Reuters Share Discussion Threads

[huwrayhenry] 17/3/2008 07:40

SHORT form 600p


here we go....

[jarbie] 29/2/2008 11:38

Why the ongoing drop - any ideas ?

[jarbie] 23/2/2008 16:41

To make further judgements the following may be useful :-
Thomson Corporation has a ticker - TOC on NYSE & TO
address - www.thomson.com
currently trading at circa US$34 - yr range c US$ 47-32
TOC pay dividends qly which can be elected to be paid in £
current yield is c 3.2%

[meic] 23/11/2007 19:42

Any ideas how this outcome could impact rtr?

Forecast: U.S. dollar could plunge 90 pct


Published: Nov. 19, 2007 at 2:16 PM
Print story Email to a friend Font size:RHINEBECK, N.Y., Nov. 19 (UPI) -- A financial crisis will likely send the U.S. dollar into a free fall of as much as 90 percent and gold soaring to $2,000 an ounce, a trends researcher said.

"We are going to see economic times the likes of which no living person has seen," Trends Research Institute Director Gerald Celente said, forecasting a "Panic of 2008."

"The bigger they are, the harder they'll fall," he said in an interview with New York's Hudson Valley Business Journal.

Celente -- who forecast the subprime mortgage financial crisis and the dollar's decline a year ago and gold's current rise in May -- told the newspaper the subprime mortgage meltdown was just the first "small, high-risk segment of the market" to collapse.

Derivative dealers, hedge funds, buyout firms and other market players will also unravel, he said.

Massive corporate losses, such as those recently posted by Citigroup Inc. and General Motors Corp., will also be fairly common "for some time to come," he said.

He said he would not "be surprised if giants tumble to their deaths," Celente said.

The Panic of 2008 will lead to a lower U.S. standard of living, he said.

A result will be a drop in holiday spending a year from now, followed by a permanent end of the "retail holiday frenzy" that has driven the U.S. economy since the 1940s, he said.

[mdj8] 23/11/2007 11:19

CAD has also fallen 5% against GBP so this deal is getting more expensive for TOC. That aside both RTR and TOC will be hit by declining orders/cacellations as a result of the problems in the markets. Given we are close to December this will affect earnings far more significantly next year when the full 12 months of any cancels will be felt.

[martinfrench] 22/11/2007 14:44

MERGER IS ON SCHEDULE, BUT AS THIS TAKEOVER IS CASH AND SHARES, THOMSON PRICE HAS FALLEN OVER 10% HENCE RTR HAS.

SIMPLE REALLY.

[mdj8] 21/11/2007 12:09

Only last week Devin sent out an internal memo stating who would would be doing what in the new TOC/RTR "senior management" team, so RTR clearly think it's going ahead.....Perhaps regulatory probs? Creating a situation where there are only two major players will certainly not leave much room for competition...

[2wheelerdealer] 20/11/2007 14:39

Cant believe this thread is so quiet. 592 share price Looks like the proposed bid/merger is stalled for now. Any thoughts anyone?

[mdj8] 01/11/2007 15:51

I'm sure the DOJ (U.S.) will be having a good look, just as they did when RTR bought what remained of Moneyline Telerate. I feel there may be some justified concerns by the authorities - the deal going through would mean an effective duopoly between RTR/TOC and Bloomberg.....

[diogenes dottle] 16/10/2007 13:31

Is the EU the only anti-trust type investigation currently commenced or contemplated? Is there also to be a Canadaian and / or a US process of enquiry?

[pugdog] 02/10/2007 10:54

When does one expect the takeover to be completed and the share price to rise to the £6.80 - £6.90 range

[meic] 27/7/2007 23:11

1929 about to repeat itself?

As Paul Alexander Gusmorino said in his article, "Main Causes of the Great Depression": "Many factors played a role in bringing about the depression; however, the main cause for the Great Depression was the combination of the greatly unequal distribution of wealth throughout the 1920s, and the extensive stock market speculation that took place during the latter part of that same decade."

