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Bucks, Balls and The Beautiful Game.

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     If there’s indeed a global sport in which money talks, football would be it. Lucrative contracts, sponsorship deals, stadium naming rights, multi-billion Euro television broadcast rights, player transfer fees and merchandise sales all portray the grip that money has gained on the game. And if there was money to be made, it was only a matter of time before private equity came calling.      Now typically, sports franchises don’t have the trappings of a typical private equity investment. Returns, after all, are difficult to come by. Sports franchises are expensive to acquire in the first place and need perennial cash infusions to meet their season expenses and contract bids. With revenue streams being largely lumpy and seasonal, building a steady non-game revenue stream needs heavy marketing and brand building. Broadcasting revenue and merchandising provide some stability and predictability, while fans’ club loyalty is a powerful adhesive. Even then, most teams swing from profits to
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The Curse of The Khiladi.

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     Fiscal year 2019 wasn’t a great time to be in the midcap space, to say the very least. Valuations suffered a reality check and several cases of corporate fraud emerged, even as the Indian growth story came to a screeching halt. Outliers, however, always save the day. Even in these turbulent times, there are some stocks out there that are consistent performers, outpacing the market in any era. Bollywood, in that regard, isn’t too different. While the recent past has seen several films led by the biggest names crash and burn, the industry does have its crop of bankable stars. And over the years, one man has stood tall above the rest.      Rajiv Hari Om Bhatia. The man who holds a Canadian passport and masquerades behind the screen name Akshay Kumar just so happens to be one of the most versatile actors out there, one who has undoubtedly reached the dizziest heights of stardom. Starting out as an action hero in the industry, Akshay Kumar has proven over two and a half decade
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The Beast From The East.

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     In the year 2018, even as animal spirits were running wild on the bourses and the world was approaching the longest economic expansionary span on record, Europe was buffeted by one storm after another. With the Brexit hurtling towards an ugly finish, political and social unrest in France, a resurrecting Italian debt crisis and an EU-wide industrial production and consumer confidence slump, Europe’s economic engines were sputtering. Germany, by far Europe’s financial powerhouse, was facing mounting troubles of its own. Caught in the crossfire of a China-USA trade war and being the epicentre of a refugee crisis, its own slowing economy was doing it little favours. Over the course of the year, several German companies egged Angela Merkel’s government to loosen its purse strings to resuscitate an economy that was on the precipice of a recession. At the start of 2018, the cold wave dubbed ‘The Beast From The East’ had blanketed Europe in thick snow and sent both temperatures and con
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Tata Crucible: The Taking Of Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory.

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"When thou seest a buzzer, thou shalt press it even if thou knowest not the answer."    - Unknown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb4BG0KXgwY
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Surging Bull, Hidden Bear.

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     On Wall Street, there’s a saying that goes a little something like this. ‘This time, it’s different.’ And quite frankly, this time, things are indeed different. A bull market that has run for well over a decade, while shrugging off anything that may even seem like an obstacle. An American President who once ranted about the market being in bubble territory during his election campaign, now claiming credit for America’s booming economy and even stating that the same surging markets would crash if he was impeached. The same American President engaging in a trade war with and taking on the biggest holder of his country’s debt. The same American President first threatening a nuclear war against and then palling up with the Hermit Kingdom’s Kim. And the other Kim’s husband pushing back his 2020 Presidential bid to 2024 and then claiming that he’s distancing himself from politics and completely focusing on ‘being creative’. It may be 2018 but nothing makes sense anymore.        On
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The Interloper.

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     Elliott. Perhaps no other name strikes as much fear into the heart of an underperforming or poorly managed company. For years, Paul Singer and his band of merry men have circled and attacked companies in play, companies in the midst of management overhauls and companies that have performed well below their full potential to take on the bidders and managements and enforce a higher offer price or change in management. All of Elliott’s targets seem to have had a common characteristic – a stock price well below where it should have been.      Elliott’s approach is opportunistic and far from friendly, to say the very least. It takes sizeable stakes in companies that are vulnerable and valued by the market at far lower levels than they deserve, and then launches public campaigns and attacks against the company managements, goading them to improve financial performance, sell underperforming divisions or non-core assets, buy back shares, pay more dividends and in extreme cases, ove
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Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

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     The closing decades of the twentieth century saw the predatory M&A culture at its zenith. Hostile takeovers, poison pills, Pac-Man defences, greenmail, activist investors, white knights, black knights and bidding wars were the order of the day, at a time when the American markets were on a major bull run. And then, somewhere along the way, after the East Asian financial crisis, the Dotcom Bubble and the Financial Crisis that spanned the last and first decades of the twentieth and twenty first centuries respectively, the world of M&A suddenly became a less exciting place to live in. Hostile takeovers lost their flavour, companies built up their defences, shareholder activism gained prominence in the wake of sloppy results at several companies and private equiteers preferred working with managements rather than trying to depose them, even as the world grappled with increased uncertainty over the past decade. But now, with the global markets gaining steam, big-ticket M&
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