Pokémon Go — gotta catch ’em all out...
MORE red faces for the brokers, particularly the analysts covering Nintendo who were wrong-footed by the sudden success of Pokémon Go — and presumably haven’t got the time to chase imaginary creatures on their phones.
Top of the embarrassment league was Bank of America’s Hiroyasu Eguchi, who lowered his target on July 6, a day before the shares began a run that more than doubled their price. But this Monday, he was a buyer and his target was the highest of all the analysts covering the stock. The shares promptly retreated. “Pokémon Go is a game changer,” he told clients. Thanks for that.
IT never rains but it pours for Earl’s Court developer Capital & Counties, which alongside a struggling property market is now looking for a new finance chief as well after Soumen Das jumped ship to fellow property firm Segro. Das has been running the numbers since the former Liberty split into CapCo and intu (then Capital Shopping Centres) in 2010, although he’s recently broadened his role to take responsibility for CapCo’s Covent Garden properties. City chatter says Das — still only 39 — is nothing if not ambitious, and it won’t have escaped his notice that Segro’s chief executive David Sleath got the top job after a stint as finance director first.
BREXIT is getting the blame for everything — but Andrew Monk, chief executive of stockbroker VSA Capital, is taking things a bit far. In an update after his holiday in Cornwall, he said: “I blame Brexit for our team losing our last tennis match last night in the Middlesex leagues — their team didn’t have a single Englishman.” Stop causing such a racket.
TESCO has long been asked what it was going to do to make better use of its big stores, and now we have part of the answer — fill ’em with concessions of health chain Holland & Barrett. So what can Tesco customers look forward to? The store says snail gel — a skincare range made from the “mucus secretion” of snails — will be a big draw. That’ll sit nicely in the trolley with the bread and bananas.