Fwd:SUEZ PROPOSAL FOR ARDIAN GIP AT EUR 20



From: Nicolas Marmurek (OSCAR GRUSS & SON IN) At: 03/21/21 16:44:02
To: Laurent Chekroun (MAKOR SECURITIES LO )
Subject: SUEZ PROPOSAL FOR ARDIAN GIP AT EUR 20


DISCLAIMER

This information represents neither an offer to buy or sell any security nor, because it does not take into account the differing needs of individual clients, investment advice. Those seeking investment advice specific to their financial profiles and goals should contact their Oscar Gruss & Son Incorporated sales representative. Oscar Gruss & Son Incorporated believes this information to be reliable, but no representation is made as to accuracy or completeness. This information does not analyze every material fact concerning a company, industry, or security. Oscar Gruss & Son Incorporated assumes that this information will be read in conjunction with other publicly available data. Matters discussed here are subject to change without notice. There can be no assurance that reliance on the information contained here will produce profitable results. A security denominated in a foreign currency is subject to fluctuations in currency exchange rates, which may have an adverse effect on the value of the security upon the conversion into local currency of dividends, interest, or sales proceeds. The value of securities and depositary receipts of foreign issuers that are denominated in United States dollars are also influenced by fluctuations in currency exchange rates. © 2020 Oscar Gruss & Son Incorporated. All rights reserved.

From: nmarmurek@oscargruss.com At: 03/21/21 11:40:01
To: Nicolas Marmurek (OSCAR GRUSS & SON IN ) , ArbitrageEmailOGSI@oscargruss.com
Subject: SUEZ PROPOSAL FOR ARDIAN GIP AT EUR 20



Nicolas Marmurek
Managing Director

Oscar Gruss & Sons Incorporated 
430 Park Ave
6th Floor
New York NY 10022 
USA
nmarmurek@oscarguss.com
+1 (212)-419-4037 (o)
+1 (646)-627-3331 (m)


DISCLAIMER This information represents neither an offer to buy or sell any security nor, because it does not take into account the differing needs of individual clients, investment advice. Those seeking investment advice specific to their financial profiles and goals should contact their Oscar Gruss & Son Incorporated sales representative. Oscar Gruss & Son Incorporated believes this information to be reliable, but no representation is made as to accuracy or completeness. This information does not analyze every material fact concerning a company, industry, or security. Oscar Gruss & Son Incorporated assumes that this information will be read in conjunction with other publicly available data. Matters discussed here are subject to change without notice. There can be no assurance that reliance on the information contained here will produce profitable results. A security denominated in a foreign currency is subject to fluctuations in currency exchange rates, which may have an adverse effect on the value of the security upon the conversion into local currency of dividends, interest, or sales proceeds. The value of securities and depositary receipts of foreign issuers that are denominated in United States dollars are also influenced by fluctuations in currency exchange rates. © 2021 Oscar Gruss & Son Incorporated. All rights reserved.

WSJ : The New Stock Influencers Have Huge—and Devoted—Followings

The New Stock Influencers Have Huge—and Devoted—Followings
Stocks surge on tweets from the likes of Elon Musk, Cathie Wood and Chamath Palihapitiya

One January afternoon, Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk sent out an 11-character tweet: “Gamestonk!!”

His Twitter followers sprung into action.

GameStop Corp. shares surged more than 150% overnight. The next day, analysts threw up their hands. Nothing apart from Mr. Musk’s tweet—which included a link to Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum—could explain why the stock soared.

Mr. Musk isn’t alone in moving stocks by simply tweeting. Public figures as varied as the Tesla executive, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, Barstool Sports founder David Portnoy and fund manager Cathie Wood have collectively amassed hundreds of millions of followers online. Many of their fans are individual investors who take their comments on the market as gospel.

The notion of a market influencer isn’t new. Prior generations were enraptured by star investors like Bill Miller, Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett. They soaked up shareholder letters and book recommendations, eager to glean insights into how to routinely beat the markets. And they sought to replicate the investment strategies of star investors in their own portfolios, poring over company earnings reports and debt-to-equity ratios. The growth in popularity of business news on cable television and the internet in recent decades gave rise to another wave of influential figures.

Today’s gurus aren’t defined by Wall Street bona fides. (Ms. Wood, who cut her teeth at firms like the Capital Group and Jennison Associates, is an exception.) Many of today’s influencers have appealed to their followers precisely because of their irreverence and disdain for financial-industry norms. Their followers often profess they couldn’t care less about the depth of analysis behind a trade. If their icon is buying something, they will throw money at it, too.

