Liams Last Post : white christmas ecomes a retailers and travel nightmare

Good Afternoon ,

 

Well , it looks increasingly likely that we will get a white Christmas but it is turning into a retailing and air Travel nightmare with more airports closing and more delays due to the extreme weather.

The markets are determined to end the year with a dose of Christmas cheer and determined to ignore any bad news. The irish Financials rallied today after the The European Commission has authorised under EU state aid rules emergency measures for three Irish banks. The worrying item is covered by FT alphaville saying that Anglo Irish Bank will furthermore receive a guarantee covering certain off-balance sheet liabilities (derivatives, clearing transactions and transactional arrangements) that will ensure that Anglo Irish Bank can continue its daily activities as a going concern. 

 

There was also the comments re After all, we had Friday's announcement of a EUR/GBP swap line between the ECB and the Bank of England, on behalf of the central bank of Ireland in order to meet potential liquidity needs from Irish banks.

The continuing concerns re Irish Banks liquidity is an ongoing source of concern but the markets appear to have shrugged it off as a risk factor in ireland or at least seem to worry for only short periods of time before the stocks recover.  Irish 10 year bond yields are back up at 8.87% … clearly someone is worried…

Anglo had an announcement themselves this morning that bond holders had agreed exchange 307 million euros ($404 million) of its so-called lower Tier 2 bonds due 2014 and 459.5 million euros of similarly ranked notes maturing 2016 at an 80 percent discount to par value.     The lender is convening bondholder meetings this week to insert clauses into the bonds' documentation giving it the right to repay the notes left outstanding at 1 cent per 1,000-euro face amount.

Not much corporate action in Ireland , markets mostly up. Aer Lingus down a tad as it is really exposed to the bad weather in the UK and Ireland with sevee disruptions looking likely to continue through the next while.

Have a good evening , I am off to santa with my  kids..

Liam

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

___________________________________________

Liam Boggan

　

Merrion Stockbrokers

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