily PodCast can be found here on the Front Page of the site
http://www.rich.co.ke
I attended and spoke at the Moodys Conference in Nairobi yesterday |
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Bank of England Signals August Stimulus as Rate Kept at 0.5% @business Africa |
The Bank of England left its key interest rate at a record low and
signaled it’s readying stimulus for August as the economy reels from
Britain’s decision to quit the European Union.
The nine-member Monetary Policy Committee, led by Governor Mark
Carney, voted 8-1 to keep the benchmark at 0.5 percent, with only
Gertjan Vlieghe saying the outlook justified an immediate reduction.
The decision surprised investors, who had priced in more than an 80
percent chance the rate would be lowered. While policy makers
discussed what measures could help the economy, they stopped short of
detailing what those might be. The pound surged after the
announcement.
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Laureate of Terror Don DeLillo's prophetic soul. by Martin Amis 21 November 2011 New Yorker Africa |
The specialist is monitoring data on his mission console when a voice
breaks in, “a voice that carried with it a strange and unspecifiable
poignancy.” He checks in with his flight-dynamics and
conceptual-paradigm officers at Colorado Command (and we ask
ourselves—has there ever been a more distinctive exponent of dialogue
than Don DeLillo?):
“We have a deviate, Tomahawk.”
“We copy. There’s a voice.”
“We have gross oscillation here.”
“There’s some interference. I have gone redundant but I’m not sure
it’s helping.”
“We are clearing an outframe to locate source.”
“Thank you, Colorado.”
“It is probably just selective noise. You are negative red on the
step-function quad.”
“It was a voice,” I told them.
“We have just received an affirm on selective noise. . . . We will
correct, Tomahawk. In the meantime, advise you to stay redundant.”
The voice, in contrast to Colorado’s metallic pidgin, is a melange of
repartee, laughter, and song, with a “quality of purest, sweetest
sadness”: “Somehow we are picking up signals from radio programs of
forty, fifty, sixty years ago.”
"Temporal bandwidth," is the width of your present, your now. It is
the familiar "∆ t" considered as a dependent variable. The more you
dwell in the past and in the future, the thicker your bandwidth, the
more solid your persona. But the narrower your sense of Now, the more
tenuous you are.
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At least 80 killed after attacker drives lorry into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in southern city of Nice. Law & Politics |
At least 80 people were killed and another 100 injured in the southern
French city of Nice after an attacker drove a lorry into a crowd
celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday, authorities said.
The attacker behind the wheel on Thursday drove at high speed along
the famed Promenade des Anglais seafront, hitting the mass of
spectators who had been watching a fireworks display.
Police later shot and killed the driver, officials said.
France's Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 80 people were
killed, including children, and 18 were in critical condition.
Identity papers belonging to a 31-year-old French-Tunisian were found
inside the truck, a police source told the AFP news agency on Friday.
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29-MAR-2016 Countries Pay Heavy Price for Less Costly Terror Attack @TheStarKenya Law & Politics |
As I scanned the news and the names of the Attackers, I looped back to
one of my French O Level books, the inestimable Albert Camus'
L'Etranger and this quote;
“The Byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible
love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition
exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible
exaltation of a brief and destructive action.”
Surely Najim Laachraoui and Brahim el-Bakraoui are not Byronic Heroes
by any stretch of the imagination but in their minds, they are.
In the Financial Markets, there is a concept called ''Tail Risk'' -
Tail risk is the risk of an asset or portfolio of assets moving more
than 3 standard deviations from its current price. For example, in
early January, It took just 15 minutes on a Monday morning for South
Africa’s rand to plummet 9%. More than a year ago, the Swiss franc
surged almost 30 percent versus the euro after the central bank
abandoned its currency floor against the shared currency. The Examples
are numerous. If the markets are a mirror, then they are certainly
reflecting a New Normal around Volatility and Tail Risks.
Ben Bernanke was asked why people hold gold and he said: "As
protection against what we call tail risks: really, really bad
outcomes."
Therefore, my first Question is how big is the Tail Risk in our World
of more than 7b. Lets say 0.5% of 7b, thats 35m People! Drop that to
0.05% and you still have 3.5m People. So thats my First Point, the
absolute number of Folks who are prepared to cross the Edge is a big
absolute number.
