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Sep 25, 2009

Foreign Investor warnings from Oppenheimer and Co.

Story PictureA report earlier this week from the U.S. based financial advisory group Atlanta International, a division of Oppenheimer & Company, is sounding the alarm for investors. Atlanta International is known for their innovative work in securities research on companies from around the world listed on the U.S. stock exchange. The article on Belize titled “Multiple Caution Flags” focused on three main areas of concern. The first caution is that Taiwan is no longer seeking full membership into the United Nations. Taiwan has befriended and generously funded many small countries like Belize. The only gesture that these nations offer Taiwan is their vote for support at the UN. Since Taiwan has abandoned its membership bid, it is doubtful that Taiwan will continue to donate so generously. The report points out that Taiwan has made fifty million U.S. dollars in commitments to Belize spread over 2008 and 2009. A dip in those Taiwan aided programs in the future would have a serious dent on government’s coffers. The second caution flag is titled “Has Chavez become contagious?” a not so polite reference to Venezuela’s president and to Belize’s hostile takeover of Telemedia. This afternoon News Five spoke via phone to Carl Ross of Oppenheimer, the man who penned the report.

Jose Sanchez
“With regards to the Telemedia takeover, what is the message does that send to foreign investors? What’s the message?”

Carl Ross, Ph.D., Managing Director of Investments, Oppenheimer (Via Phone)
“The message is negative at least on the surface. And I know there are multiple sides to the story. It is not just one side to the story. But anytime you see a nationalization of a private company done in such a rapid manner in parliament the way it was done, you know, I think it sends a negative signal. If foreign investors get that message, you’re gonna see investments, foreign investments especially dry up.

That is a lot money for a Belizean investor or a group of investor to come up with. It’s an enormous amount of money. And B, if you found a possible foreign buyer for that, I think the foreign buyer would need a great deal of assurances that the rate structure and the legal structure was solid, ok. Because that is a lot of money to pay out for a company in Belize that was recently taken over by the government where there might be some litigation still outstanding. All I’m trying to say is, it’s going to be more difficult that it otherwise might been to find a buyer for that company in the current context, the manner in which the company was taken.

Everybody realizes that domestic perception is different from foreign perception. But I think that when we are in an economy that is increasingly integrated and you know we’re obviously seeing that now with the crisis that we have in the U.S. impacting Belize and other countries. When you’re in a global economy that is so integrated, you can’t really ignore the foreign perceptions and you can’t engage in policy domestically that is strictly for the domestic political constituency. You know, and I think countries that do that tend to receive less foreign investment.”

Ross says that if government makes decisions based on domestic political considerations, the country’s economy could be in trouble. So who is Carl Ross and why is his analysis of the country important to foreign investors? Prior to joining Oppenheimer, Ross was a Senior Managing Director and head of emerging markets fixed income research at the New York Based Bear, Stearns & Co. His research on Latin American and Caribbean countries has been recognized as industry-leading.


Viewers please note: This Internet newscast is a verbatim transcript of our evening television newscast. Where speakers use Kriol, we attempt to faithfully reproduce the quotes using a standard spelling system.

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4 Responses for “Foreign Investor warnings from Oppenheimer and Co.”

  1. moonecock says:

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  2. phothSitesode says:

    To those who like and comprehend this career, Rupert Murdoch stands out as the world’s biggest newspapersman and its finest editor. Amid all those who have created newspapers, a unusual and exquisite expertise, he’s with out equal. He has defined lacking query all present day tabloid journalism but arguably also a lot of its broadsheet trade. This might seem peculiar, but he isn’t prejudiced in that sense and does not discriminate somewhere between brief, fun-loving newspapers and tall, prudish types.

    He owns Britain’s most downmarket newspaper (The Sun) and its most upmarket 1 (The Moments). He owns America’s most downmarket regularly (New york Submit) and its most upmarket one particular (The Wall Street Journal). He owns Australia’s most downmarket newspaper (The Regularly Telegraph) and its most upmarket one (The Australian).

    If India didn’t have paranoid newspaper ownership laws, he would own and operate superior (and bawdy) newspapers right here.

    Of these titans, prominent by very last name on your own, who have owned newspapers for like with the printed phrase, Murdoch is Kronos, with far more strength, more results and even more skill than Rothermere or Northcliffe or Hearst.

    News globe: (properly) Murdoch chatting for the press on fifteen July; and also Ny city office of your Wall Street Journal, owned by Murdoch. Picture: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP & Mary Altaffer/AP

    News community: (appropriate) Murdoch chatting for the press on 15 July; and therefore the Ny city workplace in the Wall Road Journal, owned by Murdoch. Image: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP & Mary Altaffer/AP

    I think it was Hearst who called journalism “the stuff among the ads”. Murdoch cared about this stuff much more than he did the ads.

    Murdoch’s money is made in television-BSkyB in Britain, Fox Information and the Fox Network in America, and Star in Asia. And it is made in movies-he owns 20th Century Fox, producers of Avatar and X-Men. But his love is his newspapers.

    Also Read Aakar Patel’s previous Lounge columns

    It is not a romantic cherish. It is lusty, groping enjoy. He has sentimentally invested in newspapers against the will of his company Information Corp.’s investors. He subsidized The Days for decades when it made enormous losses.