Mr. Portnoy live-streamed himself buying stocks based off the letter tiles he blindly pulled out of a Scrabble bag. Mr. Palihapitiya bought $125,000 worth of call options on GameStop in January after telling his Twitter followers he would “throw a few 100 k’s” at whatever they persuaded him to buy. The rapper Snoop Dogg was credited with sending the price of cryptocurrency dogecoin soaring after he tweeted an altered version of one of his album covers, showing himself with a “doge” head.


“It doesn’t matter what your investment skills are,” said Ben Carlson, director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. “Because of social media, it’s never been easier to become a promoter.”

It is no accident that many of the most prominent stock influencers have embraced antiestablishment views. They have directed their anger at parties ranging from the Securities and Exchange Commission to CNBC to hedge funds and billionaires, often to the delight of their followers.

Mr. Palihapitiya, for instance, said Reddit traders pulled off an “insane, crazy, baller” feat after their bets on GameStop pummeled hedge fund Melvin Capital Management. In response, praise for Mr. Palihapitiya exploded on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum. “We should support his spac’s next lol,” one WallStreetBets user wrote, making a reference to Mr. Palihapitiya’s special-purpose acquisition companies.

Mr. Musk has joked that “it would be awesome” if the SEC investigated his tweets on dogecoin. And Mr. Portnoy publicly feuded with billionaire hedge fund owner Steven A. Cohen in late January when brokerages restricted trading in GameStop shares, accusing him of being involved with the curbs in an effort to “save hedge funds at the cost of ordinary people.” Mr. Cohen denied the allegations.

In one sense, it isn’t surprising that such figures have become heroes to many individual investors, said Peter Atwater, an adjunct professor of economics at The College of William & Mary.

“There’s an enormous population that feels that they do not have any standing, and the pandemic only reinforced those perceptions,” he said. Many of today’s stock influencers have succeeded in growing their followings precisely because they have conveyed the image that they, too, are outsiders, Mr. Atwater added.

The reality often falls short, though.

Influencers like Mr. Palihapitiya and Mr. Musk are billionaires, Mr. Carlson said. “They are ‘the man.’ ”

If there is one obvious benefit to the rise of social-media influencers, it is that they have helped stir up interest in investing, especially among younger individuals who otherwise may not have made the jump into the market. Sign-ups for new accounts at brokerages like E*Trade Financial Corp., Fidelity Investments and of course, Robinhood Markets Inc., have soared during the past year.

In many cases, it has paid off to be in stocks this year. The S&P 500 has risen 4.2%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has advanced 6.6%. Both indexes are less than 2 percentage points away from records.

But the market’s wild ride has also shown that bets—especially in individual stocks—can backfire quickly. There is a danger in big personalities online wielding the influence they do over individual investors, said Nancy Tengler, chief investment officer of Laffer Tengler Investments.

GameStop, for instance, soared to a closing price of as high as $347.51 Jan. 27 before skidding into the $40s a few weeks after. (It has since recouped some of its losses, closing Friday at $200.27.)

“In between all of that, people get hurt,” Ms. Tengler said. And while a billionaire may be able to laugh off the losses, for the average individual, one wrong bet could have far more punishing consequences.

The SEC has said as much about the boom in interest in SPACs. They have been backed by a growing crowd of celebrities, including Shaquille O’Neal, Colin Kaepernick, Alex Rodriguez and Serena Williams. Amid the hype, the SEC issued a sober reminder earlier this month.

“It is never a good idea to invest in a SPAC just because someone famous sponsors or invests in it or says it is a good investment,” the SEC said in an investor alert.


The big question many money managers have now is how long the current generation of influencers will hold sway over their fans.

Bona fide fund managers like Ms. Wood, of ARK Investment Management LLC, have a greater chance of standing the test of time, said Rick Lear, founder and managing partner of Lear Investment Management, simply because they have a goal of delivering long-term value to investors—not just capitalizing on the buzz of the moment.

“What really appeals to the public is making money, and that’s what she’s done. She’s been in all the right places,” said Mr. Lear.

As for the rest of the crowd, Mr. Lear is less sure.

“I think it can persist as long as the market is going up,” Mr. Lear said. “As soon as things turn, it’s no longer fun.”

WSJ : A Fed With No Fear of Inflation Should Scare Investors

A Fed With No Fear of Inflation Should Scare Investors
Markets are only just waking up to the implications of an important shift at the Federal Reserve

It has taken four decades, but the Federal Reserve has finally shaken off its fear of inflation. The markets are only just waking up to the implications of the shift.

The outlines of the turnaround have been developing for a while as the Fed’s focus has moved from its inflation mandate to a constant emphasis on its goal of full employment. Meanwhile, its measure of rising prices has moved to an average target, allowing inflation to overshoot a 2% goal to make up for past misses.

Last week, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell underlined the final two steps: looking at where inflation actually is, rather than worrying about where it is forecast to be, and making clear that neither the current wild excess in the stock market nor the recent run-up in bond yields bothers him.

