The IPO stalls

The Glazer family launched its IPO on Wall street in a scene resembling a sketch from the league of gentlemen, one look at their ugly mushes would scare investors off, never mind their flawed business model. As the Economist put it, compared with this, Michael Glazer's facial hair seems attractive.

Andersred lays out the reasons why the Glazer's blatant personal money grab, won't benefit Manchester United for the next two years. It won't really change that much after that will it, but then, do they really care. Given the universal slating the IPO received from the world's press it was no suprise to see the IPO set below the rate they'd hoped at $14, hopefully it's set to slide towards $10 or even below. Whilst Fergie may or may not have been economical with the actualite, when he protested that he wouldn't benefit financially from the IPO, it was noticeable that Gill blustered yesterday, without actually denying that he would, what a slimeball.


Reading Michael Moritz again in this Daily beast article, i don't think MUST and the anti-Glazer cause has a better advocate. In fact he makes a brilliant case against leveraged buy outs and socially useless finacial system as described by Adair Turner a few years back in general.

Back to the issue we all wish we could concentrate on, the football. If anybody thought a midfield signing was going to appear out of the blue, the news Paul Scholes hasn't travelled to Hannover, should disabuse such wishful thinking. I suppose you could never wrap Paul Scholes in cotton wool, but Fergie would probably love to.
Ferdinand told the official site how great it was for the younger lads to play and train with the maestro on the recent pre-season tour. The man himself wants United to match the standards set by City who he thinks played the best football last season and deserved the title.
I don't think there is that much between the squads, if we can actually stay reasonably injury free. I'll say it, getting Vidic back is like signing a new player and i like the look of our two signings so far, Powell looks very promising and i can see Kagawa being a contender fro player of the season, two footed, vision, goals, i think he will be the complete package.
Despite being owned by the Adams family of the financial world i still fancy us to be in the hunt for trophies and have a sneaking feeling that we will regain the title from our six fingered cousins across town.

Will Hutton reviews three books exploring the alternative's to a successful future economic policy for the country and for the global economy. I will be reading Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson's latest book, he's not really a radical thinker, his is answer is classic post war social democracy. Not that there's anything wrong with that, that was a far more prosperous time for the mass of the population at large as opposed to the top 10% to 1% of today.But you can never just rewind the clock, the future will hopefully mix the best bits of the 45-75 era with the more socially liberal era since and look at the ideas exponded by the Skidelsky's.
Jonathan Portes asks which macro-economists are worth listening to, and argues that those that are able to demonstrate testable predictions, based on data and then to have been proved right after the event.
Anatloe Kaletsky joins in with Simon Jenkins long standing argument that instead of using quantitive easing to improve bank balance sheets, it should be used for the people instead. Of course it would be more socially just, would probably work, short term anyway, but with Mervyn King as bank of England and Gideon the chancellor, pigs will fly before this idea takes off.

Howard Jacobson salutes the Australian art critic Robert Hughes who passed away last week, i haven't read any of his book, but i have seen some of his TV work which i loved. I will have to get around to reading the Fatal shore, that really does sound like a must read book.

The brilliant Julia Davis has a new series airing on TV, trouble is it's on Sky Atlantic, and i haven't got that. Oh well i suppose we'll have to find a way around that.