The wall of worry proves to be of little challenge to the US market as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq climb. Overnight the Nasdaq came within a sniff of its recent all time high. The oil price continues to ease as investors are – for now – feeling more at ease with the fall out of the fighting in the Middle East. Brent oil was down 6% a barrel to $67.18.
- S&P 500 = +1.22%
- Nasdaq = +1.53%
- Aussie dollar up 0.7% to 65.04 US cents
- Iron down 1.1% to $92.85 US a tonne
Virgin’s back!
Virgin Australia Holdings Limited (ASX: VGN) returned to the ASX yesterday after a few years in the hands of private equity company, Bain Capital. Shares listed at $2.90 and rose to $3.23. It was great timing for the oil price to decline by 6%, but also, I believe there’s a lot of fund managers out there eager to support an IPO to help reinvigorate new listings.
Investors should always be wary of an IPO brought to the market by private equity, there’s a long checkered history of them. In this case though, Bain will hold on to it’s 40% stake in the airline, giving investors a bit of confidence in the quality of the company.
You can check out a history of companies Bain has held here, one of them being ASK JEEVES! That takes me back, simpler times. I popped across to modern Jeeves at ask.com and asked how long Bain will continue to be significant shareholders but it was useless. Bring back the butler!
There are nine board members for VGN, it would have made my day if one of them was called Jeeves. Bain has three of the nine board seats.
Cherry picking an absolute clanger, who can forget the efficient wealth destruction that was Boart Longyear.
The drilling company was floated by Macquarie – after it bought in from Bain – in 2007 for $2.35b and delisted in 2023 when it was bought for $543m by another private equity mob.
Those headline figures hide all the additional capital raising along the way too. In 2009 it raised $US698m.
We’ll keep up with the progress of the newly listed Virgin and genuinely hope it does well for shareholders. More IPO action is welcomed on the ASX. And, we hope Jeeves is healthy and happy in retirement.
As a test to see if anyone’s reading, feel free to “ask jeeves” me today on the chat in the bottom right, I’ll don my butlers uniform for the day.
