WWW - Posts tagged NikkoCordial at BloggingStocks

NikkoCordial posts

Longleaf investing abroad

Posted Jun 11th 2007 3:25PM by Eric Buscemi (RSS feed)
Filed under: Dell (DELL), Bargain Stocks

Longleaf Funds, a long-term track record of excellent results, was featured in Barron's mutual fund section over the weekend. What is Mason Hawkins investing in? His largest position is in Dell Inc (NASDAQ: DELL) equaling 7.6% of holdings.

Japan was also a big theme with investments in NipponKoa Insurance, Olympus, Nikko Cordial, being all top holdings. Other Asian holdings included Chueng Kong and Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited (NYSE: FFH).

Mexico-based Cemex Sab De CV (NYSE: CX) also topped the list along with European holdings Renault and Nestle.

Regarding U.S. holdings, in addition to Dell, Ingersoll-Rand Company Limited (NYSE: IR) was at the top of the list.

One theme was certain, Hawkins is allocating a lot more of his capital outside the United States. Prior to this decade, Longleaf and Hawkins were not big international investors.

Citigroup goes to Japan

Posted Mar 6th 2007 9:25AM by Douglas McIntyre (RSS feed)
Filed under: International Markets, Deals, Competitive Strategy, Citigroup Inc. (C), Japan

Forget about the problems of Citigroup's (NYSE:C) stock price and cost control. The big bank may not have time to fix its internal problems. It is still busy buying other companies.

Today, Citi announced that it would buy big Japanese brokerage firm Nikko Cordial for $10.75 billion. It may be a good deal for the Japanese company, but, by all accounts, Nikko is doing poorly. The company has had serious accounting problems. According to Reuters: "Nikko has admitted forging documents and booking about $300 million in excess profits over two years."

The problems at Nikko raise an interesting question for Citi and begs the question of whether this is another misstep by its management. Why won't Citi seek a joint venture or ownership state in Nomura or Daiwa Securities, two highly successful brokerages in Japan?

Citi CEO Charles Prince has enough trouble at the big financial services firm that he does not need to take up resources cleaning up a mess half way around the world.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.