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Home UK World Companies Markets Global Economy Lex Lex Live Lex In depth Lex Video Best of Lex About Lex Lex Biographies Lex on Mobile Lex by Email Subscribe to Lex Tools Tools › About Us Topics Portfolio FT clippings Alerts hub Email briefings MBA rankings Newslines FT Lexicon Mobile Currency converter ePaper Executive jobs FT press cuttings Social Media hub Economic calendar Comment Management Personal Finance Life & Arts LEX IN-DEPTH Pimco: Allianz has done well out of Bill Gross’s firm but after 15 years should consider spinning it off 1:31pm Margins: the new normal ©Dreamstime Bears have been waiting for profit margins to revert On Wall Street Stocks at records yet recovery is elusive Trading Post Seasonal trends depend on momentum Andrew Smithers The persistent myth of deleveraging Little fanfare as S&P 500 passes 2,000 ©Bloomberg 12:46pm US banking: too small to fail Small US banks are punching above their weight Lex US banks – living wills Sheila Bair Languishing solutions ©Bloomberg 11:56am Russia: faute de mieux You don’t have to own an oil company to invest in Russia Rouble hits record low against the dollar Rosneft asks Moscow for $42bn ©Bloomberg Aug 29, 2014 Tesco: it really is that bad Retailer’s shares are not cheap yet Big Tesco shareholder reduces stake Tesco vows ‘decisive action’ after profit warning Fashion the new front in supermarket wars ©Bloomberg Aug 29, 2014 Media M&A: digital divide Media legends are missing out on transition to digital video Twitch’s Zen geek finds inner chief Inside Business Amazon’s play for Twitch poses a dilemma ©AFP Aug 29, 2014 Wanda/Tencent/Baidu: deals on wheels Competition for mobile shoppers’ spending is getting fierce Baidu follows Google steer with self-driving car Lex Baidu – biding its time Baidu joins China mobile payments race ©Getty Aug 29, 2014 Guns: jammed cylinder US gunmakers feel heat from supply chain idiosyncrasies Smith & Wesson slide weighs on gun makers Smith & Wesson hit by bribery penalty ©Getty Aug 28, 2014 Paramount Group: NY or SF Focus is on NYC and SF, unfortunately in that order Office owners ‘throw away’ tax relief Crown Estate in £345m China tie-up ©Getty Aug 28, 2014 Pernod Ricard: flagging spirits Currency movements and China shrinkage hit drinks maker Pernod Ricard hit by China crackdown Pernod rides shocks better than rival ©EPA Aug 28, 2014 QE in Europe: yield to wurst Will it be Bunds or bank stocks as central bank action nears? Lex Live blog Priced to please Everyone likes to feel a little warm and fuzzy on the first day of a public listing. That’s why IPOs are traditionally priced slightly below demand, guaranteeing a nice first-day “pop”. But a look at first-day price changes shows something surprising: the first day pop has actually fallen over the past 20 years: Some companies want the good publicity of a rising share price. But as Lex has pointed out this also means companies are losing out on potential fundraising. Over the past decade, the total positive change in companies’ market cap during their first day of listing was $27.7bn . The total negative change (for companies whose share price fell on their first day) was just -$1.5bn , according to data compiled from Capital IQ. That’s more than $26bn in net lost proceeds to the companies . Not exactly a reason to pop open the champagne. Continue reading: Priced to please Cisco subtraction So Cisco is laying off 6,000 people. But will headcount actually go down? Cisco says no: The layoffs won’t cause a net reduction in jobs because it will still be hiring people. Forecasts about workforce changes are rarely accurate, anyway — as a glance at the past few years shows. Here’s a chart of what Cisco said would happen in its August earnings calls each year, versus what actually happened: Continue reading: Cisco subtraction Unclogging the pipes at Kinder Morgan Last week, we pointed out one of the most exquisite slides we had seen all year in an investor presentation. Simply by spinning off its copper and fiber assets into a REIT, the telecom company Windstream believed its stock would rocket by 73 per cent. Alas, it is only up 7 per cent since then. On Monday, Kinder Morgan, remarkably, came up with the mirror image set of slides . Kinder would consolidate its empire of natural gas pipelines by dissolving its tax-advantaged master limited partnership (MLPs are analogous to its REITs in that they don’t pay corporate level tax). It would also consolidate all companies into a regular old corporate tax-paying C-corporation. Continue reading: Unclogging the pipes at Kinder Morgan Big game hunters Big, high profile M&A deals get the fattest headlines and fattest fees. But are there enough of them to sustain an M&A advice business? Here are two slides from a recent investor presentation from Greenhill & Co., a publicly-traded boutique investment bank, on the topic (click to enlarge): Continue reading: Big game hunters Offers Executive Appointments Global executive jobs Register today for free job alerts JOIN THE BUSINESS ELITE More people at the top read the FT* *FT has grown in every major readership survey FT Subscription Subscribe to the FT today Subscribe now for complete and unrestricted access LEX VIDEO You need JavaScript active on your browser in order see this video. 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