The View from Abu Dhabi's Investment Vehicle

Aabar, the Abu Dhabi investment vehicle, has sold its stake in Banco Santander's Brazil unit, in a head-shaking affront towards emerging markets, or at very least, a risk-aversive stance.

Talk of Irish Bailout

Ireland is in trouble - it may need to be bailed out. Have the needs of continental economies come at the detriment of the Irish economy? The Telegraph believes so, and asserts that Brussels has only helped Ireland in areas that were shrinking such as agriculture.

Ballmer's Big Sale

Behemoth Steve Ballmer has sold $1.3 billion worth of shares in Microsoft and plans to sell more by year-end.

QE2 Deployed: America's $600bn Stimulus Package and Impact on EM Currencies

Fed CHAIRMAN Ben Bernanke (undergrad Harvard, PhD Economics from MIT) has said the US' $600bn stimulus package will not spur inflation. Will it lead to inflation? Could speculative bubbles appear in bonds and commodities? South Africa's finance minister Pravin Gordhan said the US should pay more mind to the impact of QE2 on other nations. The stimulus will take the form of the government buying (government) bonds in a bid to make loans cheaper and encourage Americans to spend more. The impact on emerging market currencies was for them to strengthen versus the dollar, provoking foreign countries to intervene in the currency markets to maintain export competitiveness.

Bond Yields Bubble Up in Greece

Bond yields in Greece bubbled ahead of the weekend's local government elections (10yr bond yield was 11.34%). Greece was bailed out in May by the EU and the IMF and today's bond yields are approaching those May highs when yields were over 12%. The EU and IMF are insisting wage and pension cuts and higher VAT and excise taxes.

North American Drilling Boom for Schlumberger

Q3 profit more than doubles (NI of $1.7 3billion) leading to rise in share price of 5.4% (one of top gainers in SPX). Their Western Geco unit is also seeing some interest in surveying work. Although prospects in Gulf of Mexico look promising, there is likely to be more stringent process for deepwater permits following the BP oil spill.

Bank of America's Massive One-Off Charge and Banking Environment

BoA in Q3 2010 took a charge of more than $10bn for a revaluation of its credit and debit card business which is being adversely impacted by charge-curbing regulation. This netted out with profits to give a loss of $7.3bn. Apart from the "credit charge", BoA performance is very tied to the US mortgage market: data on foreclosures etc.

Goldman's Q3 profit was $1.73bn, down from last year (blamed on lower prop trading revs due to smaller volumes and lower volatility) although revenue from investment banking advisory increased.