''The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only
people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over''
Hunter S. Thompson
Terrorists are waging Asymmetric warfare. They cannot stand Toe-to-Toe
with a conventional Army because they would be annihilated. However,
what they are doing is exploiting an asymettric opening.
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1,700 French citizens have gone to fight in Iraq and Syria. 250 have returned. @IanBremmer Law & Politics |
“In societies reduced to blur and glut, terror is the only meaningful
act. There's too much everything, more things and messages and
meanings that we can use in ten thousand lifetimes. Inertia-hysteria.
Is history possible? Is anyone serious? Who do we take serious? Only
the lethal believer, the person who kills and dies for faith.
Everything else is absorbed. The artist is absorbed, the madman in the
street is absorbed an processed and incorporated. Give him a dollar,
put him in a TV commercial. Only the terrorists stand outside. The
culture hasn't figured out how to assimilate him. It's confusing when
they kill the innocent. But this is precisely the language of being
noticed, the only language the West understands. The way they
determine how we see them. The way they dominate the rush of endless
streaming images.” ― Don DeLillo, Mao II
"There's a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists...Years
ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner
life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that
territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used
to do before we were all incorporated."
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"The Syrian army has made a lot of advancement recently," Assad told NBC News. "It won't take more than a few months." @NBCNews Law & Politics |
A defiant Bashar al-Assad expressed confidence that Syria's bloody war
could be won within months, saying Russia's intervention has helped
tip the scales toward victory.
Assad spoke exclusively to NBC News on Wednesday at his office in
Damascus in a wide-ranging interview about the Syrian war, ISIS, the
U.S. and his legacy.
He was unruffled by the State Department branding his vow to retake
every inch of Syria as "delusional," saying it was only a matter of
time until he regained full control of his country.
"The Syrian army has made a lot of advancement recently," Assad told
NBC News. "It won't take more than a few months."
Assad's tone was strikingly different from a year earlier, when he was
short of troops and losing territory to rebels and ISIS. The
battlefield shifted, according to Assad, for one reason.
"The Russian support of the Syrian army has tipped the scales against
the terrorists," he said. "It was the crucial factor."
Six years later Assad is still in power and stronger than ever — but
not crowing about outplaying Obama.
"He's failed, but that doesn't mean I win because for him the war is
to remove me ... for me the war is to restore Syria," he told NBC
News. "If we can get rid of those terrorists, if we can restore the
stability in Syria, this is where we win. Otherwise, you cannot talk
about winning."
He accused successive U.S. administrations of stoking chaos around the
world, "becoming more and more pyromaniac."
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The Siege of Aleppo Could Spell Disaster for Rebels Fighting Syria's Bashar Assad @Time Law & Politics |
The opposition-held section of the Syrian city of Aleppo is now
effectively under siege, with potentially disastrous consequences for
the five-year-old rebellion against the regime of Syrian President
Bashar Assad.
Forces loyal to Assad captured a key area overlooking the last
remaining road into the eastern section of Aleppo on June 7, meaning
they can cut the only supply route into the city with sniper or
artillery fire. Rebel authorities have stockpiled food and other
supplies for months, but if the siege continues, opposition figures
say 300,000 people could be at risk of starvation.
“They’re playing hardball, because they think the more hardball they
play the more they’re going to get, and it’s happening,” says Emile
Hokayem, a Syria analyst at the International Institute for Strategic
Studies, referring to Russia. “The U.S. unintentionally is making
things worse.”
If the siege of Aleppo continues, it could devastate Syria’s
mainstream rebel groups, but it does not mean the Assad regime would
decisively win the war. Jihadist groups would continue to fight on.
Kurdish forces would maintain their hold on part of Syria. And
individual rebel fighters would also continue to fight, but in a more
diffuse, less organized way.
“Even if the siege manages to break rebel groups as we know them, it
will not put an end to insurgent activities against the regime. This
means the transformation of tactics among Syrian rebels from operating
in organized groups to operating as insurgents,” says Khatib.
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Vladimir Putin and John Kerry shake hands during a meeting at Moscow's Kremlin on July 14. Photographer: Alexei Druzhinin/TASS via Getty Images Law & Politics |
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry presented Russian President
Vladimir Putin a proposal aimed at curtailing violence in Syria ahead
of an Aug. 1 deadline, as the Obama administration seeks to salvage a
cease-fire in the 5 1/2-year civil war.
