Professor Glen Arnold

Mohamed El-Erian, formerly CEO of PIMCO bond investors, IMF Deputy Director economist and chair of President Obama’s Global Development Council, is lauded for his clear thinking on financial and economic affairs.  In the last two weeks he has granted interviews to discuss the crisis. Here are the highlights. Economic stops are worse than financial stops […]

Professor Nouriel Roubini, economic consultant and teacher at New York University’s Stern School of Business (formerly IMF, World Bank, President Clinton’s senior economist) is renowned for warning of impending disaster prior to the 2008 financial crisis.  He has long been a student of emerging market crashes, and this knowledge helped him spot the looming disaster […]

In China some shutdown measures have already been eased.  Does that mean its economy will rebound to the a priori position soon? If so, then perhaps westerners can stop worrying about deep recession because all we need to do it copy the Chinese anti-Covid programme and get going again. Other models to follow are Singapore, South Korea, […]

First the International Monetary Fund: Paul M. Thomsen of the IMF wrote last week that the service sectors closed in Europe and North America generally account for one-third of national output. This loss translates into a 3% drop in GDP per month while these sectors are out of action. I’m going to make an optimist assumption […]

Our lives are going to be shaped by the coronavirus, not just our health, work, relationships, politics and social interaction but, of more direct relevance to an investment newsletter, economies, businesses and shares. If we are about to enter a depression as deep and widespread as the one in the 1930s hundreds of millions of […]

Connect Group (LSE:CNCT) has not had an attractive-looking balance sheet for many years. It had/has very high levels of intangible assets, especially goodwill, due to paying excessive prices for acquisitions. Even after including those doubtful “assets” in its balance sheet it could barely report a positive net current asset value.  On top of that, it […]

In 2014 the big idea at Connect Group (LSE:CNCT) was to diversify into parcel delivery and at the same time gain synergy with the early morning News Distribution business by buying Tuffnells for £121m. Here are the performance numbers for Tuffnells under Connect’s ownership – not pretty reading for shareholders who forked out £121m. £m   […]

Connect Group’s (LSE:CNCT) Smiths News produces profits and lots of cash flow year after year because it is a duopolist (alongside Menzies) delivering newspapers and magazines to shops.  The duopolists tend to stick to their own territories when allocating their vans – it is pointless having two rivals vans passing each other in rural Norfolk […]

Connect Group (LSE:CNCT) has one business generating an operating profit north of £34m.  For a £37m market capitalisation company that is a substantial amount. And this operating profit, from the Smith News newspaper and magazine distribution business, has been consistently high (2014: £40.8m, 2015: £23.2m, 2016: £34.1m, 2017: £36.1m, 2018: £25m, 2019: £36.3m, expectation for […]

Connect shares (LSE:CNCT) have fallen more than most. While it was falling I examined three factors, looking for reassurance that it will be able to ride out the storm: Will its banks support it if covenants are breached due to a slowdown in revenue and cash flow? The measures put in place by the Bank […]