PrefBlog

The build up of corporate cash since the Credit Crunch has a nice side-effect:

Rather than get the euros or pounds they need through currency markets, there’s speculation U.S. companies including General Electric Co. may be dipping into offshore cash piles they’ve built up to mitigate tax liabilities.

“Before the market gets excited that mega takeovers from the U.S. could lift the euro and pound, it’s worth recognizing that U.S. companies are sitting on truly huge cash piles abroad,” Steven Barrow, the head of Group of 10 research at Standard Bank Plc in London, wrote in an April 29 note to clients. “That does change the way we have to look at these takeovers from a currency perspective.”

The New York Times produced an excellent graphic regarding relative price changes over the past decade; regrettably but understandably they’ve made it a PNG which doesn’t reproduce well on this blog. Anyway, the point is that the cost of College tuition and fees has soared relative to everything else. I last complained about the universities’ mission-creep on March 6, 2014.

It was another excellent day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts up 19bp, FixedResets winning 26bp and DeemedRetractibles gaining 15bp. Volatility was high, with a lengthy list of winners dominated by FixedResets. Volume was average.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2014 at 8:41 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.