The overture would establish a Joint Implementation Group in which the
U.S. and Russia would coordinate on airstrikes against Syrian rebel
groups that the two countries agree are terrorists, according to a
text obtained by the Washington Post. Yet while Kerry and Putin met
Thursday at the Kremlin in Moscow, officials on both sides said an
agreement was by no means certain.
The plan would see the U.S. sharing military information for targeting
Islamic State and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, while Russia
would use its influence to persuade Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
to ground his air force and uphold the cease-fire.
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Boris Johnson Heads for Brussels as EU Criticizes Brexit Tactics Law & Politics |
After spending the past five months condemning the European project,
Boris Johnson is heading to Brussels next week to meet with many of
the people charged with steering it.
Britain’s new foreign secretary is participating in the European
Union’s foreign affairs council on Monday, less than a month after
winning the argument to leave the bloc in the June 23 referendum. He
may get an interesting reception.
“He lied a lot to the British people and now he finds himself with his
back against the wall,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said
on Europe1 radio in France on Thursday. “His appointment is revealing
about the political crisis in Britain after the vote.”
“Boris Johnson spent part of his life in Brussels; it’s time for him
to come back to Brussels, in order to check if everything he’s telling
the British people is in line with reality,” European Commission
President Jean-Claude Juncker said Thursday at the Group of Seven
summit in central Japan. “He would be welcome in Brussels at any
time.”
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Big Winners in the UNCLOS affair are the PRC's zero-sum competitors, Japan and the United States. Asia Times Law & Politics |
The door is open for America’s friends and allies to pursue more
aggressive policies in the South China Sea, and the United States gets
to play the “international outlaw” card on China or, as Quartz
usefully framed it, China has no respect for international law, its
neighbors, or marine life, tribunal rules.
As for the PRC, in my opinion it hopes to continue doing what it’s
been doing, skulking around the South China Sea with its fishing
fleets and coast guard vessels, alternately harassing and compromising
with its neighbors, trying to keep the conflict levels low enough to
avoid military clashes and prevent its presence from escalating into a
genuine security issue justifying the military intervention of the
United States.
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Kabila adviser says Congo leader will quit, but not this year Africa |
Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila will eventually
leave office, but must continue to govern Africa's biggest copper
producer until delayed elections can be held, one of his most senior
advisers said.
The government is working to establish a "political consensus" by
holding talks with all political parties to determine how the country
will be governed after the president's mandate ends, Karubi said by
phone on Tuesday. "We must discuss what kind of governmental
architecture we need in order to govern our country together leading
to those elections that will see a transfer of power."
Congo has never had a democratic transfer of power. Elections are
scheduled for November but are likely to be delayed. The national
electoral body says it may need as long as 16 months to complete a
voter-registration process due to begin this month.
Opposition leaders say Kabila, who has ruled Congo since 2001 but is
prevented by the constitution from running for a third five-year term,
has intentionally stalled preparations for the election in order to
hold on to power. A May ruling by the country's Constitutional Court
said the president can remain in office if the vote is delayed.
"There will be no transition," Kikaya said. "Kabila will continue to
govern the country until there is a newly elected president."
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South Africa Economy Jumps Egypt, Closes in on Nigeria: Chart @business Africa |
Nigeria is still Africa’s number one economy, even after a 30 percent
devaluation of the naira last month knocked almost $150 billion off
its gross domestic product when measured in dollar terms. South
Africa, which has regained second place after overtaking Egypt, is
closing the gap. While its economy also shrank as the rand weakened,
the gap with Nigeria has narrowed to $60 billion now from $170 billion
at the end of 2015.
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Mozambique Fishy finances The Economist Africa |
“WHO cares about the tuna fish?” asked a fund manager a year or so
ago, explaining his decision to buy bonds issued by a Mozambican
government-backed company that planned to use the money to buy a brand
new fleet of fishing boats. Instead this investor, and many others,
looked simply at the government guarantee that underpinned the deal:
even if not a single tuna were caught, the loans would still be
repaid, since the government would step in.
That assurance was as full of holes as an industrial-sized tuna net.
