Month: December 2015

The last five trading days depicted erosion of investors’ confidence over the banking stocks. The reaction followed the finalization of new Federal Reserve rules which limits bailouts for banks at the time of financial crisis and downgrade in ratings of 8 major banks by Standard & Poor's ("S&P"). Further, legal issues related to past wrongdoings continued. […]

The U.S. Energy Department's weekly inventory release showed another unexpected stockpile addition. As it is, the commodity’s stock remains at levels not seen since the 1930s in the face of weak global consumption. […]

While the possible Fed lift-off decision and associated economic data points occupy maximum media attention at present, there are opportunities waiting to be grabbed in other sectors. Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated JLL is one such lucrative avenue. […]

Yesterday, Yahoo! YHOO rolled out certain upgrades to the Yahoo Messenger service. Apart from sending photos and animated GIFs, users will now be able to “unsend” messages and photos. In fact, the revamped messenger, available for mobile, web and on Yahoo Mail, will have 44 language options for web users. […]

The Dow moved lower during a holiday shortened week, dragged down by disappointing holiday sales results, the oil price slump and ECB’s lower-than-expected monetary stimulus. The index declined on Monday, dragged down by declines in consumer and healthcare stocks. […]

Markets gained over the week following speculation that China’s government will take additional steps to boost the economy. The Shanghai Composite Index gained on Monday after financials helped the benchmark index recover during the last hour of the day’s trading session. The benchmark index moved up on Tuesday following speculation that the government will introduce further stimulus measures to boost the economy […]

Thanks to the rapid growth in e-commerce and Internet sales, retail real estate investment trust (“REIT”) industry is going through a sieving phase, with only the most competent firms managing to survive the race. Amid such intense competition, few big-shot mall owners like Simon Property Group Inc. SPG has been able to withstand the pressure. […]

Per media reports, independent energy company Devon Energy Corporation DVN is currently into discussions to acquire Felix Energy LLC, a smaller operator in the oil and gas space, for nearly $2 billion. Devon has been doing pretty well through investments and development of its Permian Basin and Eagle Ford Shale acreage, which will play a vital role to meet its new oil production year-over-year growth target of 31% to 33% in 2015. […]

In order to boost its public safety software portfolio, Motorola Solutions Inc. MSI is set to buy U.K.-based communications operator Airwave Solutions Ltd for 817.5 million pounds ($1.24 billion). The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2016, subject to regulatory approvals […]

In an effort to penetrate further in India, one of the fastest growing insurance markets of Asia, Sun Life Financial Inc. SLF has announced an agreement to increase its ownership in Birla Sun Life Insurance Company Limited ("BSLI"). Sun Life will increase its stake from the current 26% to 49% by purchasing additional BSLI shares from Aditya Birla Nuvo Limited for a total price of INR16.64 billion (approximately C$340 million). […]

On Dec 4, 2015, we updated our research report on Western Union Co. WU . […]

A supplier of semiconductor components to defense, aerospace, industrial and communications markets, Microsemi Corporation MSCC has entered into a partnership with Intrinsic-ID, a provider of cyber physical security solutions based on physically unclonable functions (PUFs) to develop a secure boot solution for mission critical electronic systems. The solution, basically intended for electronic systems in government, aerospace and defense applications, is a new way to create a comprehensive secure boot process, from silicon to the system level. It provides users with control and protection over provisioning at each start-up of sensitive boot code into programmable components such as Altera & Xilinx XLNX field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and system-on-chips (SoCs). […]

The manufacturer of fuel cell power plants, FuelCell Energy, Inc. FCEL announced its plan to go for a reverse stock split, effective immediately. However, the announcement did not go down well with its investors as the shares lost 7.9% in aftermarket trade to close at 75 cents. […]

SunPower Corp. SPWR has started construction of Boulder Solar, a 100-megawatt (MW) AC solar power plant in the Eldorado Valley of Boulder City, NV. The company is constructing the Boulder Solar power plant, which is expected to be operational in 2016, on approximately 600 acres of land. […]

Shares of food company Tyson Foods Inc. TSN reached a 52-week high of $51.84 on Dec 3 following the announcement of its fourth quarter fiscal 2015 results on Nov 23. […]

E-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. 's AMZN announced that its most affordable Fire tablet, the Fire 7, is now available in China and is priced RMB 499 ($78). The Fire 7, launched in September initially in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan, France, Italy, and Spain, comes with a display of 7 inches (17 cm) diagonally, 1.3GHZ quad-core processor, rear and back cameras and 8GB of internal storage expandable up to 128GB through microSD. […]