Sisecam, Europe’s largest glass manufacturer, is about to complete the ground work to consolidate its divisions under one umbrella/one brand. The project will delist four subsidiaries whose shares are publicly listed.

Recent academic research find evidence for presence of strong negative correlation between star analyst coverage and price synchronicity in China but not in the US.

Correlation coefficients or co-variances are too row metrics to depend on for portfolio diversification purposes. This short note promotes segmentation scores methodology as a more robust alternative. especially for funds investing cross-country.  

IHH reported decent sales growth across regions. The margins are somewhat weaker due to investments. RM2.3B in December quarter revenues registering 18% growth. EBITDA reads RM614.3M (+5%). Earnings posted 74% YoY growth to RM415.8B on several one-off items and exceptional gains. Full fiscal year 2015 revenues and EBITDA grew by 15% and 10% YoY to RM8.5B and RM2.1B, respectively. Investments are broadly on track to meet targets.

Strong dollar, weaker demand in emerging markets, shrinking repo balance sheets at U.S. institutions and excess capacity in China should force Fed tone down the rate hike rhetoric.

Finansbank is changing hands again - and it's yet another bad deal for the National Bank of Greece. Having bought Finansbank for ~4x book in 2006, they are now selling to QNB for below 1x. What's more, Finansbank is NBG's most profitable business, the absence of which would reduce the group ROE, quite possibly significantly.

Kudos to QNB for acquiring one of the best retail and SME banks in Turkey for a bargain.

Combined revenues in Van now make up 40% of Lokman's sales, up from 35% same period last year - that's the key take-away from September financials. Pace of growth at both Van and Van Hayat continues to outstrip the rest of the group.

The market valuation of Turkish banks is currently implying a cost of equity of 12% on average, which we find too low. Turkish risks – inflation, regulatory and political –, as well as global outlook warrant more conservative risk assumptions and hence require higher rate of return. Inflation itself should increase towards 9% mark in 1Q16 to factor in further weakness in currency. Our models factor in an average 14% COE, some 200bp above that implied by the market.