BNP Paribas has continued the trend of European banks beating at revenue level, but experiencing significant cost growth.

We are pleased that the Supreme Court ruled in our favor. The fact that the court was unanimous confirms what we said from the start: this case had no merit.

We get the sense that this was really a personal decision made by Mr. Nelson and that he was not pushed out by the company.

We believe Asia Global Crossing is well positioned to become the first truly pan-Asian network services provider.

Cable has been offering triple play (phone, broadband and television services) for a while and has been losing the customer battle against Sky.

Ironically, it does not appear to be from the commodity corner as many believe, but instead from the labor-related costs.

Compass has issued, for the first time in a while, a trading statement that does not include a profit warning. Trading and management’s initiatives appear to be running to schedule.

We can see a relief rally lifting the stock for a day or two.

Congressional pressure is one of the factors underlying the Bush administration’s leverage on China to allow [foreign exchange] flexibility.

The Fed is no longer on auto-pilot, and further hikes beyond next week should be a function of the incoming economic data.

Every major player in the [electrical appliances retailing] sector will have similar expansion plans. So land grab will be the dominant theme in the short term.

We remain cognizant of the fact that in an industry which is currently operating at full capacity to meet demand, any significant curtailment of production would be difficult to make up.

There is no obvious single deal.

Our marketing plans do not call for us to refer to the university in any way nor do we have any intention of using the reputation of the university to promote the brand.

Though financial stocks rebounded Friday following a punishing several days, we think investors should remain exceedingly cautious and should not yet aggressively build positions unless they are geared for the long term.

Risk of brain-drain and lost business dissipates now that leadership and succession issues are resolved.

One of the factors contributing to retail margin pressures in January was a shift in advertising to later in the year, in support of Target’s evolution to more a department store and gift destination.

On the face of it, this sounds like a positive piece of news for Cairn, however, we think ONGC are most likely to look to a acquire an additional stake in Cairns 70 per cent...

The April IEA report supports our belief that rising inventories, moderating demand growth and Saudi Arabia’s commitment to put more oil into the market will put downward pressure on oil prices.

And we still haven’t seen the full brunt of the lagged impact of the Fed’s rate hikes.

This suggests there is a possibility that the consortium could still revise/raise its offer, in our view.

While we had not considered a private equity deal, there is no reason why, if the price were right, this should not be a legitimate option.

We expect Nokia device gross margin to stabilize resulting from the transition to lower-cost entry-level phones and a much stronger mid-range and high-end portfolio.

Our intermediate-term ‘strong buy’ rating for Intel stands — first-quarter PC inventory rebuild should temper seasonal weakness.

We caution against extrapolating too much from this figure to any individual company’s outlook. The 6.9% figure does not necessarily translate to the average payment increase a given MA plan ultimately receives.

It’s not going to be that much of a negative for the consumers. After all, they’re paying much lower prices than we’ve paid for six months… ( It ) might actually make everybody a winner...

We remain bullish on gold over the medium to long term and believe that the arguments for gold outweigh the arguments against.

This makes us confident that Compass should be able to sell this business for a price in excess of 1.2 billion pounds.

Financially, there might be reason behind the madness.

Compass’ statement should be a relief to the market as trading appears to be in line with expectations.

Bulls hoping for a more substantial move in Intel may be disappointed, however. There was nothing in Intel’s comment that can be used to support an improved outlook for either the third or fourth quarter.

We noted with interest that the often overlooked Furniture & Appliances industry sector turned out to be one of the stronger performers in 2001…based on market capitalization, Furniture & Appliances ranks 11th out of the...

Management believes the group can generate half of its profits from outside the U.K. within three years from the current portfolio of businesses – we think highlights the strong organic growth possibilities within the business.

The euro zone has just edged ahead of Japan, and is now the region investors would most like to overweight in the next year.

Although some of the company’s problems can be attributed to weakness in the PC market and inventory reduction efforts, AMD also continues to lose ground to Intel in the [microprocessor] market.

Fear of inflation has caused (U.S.) fund managers to raise their cash positions to overweight from underweight. It has also driven a dramatic move out of U.S. equities, the perceived risk area.

Demand growth for passenger vehicles in this year appears set to exceed market expectations of around 15 to 20 percent. Growth rate may fluctuate in response to changes in government policies and economic hiccups, but...

However, there is a risk that less easing is in store since the 3 percent growth we expect, on average, in the first half of 2006, may not be enough to convince the Fed to...