18.02.2011

Nordic markets managed a plus day on Friday. Bank's required reserve ratio was increased again in China. Protest in Bahrain have intensified and demonstrators have been fired on and same goes for Libya. A container ship is leaking oil next to a national park area in Norway after hitting ground in a poorly buoyed waterway. European Central Bank officials are dropping hints of rate hikes to reel in inflation expectations. Upcoming wage negotiations will undoubtedly be difficult. Fed Chairdman Ben Bernanke defended loose money policies.

TeliaSonera initiates a share buyback program. Talvivaara mining company was unchanged today after retreating a bit yesterday following quarterly results. The CEO Pekka Perä commented that he is a little worried that nickel producers are doing "too well" all over the world, a situation he says historically does not persist. HK Scan did just as bad as competitor Atria in Q4. The long term goals are very modest but still far and even the constant dividend needs to be financed via loans.

In a surprising twist to a saga that has been ongoing, Tecnotree and Atul Chopra (and the mysterious "others") have reconciled. Tecnotree is not firing him from the Board after all and an extraordinary general meeting is cancelled. Additionally "certain former Lifetree shareholders" who received Tecnotree shares when Tecnomen and Lifetree merged are now eligeable to sell the shares as the company agreed to waive the reminder of a three year period barring such actions. While it obviously took considerable thinking and cooler heads on both sides to reach this point, one cannot but wonder who reached their goals and what the next move may be.

Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop sold all of his Microsoft holdings and bought a million's worth of Nokia stocks. His Microsoft holdings and lack of NOkia ownership were causing a lot of whispers in the local media, despite stock market rules being the obvious explanation for any inaction on this front previously. Chairman of the Board Jorma Ollila came out of his hiding to defend the Microsoft partnership. Elop says Nokia aims to be at the forefront of the next change in the industry and claimed MeeGo would have been too slow into market and too expensive for customers, while hinting that somehow Android is too inexpensive at the moment. News on the Chinese manufacturers closing in on starting to offer affordable smartphones adds another issue to the mix.

Schibsted retreated after quarterly numbers. BWG Homes was down on heavy insider sales. Tower Group had to postpone planned rights issue for no agreement has been reached with creditors for reorganization. Just yesterday Tower Group pushed back Q4 report. The company needs to raise money to continue going concern.