Whilst I was away...

I’ve been away for the last two weeks although I’ve been keeping a close eye on events. We sailed from Monte Carlo and ended up with Tower Bridge rising to let us through to moor beside HMS Belfast. It is an interesting sign of the times that I had broadband speed wi fi in my cabin for the whole journey - much to the disgust of my wife!

To be blunt nothing very exciting has happened in that period. Stock market indices have continued to slump – the FTSE100 is down 7% since I went away, NASDAQ down 5% and the FTSE SCS Index down 4%.

Bid activity continues. Indeed the ‘trend’ seems to be for the remaining quoted companies to be fought over! Quintiles has put in a competitive bid to Parexel at Clinphone. David Mann at Flomerics had seen himself in the middle of a bidding war from Mentor and Autodesk with the story getting even more interesting with Cadence’s bid for Mentor! However, today Autodesk has withdrawn from the fray. Maybe the same will happen to Mentor if they are distracted with their own bid situation. When sellers get too greedy, buyers walk away and share prices slump.

Some other things that caught my eye were...