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[DMorgan]

Question about balance sheets. Where does this liabilities number come from if borrowings and other current liabilities are n/a?

Click to see full-size image.

[nirvana]

Question about balance sheets. Where does this liabilities number come from if borrowings and other current liabilities are n/a?

Click to see full-size image.

Debentures perhaps ?

[doubleup]

It varies year to year so as an insurance company it might be something to do with claims?

[4KSuited]

It varies year to year so as an insurance company it might be something to do with claims?

Yes; likely to be an estimate of their claims exposure.

[Doobs]

Question about balance sheets. Where does this liabilities number come from if borrowings and other current liabilities are n/a?

Click to see full-size image.

Don't bother with that.  It is clearly a waste of time as it could well be any old gibberish.

Get the real report and accounts from the esure website.  In the accounts the liabilities will be split by type.  Then there are usually some notes to the accounts which will explain some of it.

[Doobs]

To be pedantic IIRC the way sharesave works is that you either get your money back or your shares THEN if you have the shares you can sell them immediately (or sell some keep some).  Don't think that the company can buy them back directly.

As they are only options until the point of purchase, there shouldn't be a negative effect ie shares are being bought and then sold or kept on the same day (though there might be some link with maturing options and share price, I suppose).

As far as keeping is concerned, it really depends on how much she has tied up in this investment in comparison to overall savings - eggs/basket.

Thanks, this would be at this moment in time the vast majority of her savings.  They took a bit of a dunt since buying a house.  

I'd expect we are likely to be debt free by March/April time and will only be servicing the mortgage and can then replenish the savings.  

Either way it's not going to cause massive hardship.  We toyed with the idea of using the share money for a new kitchen that will be money well spent.  

If you had £5000 would you put it all in esure shares?  If not then why would you not sell them?  Obviously wait for the bonus first.

Fwiw money for holiday, booze, new car is going to be way better than a new kitchen.  Your missus will disagree.

I'd happily pay off any debt first though.  No point in paying interest when you don't need to. 

[DMorgan]

Don't bother with that.  It is clearly a waste of time as it could well be any old gibberish.

Get the real report and accounts from the esure website.  In the accounts the liabilities will be split by type.  Then there are usually some notes to the accounts which will explain some of it.

Thanks for making that so clear

[Woodsey]

To be pedantic IIRC the way sharesave works is that you either get your money back or your shares THEN if you have the shares you can sell them immediately (or sell some keep some).  Don't think that the company can buy them back directly.

As they are only options until the point of purchase, there shouldn't be a negative effect ie shares are being bought and then sold or kept on the same day (though there might be some link with maturing options and share price, I suppose).

As far as keeping is concerned, it really depends on how much she has tied up in this investment in comparison to overall savings - eggs/basket.

Thanks, this would be at this moment in time the vast majority of her savings.  They took a bit of a dunt since buying a house.  

I'd expect we are likely to be debt free by March/April time and will only be servicing the mortgage and can then replenish the savings.  

Either way it's not going to cause massive hardship.  We toyed with the idea of using the share money for a new kitchen that will be money well spent.  

If you had £5000 would you put it all in esure shares?  If not then why would you not sell them?  Obviously wait for the bonus first.

Fwiw money for holiday, booze, new car is going to be way better than a new kitchen.  Your missus will disagree.

I'd happily pay off any debt first though.  No point in paying interest when you don't need to.  

Well you say that, but with interest at an all time low I think there are better options these days that sweating paying off debt first. Sure in normal times that is the best option but we aren't in normal times....

[Doobs]

To be pedantic IIRC the way sharesave works is that you either get your money back or your shares THEN if you have the shares you can sell them immediately (or sell some keep some).  Don't think that the company can buy them back directly.

As they are only options until the point of purchase, there shouldn't be a negative effect ie shares are being bought and then sold or kept on the same day (though there might be some link with maturing options and share price, I suppose).

As far as keeping is concerned, it really depends on how much she has tied up in this investment in comparison to overall savings - eggs/basket.

Thanks, this would be at this moment in time the vast majority of her savings.  They took a bit of a dunt since buying a house.  

I'd expect we are likely to be debt free by March/April time and will only be servicing the mortgage and can then replenish the savings.  

Either way it's not going to cause massive hardship.  We toyed with the idea of using the share money for a new kitchen that will be money well spent.  

If you had £5000 would you put it all in esure shares?  If not then why would you not sell them?  Obviously wait for the bonus first.

Fwiw money for holiday, booze, new car is going to be way better than a new kitchen.  Your missus will disagree.

I'd happily pay off any debt first though.  No point in paying interest when you don't need to.  

Well you say that, but with interest at an all time low I think there are better options these days that sweating paying off debt first. Sure in normal times that is the best option but we aren't in normal times....

Well it depends how much interest you are paying on the debt.  Even though base rates are at an all time low that doesn't mean debt interest is.  When I was younger base rates were much much higher and typical APRs were 20% or so on loans and credit cards.  Now base rates are tiny and typical APRs can be absolutely ludicrous. 

I don't know what you mean by normal times though.  There isn't going to be any reversion to mean, whatever that is.   I don't think there was ever a time where it was a good idea to hold all your savings in one share.

[Doobs]

Don't bother with that.  It is clearly a waste of time as it could well be any old gibberish.

Get the real report and accounts from the esure website.  In the accounts the liabilities will be split by type.  Then there are usually some notes to the accounts which will explain some of it.