    The epithets people have used for him, in praise and in contempt, are linked to his editorial skills. In his book Full Disclosure, Andrew Neil referred to his former boss as “The Sun King”. Britain’s fabulous Private Eye magazine calls Murdoch “the Dirty Digger”.

    Given the provenance of Britain’s other newspaper proprietors-among whom are convicts (Lord Conrad Black who owned The On a daily basis Telegraph), pornographers (Richard Desmond of Daily Express) and KGB agents (Alexander Lebedev of your Independent and Evening Standard)-Murdoch’s editorial crimes are mild. One particular of his many rivals, Lord Black, admitted that Murdoch had actually improved the mighty Wall Road Journal after buying it.

    Tabloid journalism is more difficult than broadsheet journalism because an individual needs to create, to shape, to titillate, to outrage, to humour. Tabloids must try harder. It isn’t surprising that it is a tabloid, News belonging to the Globe, that has got Murdoch into trouble by using extreme means to secure a fantastic story.

    While not Murdoch we would have no “Page 3”. Not the piffle printed in Indian newspapers. The real Page 3, in The Sun, has a pretty girl baring her breasts to a grateful working-class reader, accomp- anied by a brief interview revealing something a little additional personal.

    Almost any clever headline you can think of that lives on in legend is from a Murdoch tabloid: “Headless body in topless bar”, “Kiss your Asteroid goodbye” (reporting a comet’s near-miss with earth), both from the newest York Submit. “Freddie Starr ate my hamster”, “GOTCHA” (when Thatcher’s Royal Navy sank the Argentinian battleship General Belgrano), both from The Sun.

    To a report that Australians were increasingly having children out of wedlock, Col Allan, an individual of Murdoch’s favourites, ran this splash: “A NATION OF BASTARDS”.

    This irreverence and perception of pleasurable comes to them from their master. Murdoch has had a very normal upbringing and does not take life too seriously-as witnessed by his grinning face when he landed in London to face the hacking allegations.

    A few years ago I read a book in which the author lands in 1950s Australia to meet the Murdochs, young Rupert and his father Sir Keith. They arrive in a pick-up truck, and he’s cheerfully asked to squeeze in around father and son. After lunch, Sir Keith sends Rupert off to buy a couple of ties. “We’re meeting the prime minister later,” he explains to his son.

    Of all the proprietors in the earth, only Murdoch sees the globe as a reporter would. Dining with presidents and monarchs, he would slip off to tip his editors to a story, however small. He regularly called the editors of his many newspapers to find out what was happening.

    When he was made editor of News of the Planet, Piers Morgan (who has now taken over Larry King’s CNN slot) said he would tremble at the thought of Saturday nights because Murdoch would call to find out what story he was running. The first issue, Morgan wrote in his book The Insider, was almost sunk till the photo desk gave him a picture of a naked man parachuting into Buckingham Palace. A clever sub-editor headlined the story “BARE HE GOES”, and Morgan was greatly relieved.

    On your own amid the world’s proprietors, Murdoch does not discriminate somewhere between journalists and MBAs. Only Murdoch has promoted editors to CEO-Rebekah Brooks at Information International, Uday Shankar at Star. The Times’ editor Robert Thomson went into the Wall Street Journal as publisher, before editing it.

    This aspect to Murdoch, that he’s really on their side, has escaped the journalists who so despise him.

    He has picked underprivileged, half-literate youngsters and made them editors-Brooks (who has no degree) at TheSun, Piers Morgan (who was a gossip columnist) at Information belonging to the Environment.

    Les Hinton, whom Murdoch made CEO of Dow Jones, worked with Murdoch for 52 years, starting at age 15 as a tea boy, then rising to become a reporter. Brooks herself was a secretary.

    From people around him, Murdoch elevated all who were enthusiastic and smart. No other qualification was needed, and that is as noble as it is wise.

    He has shipped editors around the marketplace. Aussie Col Allan from Sydney to Ny Publish, Thomson from London towards the Wall Road Journal, Scot Andrew Neil at the revered Sunday Times. He saved all proprietors in Britain, which today has the best newspapers within the world, by single-handedly destroying the oppressive unions. His courage is chronicled in Graham Stewart’s book History within the Days: The Murdoch Years. All this must be remembered when Murdoch is attacked, quite rightly, for the sins of his employees at Information with the Marketplace.

    In India we unique a vague ethic and a lower moral standard. The majority of us will not understand what the fuss about a newspaper hacking into someone’s voicemail for a story is.

    The Indian Express (for my money our best broadsheet) published transcripts it had been spoon-fed, hacked illegally by unknown enemies in the hapless and blackmailed Tatas, and called it investigative journalism.

    The Hindu trumpeted its exclusives, handed to it by WikiLeaks but hacked illegally and criminally. Much of that is also gossip but since it involves diplomats and not celebrities that makes it legitimate journalism.

    But Murdoch’s papers operated in nations which revere the rule of law. They broke regulations and they have paid heavily. The reason he’s under sustained fire is that the other proprietors envy him his good results. Most people hate him for revealing the true nature of his tawdry readers.

    Eighty years old this year, I hope Murdoch survives this final ordeal in his magnificent career. He’s the hero in the story of 20th century journalism.

    News television, with its dependence on the subject’s acquiescence, with its staged drama in addition to the weakness of its linear format, isn’t really journalism.

    Real journalism needs journals. Alot more than any man in history Rupert Murdoch created, owned and ran great types.
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