Research and Insights

When companies seek to conserve cash they reduce capital expenditures. This can lead to reduced productivity. Customer financing enables companies to increase their productivity, profitability and cash flow.

Financing a football club comes with its set of risks including bankruptcy. Mark Bladon analyses a club’s sources of income, its main overheads, traditional sources of financing and establishes why creativity is required to protect a bank’s downside risk.

SA has seen the rand weaken on a recent slew of bad news ranging from Moody’s rating downgrades of both SA’s and its key corporates’ debt (see “Ratings update: Moody’s indicates further downgrades may follow yesterday’s downgrade of SA government bonds”, 28th September 2012, contact details below), S&P’s downgrade, violent strike action and increased political tensions, to worsening global economic activity and renewed concerns over the euro zone debt crisis.

In the current environment of historically low interest rates and yields, investors would do well to consider the benefits of dividend investing. Overtime, dividends have contributed a large proportion of the total return from equities, while the dividend component of the total return has also proved far less volatile. With the debate still raging over whether central bank actions around the world to stimulate global economic growth will ultimately prove inflationary, the potential for dividend growth as a ward against inflation should also be considered.

“Citius, Altius, Fortius” (faster, higher, stronger) is the Olympic motto, encapsulating the three performance factors for an Olympian. With the Olympic Games in London about to start, we examine some of the key performance factors based on demographics and economics, and come up with three of our own: richer, more populous, more specialised.