The shift should prompt a re-evaluation of the dominant market narrative. Up to now, the assumption has been that the Fed will tolerate some short-term inflation created by President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus, but that in the long run the Fed will reassert control or inflation will go away by itself.

In the bond market, this version of the story shows up in heightened inflation expectations for the next five years—a break-even rate of 2.51%, albeit on a measure that typically comes in higher than the Fed’s preferred gauge of inflation. For the following five years, inflation expectations are much lower, just 2.11% on Friday; if right, it would almost certainly mean the Fed’s preferred inflation measure would be below its 2% target.

An alternative narrative is far more political, and has been growing in popularity with investors who look at economic history. It starts with the transformation of the deficit debate. After the Obama stimulus of 2009 even Democrats were concerned about how it would be paid for, and the popular parallel was to troubled states such as Greece.

This time round the mainstream Democrat concern, such as it is, is that spending too much might prompt inflation.


Sure, Congressional Republicans have rediscovered fiscal probity since losing the White House, and the Democrats’ majority couldn’t be more fragile. But in the past decade virtually everyone has come to understand the core tenet of modern monetary theory, that the issuer of dollars isn’t going bust.

Here the story moves to the Fed. A hawkish Fed can counteract a big-spending White House by hiking rates. But Mr. Powell has committed to no hikes until inflation is sustainably at the Fed’s target and the country is at full employment. Most policy makers think that means at least three more years of near-zero rates.

The question is what happens if the target is reached earlier. If inflation picks up fast, say to 3%, will the Fed be willing to hike rates early and risk a rise in unemployment? What about 4%?

Fed policy makers have been emphasizing that reaching full employment helps the marginalized in society the most. The flip side is that pushing up unemployment to restrict inflation will hit that group the most. Politically that makes tighter monetary policy harder to justify.

There are also broader issues pushing toward higher inflation, as Pascal Blanqué, chief investment officer at French fund manager Amundi Asset Management points out. Rising national rivalry, as well as export restrictions on protective equipment and vaccines, encourages companies and governments toward secure domestic supply chains, even if that leads to higher costs.

A synchronized global recovery this year will mean upward pressure on commodity prices, a classic source of inflation. And Covid-related disruption has led to widespread production problems, including shortages of shipping containers and critical parts for cars, which again points to higher prices.


“There’s an ongoing shift from the narrative of secular stagnation to what I call the road back to the 1970s,” Mr. Blanqué says.

I think it is safe to leave the flowery bell-bottoms in the closet. Serious inflation is still very unlikely, albeit now more likely than it was. The jobs market is much more flexible than in the 1970s, making wage-price spirals difficult, while there is still plenty of international competition to restrict the ability of companies to jack up prices. These trends might reverse, but it will take years for unions to build their power and economies to be reoriented to domestic production.

However, everything is in place for at least a bout of market anxiety about inflation.

Inflation is poised to leap higher in the next few months due to a sharp dip in prices a year ago, as Mr. Powell himself pointed out on Wednesday. He said the Fed would ignore what he expected to be merely a blip. The economy is likely to be growing fast, too; the New York Fed’s Nowcast model, for example, predicts 6.3% annualized growth in the first quarter.

Combine that with a commitment to low rates and a president already moving on to his next spending plan, and it makes sense that people would worry more about rising prices.

“Investors are primed for an inflation scare,” says Dario Perkins, an economist at strategists TS Lombard, even though he thinks it is unlikely to last.

The obvious bets to profit from an inflation scare are the reverse of what worked last year: dump Treasurys, dump high-grade bonds, dump growth stocks, buy cheap economically-sensitive cyclical stocks, buy commodities, buy junk bonds.

The market overall might rise or fall, depending on its constituents, as last Thursday showed: The S&P 500 was dragged down by big falls in growth stocks, even as its cheap and cyclical members suffered less and banks rose. In Europe, the same pattern led to a rise in the market, as cheap and cyclical stocks make up a bigger share.

A lot of this has already happened, as the same trades benefit from economic reopening. So the scare will have to be big to overcome what’s already anticipated in the price.

Yet, a permanent regime shift clearly isn’t priced into Treasurys. Even after last week’s jump, the 10-year still only yields around 1.7%, and long-term bond market inflation expectations have been stable. Investors, in the main, accept Mr. Powell’s pitch, and think that after a brief period of higher price rises, the Fed will be willing to assert its independence and keep inflation in line.

If the market loses confidence, long-dated Treasury yields should ramp up even faster, the dollar would slide and stocks most reliant on profits far in the future, think Tesla, will be hit hard.

Real inflation scares hurt.