Thanks for making that so clear

I looked at the real report and accounts and it as pretty hard to tally the figures to the summary in your picture.  I just think it is always sensible to look at the source figures rather than the summary on a financial website.  Not only does it stop glitches from the financial website setting the feed wrong then you can usually see why the company made 500 million this year rather than 100 million.  Of course reports and accounts cam be full of meaningless gibberish too.

[doubleup]

Question for the more initiated. 

My mrs has  a share save option with esure and she has £3600 locked in at a share price of £1.94 she has options of cashing out at the value of the shares just now, meaning she makes an additional £1700 or so.

Esure has recently announced a de-merger of GoCompare believe that is to happen in November. 

Price has steadily dropped over the last few weeks.  But share price much more favourable than earlier in the year. 

Would you hold onto the shares and ride this out or sell and take the £1700 profit.

Will the number of shares that get sold following the end of this particular share save have and impact on share price, the consensus amongst many of her colleagues is they are cashing out. 

ooops

http://investing.thisismoney.co.uk/quote/ESUR

Was the option adjusted for the demerger?  They usually are.  I had one that was reduced because of a rights issue.

[PokerBroker]

Got awarded the same number of GoCompare shares as esure Shares. 

[acegooner]

So my bet on gold has seriously unravelled in the last 2 days alone. Who would have thought a Trump victory would have stock markets rallying and commodities tanking.

Analysing things a bit closer, it's not surprising really. Trump wants to spend serious money on infrastructure projects, throw out Obamacare and lower taxes for US Corporates amongst other things. Clinton was seen as a threat to Biotech/Pharma because she wanted to attack the pricing of their drugs and therefore, over the last few days these stocks have outperformed.

I bought an Investment Trust called Biotech Growth, it has a strong long term track record. Biotech stocks have had a rough year, so I am hoping the change in administration in the US will give the sector a boost. On the subject of Investment Trusts I have been buying these as opposed to OEICS/Unit Trusts because the charges on Investment Trusts are generally lower. Also with Hargreaves Lansdown there is a cap on charges on IT's e £200 per annum. Even on a modest portfolio of around £50k that's a saving of around £300 over traditional funds. If you think of the compounding effect of these charges over several years, it makes a huge difference to performance.

On the shares front, and carrying on the Trump business friendly theme I bought into the Swiss Bank UBS. Their shares have fallen 75% over the last ten years in what has been a pretty unloved sector, but I think Trump will remove a lot of the red tape and shackles banks have had to deal with since the financial crisis. Yesterday, the shares surged 10% but I only caught the back end of this rise by the time I bought in. The other bank I bought Metro Bank is now sitting up 43% on the price paid, so very happy with that.

The thing is with investing, human nature can affect our decision making. I lost a few thousand quid on my gold holdings over the last two days, it's a bit unnerving seeing that happen. it can lead to knee jerk decisions but my conviction with gold is that it will in time hit $2000 an ounce and, therefore, I will ride out the turbulence.

Going back to Trump, with the trillions he is going to spend on the US infrastructure, the sector could well become a very lucrative/interesting place to be over the next few years. I just hope this toned down post election version of Trump continue. If he starts throwing punches at China in the form of tariffs then Global stock markets will not like that. That will be extremely dangerous for a post brexit Britain if every major/emerging economy pulls up the drawbridge and starts protecting their domestic companies.

[Rupert]

Beximco Pharmaceutical is a Bangladeshi based company that has recently received US FDA approval. The company is pretty unamazing other than that, however their London GDRs trade at around a 60% discount to their Bangladeshi price. I don't forsee any catalyst for this gap to close (short selling on the Bangladeshi exchange is not allowed) but in the meantime you get a pretty decent dividend yield (it's important for poor countries companies to pay dividends to give themselves credibility in the quality of their earnings) and a cheap price. They are the only Bangladeshi GDR listed in London. Plenty of Egyptian, Indian, Russian, and Korean GDRs trade at between a 20-30% discount and a small premium. Many trade close to the spot price of their native country.

LinkedIn is an online social media website that is suitable for employers and employees for recruitment and networking purposes. Microsoft have had an offer accepted to purchase LinkedIn at $196 a share. The merger is only waiting for the EU commission to accept it having had acceptance already in USA, Canada, and Brazil. It is extremely rare for a merger accepted in the USA to be denied by the EU. A company called SalesForce who also tried to acquire LinkedIn has objected to the merger, blah blah blah something about lack of innovation. There is no monopoly on user job data. Facebook could easily compete, Google could easily compete, hell even Amazon could get in that space if they wanted. There are numerous recruitment websites that could also step up - indeed being the UKs biggest, for example. I bought in cheaper, but the current price is $191.44 with the EU to decide between 22nd November and 10 days after which offers a very nice annualised return assuming all goes well.

Disclosure: long LON:BXP NYSE:LNKD

[Rupert]

Update:

BXP posted their first quarter results on Tuesday and are up 12% since then. The spread has come in somewhat, closing at 81.7 Taka in Dhaka today (£0.834) and £0.5168 in London representing a 38% discount. They remain my biggest holding.

Microsoft offered concessions to EU regulators today. The exact details are private, but it seems clear they are willing to jump through any hoops required to make the deal happen. LNKD is up to $191.36 which still offers a 2.4% spread on the $196 accepted offer. The commission put back the deadline to 6th December. EU updates are here. Solving 191.36 * [(1+x)^(20/365)] = 196 for x gives an annualised return over the 20 days of 54.8% if the merger completes. I remain a holder, the deal seemed exceptionally likely before, and even more so now.