The same factors are at work today except that the speculation is in real estate rather than stocks. Just as in the 1920s the equity bubble was not created by wages keeping pace with productivity (the healthy formula for growth) but by the expansion of personal debt. Also, one could buy stocks without the money to purchase them, just as one can buy a $600,000 or $700,000 house today with zero down and no monthly payment on the principle for years to come. The current account deficit ($800 billion) could also weigh heavily in any economic shake-up that may be forthcoming.

Bob Chapman of The International Forecaster made this shocking calculation about America's out-of-control trade deficit: "US debt was up 10.1 percent to $4.085 trillion and accounts for 58.8 percent of all the credit issued globally last year. That means the US expanded credit at a much faster rate than the economy grew. This was borrowing to maintain a higher standard of living and attempt to pay for it tomorrow."

Think about that; the US sucked up nearly 60 percent of ALL GLOBAL CREDIT in one year alone. That is truly astonishing.

There are many similarities between the pre-Depression era and our own. Paul Alexander Gusmorino says: "The Great Depression was the worst economic slump ever in U.S. history, and one which spread to virtually all of the industrialized world. The depression began in late 1929 and lasted for about a decade. . . . The excessive speculation in the late 1920s kept the stock market artificially high, but eventually led to large market crashes. These market crashes, combined with the misdistribution of wealth, caused the American economy to capsize."

"[The income disparity] between the rich and the middle class grew throughout the 1920s. While the disposable income per capita rose 9 percent from 1920 to 1929, those with income within the top 1 percent enjoyed a stupendous 75 percent increase in per capita disposable income . . . A major reason for this large and growing gap between the rich and the working-class people was the increased manufacturing output throughout this period. From 1923-1929 the average output per worker increased 32 percent in manufacturing. During that same period, average wages for manufacturing jobs increased only 8 percent (This ultimately causes a decrease in demand and leads to growth in credit spending)

"The federal government also contributed to the growing gap between the rich and middle-class. Calvin Coolidge's (pro business) administration passed the Revenue Act of 1926, which reduced federal income and inheritance taxes dramatically . . . (At the same time) the Supreme Court ruled minimum-wage legislation unconstitutional.

"The bottom three quarters of the population had an aggregate income of less than 45 percent of the combined national income; while the top 25 percent of the population took in more than 55 percent of the national income . . . Between 1925 and 1929 the total credit more than doubled from $1.38 billion to around $3 billion."

Just like now, the growing wage gap has spawned massive speculative bubbles as well as a steady up-tick in credit spending. Wage stagnation forces workers to seek other opportunities for getting ahead. When wages fail to keep pace with productivity then demand naturally decreases and business begins to flag. The only way to spur more buying is by easing interest rates or expanding personal credit, and that is when equity bubbles begin to appear. That's what happened to the stock market before 1929 as well as to the real estate market in 2007. The availability of credit has kept the housing market afloat but, ultimately, the result will be the same.



On Monday October 21, 1929, the over-valued stock market began its downward plunge. It managed a brief mid-week comeback, but seven days later, on Black Tuesday, it plummeted again; 16 million shares were dumped and there were no buyers.

The game was over.

Confidence evaporated overnight. People stopped buying on credit, the bubble-economy collapsed, and the mighty locomotive for growth, the American consumer, hobbled into the Great Depression. Tariffs were thrown up, foreigners stopped buying American goods; banks closed, business went bust, and unemployment skyrocketed. Ten years later the country was still reeling from the implosion.

Now, 77 years later, Greenspan has led us sheep-like to the same precipice. The economic dilemma we're facing could have been avoided if the expansion of personal credit had been curtailed by prudent monetary policy at the Federal Reserve and if wealth were more evenly distributed as it was in the '60s and '70s. But that's not the case; so we're headed for hard times.