FT : Investors brace for lira tumult after Erdogan sacks central bank chief

Investors brace for lira tumult after Erdogan sacks central bank chief
Naci Agbal drew praise from investors for shift to more orthodox monetary policy

Traders are preparing for a jolt of volatility in the Turkish lira after president Recep Tayyip Erdogan sacked the country’s central bank chief, who was regarded as a key force in pulling the lira from historic lows last year.

The removal of Naci Agbal, announced in the early hours of Saturday, shocked many local and foreign investors who had applauded the official’s decisions to move Turkey towards a more orthodox monetary policy.

“Unwinding what was briefly appropriate macro policy is going to be painful”, said Edward Al-Hussainy, a senior rates and currencies analyst at Columbia Threadneedle, adding that it would hit the appeal of Turkish assets.

The appointment of Agbal in November, which was part of a broader economic leadership shake-up, helped spark a sharp rally in the lira after the currency had plummeted to a historic low. The lira was at one point the best performing emerging-market currency of 2021 and has recovered almost a fifth from the trough of around 8.58 to the US dollar struck on November 6.

The lira had gained last Thursday after Agbal increased interest rates by 2 percentage points, double what economists expected and adding to a 6.75 percentage point increase he oversaw last year.

Investors had long called for tighter monetary policy in Turkey to tame inflation that is running at more than 15 per cent and to quell strong outflows from foreign investors.

Ehsan Khoman, head of emerging markets research at MUFG Bank in Dubai said the Agbal’s leadership and the central bank’s prudent measures had played a “pivotal role” in restoring confidence in the lira and Turkish assets.

Traders and analysts are now concerned that Erdogan’s decision to install Sahap Kavcioglu to the role could rapidly erode the gains made during Agbal’s short tenure. Kavcioglu is a little-known professor of banking and a former lawmaker from the ruling Justice and Development party.


The new central bank head wrote in his column at the Islamist newspaper Yeni Safak last month that “interest rate increases will indirectly lead to an increase in inflation” — a view that runs counter to most modern macroeconomic theories and is also espoused by Erdogan, a vocal opponent of high rates.

Robin Brooks, chief economist at think-tank the Institute of International Finance, said Turkey was now at risk of “large” investor outflows that would place pressure on the lira.

Goldman Sachs warned on Sunday that it sees “significant risks of a near-term discontinuous move weaker in the lira”. The investment bank said local lenders had been quoting retail clients to buy the lira at the TL7.7 to TL7.8 to the dollar level, far weaker than Friday’s closing level of around TL7.22.

Currency trading begins in Asia around 10pm GMT.

“Big surprises tend to have market consequences and I think we can expect fairly aggressive falls in the lira at the open and the coming days,” Paul McNamara, an investment director at GAM, added.

Kavcioglu said in a statement on Sunday that the central bank “will continue to use the monetary policy tools effectively in line with its main objective of achieving a permanent fall in inflation”.

The sudden change in Turkey’s monetary policy leadership comes during a fraught moment for emerging markets, which have been under pressure as borrowing costs in the US and other developing markets have climbed higher. Last week, Russia and Brazil both joined Turkey in increasing interest rates as they sought to keep a lid on inflation.

Challenges: Suez offers Veolia to negotiate on the basis of an offer from Ardian

PARIS (Reuters) - Suez announced on Sunday that it was ready to enter into discussions with Veolia, but on the basis of a firm offer to take over Suez presented the same day by investment fund Ardian and Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP).

Ardian and GIP announced in a separate press release that they proposed to take over most of Suez's activities for an amount of 11.9 billion euros (15.8 billion in enterprise value), or the equivalent of 20 euros per action.
The Suez group, specializing in collective services, has been the target of a hostile takeover offer from its competitor Veolia since last summer.

Challenges : Suez propose à Veolia de négocier sur la base d'une offre d'Ardian/


PARIS (Reuters) - Suez a annoncé dimanche être prêt à engager des discussions avec Veolia, mais sur la base d'une offre ferme de reprise de Suez présentée le même jour par le fonds d'investissement Ardian et Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP).

Ardian et GIP ont annoncé dans un communiqué distinct proposer de reprendre l'essentiel des activités de Suez pour un montant de 11,9 milliards d'euros (15,8 milliards en valeur d'entreprise), soit l'équivalent de 20 euros par action.
Le groupe Suez, spécialisé dans les services collectifs, est depuis l'été dernier la cible d'une offre de rachat hostile de son concurrent Veolia.

>>> Turkey Pres Erdogan removes central bank governor

Turkey Pres Erdogan removes central bank governor
- Naci Agbal, who was appointed less than 5 months ago was replaced after raising policy rates by 875 basis points to 19%, including a 200 bps hike on Thursday aimed at heading off inflation a bolstering the sagging lira.
- Erdogan names Sahap Kavcioglu as new central bank governor. Kavcioglu is a former member of parliament for Erdogan’s ruling AK Party who supports low interest rates and was critical of Agbal's policy