Although the government has indeed stepped in to honour the debt, its
own finances are horribly stretched, not least because it has borrowed
far more than it had previously admitted. Faced with a shoal of
troubles, it now appears to be on the brink of default.
For a start, its decades-long civil war, which raged from 1977 to
1992, has returned. Vehicles are being burned and people killed daily
in parts of central Mozambique where Renamo, a former rebel movement
that became an opposition party, has gone back to guerrilla warfare.
Highways, including those linking neighbouring countries such as
Malawi to the sea, are no longer safe to travel without a military
escort. Government forces are returning Renamo’s violence with
interest.
Drought compounds the misery: in the southern half of the country some
1.5m people are hungry after rains failed for the second year in a
row. And weak oil and gas prices have slowed the development of
reserves in the north that many had hoped would provide huge dollops
of cash to pay off the country’s debts. Instead, investors are running
scared. Government bonds are trading at about 70% of face value. This
week Moody’s, a ratings agency, downgraded the country, saying it was
very near to defaulting.
At the heart of Mozambique’s debt crisis is a series of three
foreign-currency loans that, between them, add up to about 15% of GDP.
The first was for $850m that was meant to have been spent on a fishing
fleet. Yet it seems to have bought ludicrously expensive boats, and a
chunk went on high-speed patrol craft. The fishing boats that did
arrive generally spend their days tied up on the docks, though
occasionally one is seen puttering about inside the harbour. Earlier
this year Empresa Moçambicana de Atum (EMATUM), the state-owned
tuna-fishing company, said it could not repay its debt. A rescue plan
was cobbled together under which investors swapped their EMATUM bonds
for ones issued by the government.
That ought to have settled the matter. But just as the swap was going
through it was revealed that Mozambique had secretly borrowed another
$1.4 billion, or about 10% of its GDP, making it the most indebted
country in sub-Saharan Africa (see chart). The revelation shocked the
IMF and western donors into freezing disbursements to the government,
whose budget relies on international aid. It also led to red faces at
Credit Suisse and VTB, the two banks that helped arrange the various
bond sales. Some of the investors who bought the bonds complain that
the banks should have given them more information.
Yet it seems to have induced almost no shame in the government. The
IMF and western donors are pressing for an independent audit of the
secret loans. Yet Filipe Nyusi, Mozambique’s president, is dragging
his feet, prompting speculation that a cover-up is under way.
Mozambique is not alone in its fiscal fishiness. Economic crisis is
stalking Angola, which is also suffering from the slumping price of
oil, its main export. Its bonds tumbled earlier this month after Jose
Eduardo dos Santos, its president since 1979, said the country was
collecting barely enough revenue to service its debt. It, too, had
been in bail-out talks with the IMF, but called them off after seeing
the fund’s conditions on fighting corruption.
Conclusions
This is a Debacle
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Angola's June Inflation Outpaced Rest of Region at 31.8%: Chart Africa |
Angola has the highest official inflation rate of at least 12 southern
African nations that released consumer-price data in the last two
months. Consumer prices grew 31.8 percent last month from a year ago,
the fastest rate since November 2004, two years after the end of an
almost three-decade-long civil war. The inflation rate more than
tripled from a year earlier as a slump in crude oil prices cut
government revenue and resulted in the kwanza weakening 26 percent
against the dollar.
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Zimbabwe Misses Own Deadline to Pay $1.8 Billion; Pays None Africa |
Zimbabwe failed to repay $1.8 billion to the International Monetary
Fund, the World Bank and African Development Bank by its own June 30
deadline.
“Right now, we’ve not paid anything,” John Mangudya, Zimbabwe’s
central bank governor, said by phone from the capital, Harare, on
Thursday. “That is why we have this re-engagement process with
international financial institutions.”
Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said earlier the country would
repay at least $1.8 billion by the end of June to be able to resume
borrowing in a bid to revive an economy that’s half the size it was in
2000. Zimbabwe owes $110 million to the IMF, $1.1 billion to the World
Bank and $601 million to the African Development Bank, Mangudya said
in an e-mailed response to questions on Thursday.
The IMF will only consider requests for financing once Zimbabwe clears
its arrears with the lender and the IMF board approves the
normalization of relations with the country, spokesman Gerry Rice told
reporters on Thursday in Washington.
