Overnight there was more snow, this time on Long Island across the East River from my office. It didn’t stick, a sign of progress toward spring.
National Public Radio says mouse studies often lead medical studies down dead ends.
Chartists refine and add ever more correlation factors to make things match which creates errors, according to The Financial Times (yesterday’s. It did not publish on Good Friday when US and UK markets are closed.)
David Gardner of The Motley Fool is tipping Whole Foods Market again. Now that its John Mackey has failed to derail Obamacare maybe its employees can afford to see a doctor and no longer spread germs to Whole Paycheck’s customers.
Finally the daily TV focus on the Malaysian airline crash is lower because there is a South Korean ferry disaster to discuss.
My husband and I have canceled our planned Black Sea cruise this July because it will not visit Sochi, Yalta, or Sebastopol, and not Ukraine either. These were the highlights.
Today we are proposing a stock switch, from Ireland to Australia. Neither market is open so readers cannot act until Monday in Ireland or Tuesday in Australia. Jewish readers who do not trade Monday and Tuesday (when there will be no blogs) can put in their orders over the weekend for automated execution. Much news also from Brazil and Britain despite or perhaps because São Paulo and London are closed today.
*The bad Brazilian news is that the Guinea cabinet has recommended that Vale be stripped of rights to the country’s huge iron ore reserve alongside sanctions for bribery against Israeli Beny Steinmetz whose BSG Resources Co. got the Simandou concession from a prior government in Conakry. This was reported by Reuters but not confirmed by VALE. All licenses have been revoked for corruption and put up for tender again, said a Guinean spokesman. Steinmetz said he would seek international arbitration which might help Vale. The West Africa country, afflicted with one of the world’s worst reputations for corruption, is also suffering from Ebola virus.
*The better Brazilian news is that the board and controlling shareholders ofAll America Latina Logistics, now trading as ALLAY-OTC, agreed to it being acquired by Cosan SA Industria e Comercio‘s Rumo logistics sub. ALLAY listed its ADR in 2005. The merger will give ALLAY’s majority shareholders control of Rumo with a deal value of ~$3 bn, a 20% premium to the prior price of ALLAY. The Brasilia authorities sought this outcome.
Cosan, a grower of sugarcane and maker of ethanol, is controlled by billionaire Rubens Ometto who tried to buy ALL two years ago. ALL connects soybean farms in Mato Grosso to the port of Santos. There Rumo has warehouses which handle sugar and ethylene for export. CZZ also makes electricity from sugarcane waste (bagasse) and operates ethylene gas stations under the Shell and Esso brands through a jv, Raizen, with Shell. Es complicado.
We own CZZ, Cosan Ltd, the Bermuda holding company at the top of Ometto’s conglomerate structure, of which Cosan SA is a sub. CZZ rose yesterday on the news of the ALL deal. Cosan created Rumo via an earlier takeover by its Cosan Logistica sub. CZZ also owns a 60%+ stake in Companhia de Gas de São Paulo, or Comgas, which it bought from BG (when we owned BG, now sold), a gas ute.