“Irrespective of the calendar for arrears clearance, the economy needs
immediate reforms to address the vulnerabilities that have come to the
fore,” Rice said. “Expeditious implementation of those reforms is
critical to reverse Zimbabwe’s economic decline.”
The southern African nation is experiencing an unprecedented liquidity
crisis that’s led to civil servants being paid late and some
private-sector workers receiving goods instead of salaries. That
sparked a national strike on July 6. The country was also hit by riots
as taxi operators protested against what they said was police
harassment and Zimbabwe’s main border post with South Africa was shut
for a weekend after the government banned the import of certain goods,
sparking demonstrations from traders.
Most banks have limited cash withdrawals to $100 a day, leading to
snaking queues at automated teller machines countrywide. Zimbabwe’s
foreign direct investment fell 23 percent to $421 million in 2015,
according to a report in the Financial Gazette newspaper that cited
United Nations data.
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IMF warns Kenya of Sh313bn undisclosed debt risk Kenyan Economy |
The Treasury is carrying a heavy load of undisclosed debt in the form
of power sector guarantees made in the past 10 years, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned in its latest assessment
of the shape of Kenya’s public finance.
The guarantees totalling Sh313 billion, which the IMF has flagged in
its latest report on Kenya, were in support of power purchase
agreements between Kenya Power and independent power producers.
“Information on active Public Private Partnership (PPP) contracts
worth up to $3.4 billion (Sh343 billion) or 5.7 per cent of the GDP
has not been made public or accounted for in official public finance
documents, meaning that their fiscal implications are yet to be fully
assessed,” the IMF report says.
Twelve power purchase agreement contracts worth $3.1 billion (Sh313
billion) signed before the PPP Act of 2013 became law carry the most
significant fiscal risk for the taxpayer, the IMF says.
The extent of risks to the taxpayer from the guarantees came to the
fore last month after a Virgin Islands-registered consortium Kinangop
Wind Park Limited (KWP) sued the Kenyan government at the
International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) for compensation after its
Sh15 billion wind power project in Nyandarua collapsed.
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Roads levy pushes petroleum prices to eleven-month high @BD_Africa Kenyan Economy |
Petroleum prices rose to an 11-month high beginning Friday morning
buoyed by the coming into effect of the Sh6 road maintenance levy that
Treasury secretary Henry Rotich added to the product cost in his June
budget.
The cost of diesel, which is mainly used to power trucks, buses and
industrial machinery, increased by the highest margin of Sh9.53 to
Sh83.24 a litre in Nairobi — the highest level since August last year.
Petrol, mostly consumed by private cars, is now costing motorists
Sh6.76 more at Sh92.93 a litre, representing the highest price level
since November last year.
“In this month’s review, the commission has factored in additional Sh6
per litre road maintenance levy for both super petrol and diesel in
line with the road maintenance levy fund (imposition of levy)
(amendment) order, 2016,” the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) said
in a statement.
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BAT Kenya reports H1 2016 EPS +10.665% Earnings here Kenyan Economy |
Par Value: 10/-
Closing Price: 865.00
Total Shares Issued: 100000000.00
Market Capitalization: 86,500,000,000
EPS: 49.76
PE: 17.383
H1 Net revenue 10.394b vs. 10.549b -1.469%
H1 Total cost of operations [7.256b] vs. [7.582b] -4.300%
H1 Operating profit 3.138b vs. 2.967b +5.763%
H1 Finance costs [70m] vs. [194m] -63.918%
H1 PBT 3.068b vs. 2.773b +10.638%
H1 Income tax expense [920m] vs. [832m] +10.577%
H1 PAT 2.148b vs. 1.941b +10.665%
H1 Basic and diluted EPS 21.48 vs. 19.41 +10.665%
Shareholders’ funds 6.401b vs. 6.168b +3.778%
Cash & cash equivalents at end of period [3.735b] vs. [2.872b] +30.049%
Company Commentary
Net revenue reduced marginally by 1% ...higher domestic revenues
following excise led price increases offset by lower contract
manufacturing revenues.
Operating Profit +6% operating margin improved by 2.1 percentage
points to 30.2% during the period
Interim Dividend of 3.50 a share
Conclusions
Strong share - with an attractive dividend Pay Out Ratio.
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