The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung today headlined a statement by the Russian Embassy in The Hague which I want to share with you. It reads: “Russia would not be so stupid as to again use Novichok during the World Cup games there.” Germans are generally better at reading Dutch than those with different mother tongues, as in this case.

During World War II, however, different pronunciation rules between the two countries made it easy for the Dutch Resistance to catch the Germans in their midst, by asking them to name the Amsterdam Airport, Scheveningen. In Dutch it sounds like Skeveninkh, while in German it's Shevening.

But in this case I trust that the FAZ correctly translated from the Dutch. And that the Russian Embassy more or less confirmed that the first round of poisoning aimed at a former British spy and his daughter was done by the Russians.

The latest victims in the Salisbury area of Britain include a “skip digger”, someone who looks for valuables in a garbage dump, who may have found something he shared with his girlfriend, the other person poisoned with novichok this week.

Presumably when Pres. Trump meets Putin and Theresa May some of this will be cleared up. Mexico is in favor today with the Bolsa up 2.6%, perhaps because one of his first moves as future president was to announce that penalties for marijuana use will be reduced under the Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador administration. One of our shares, a Mexican multinational corporation which dominates its industry rose 4.8%. 

Because this is a day with little news, and what there is ambiguous, I made it my business to read the Brazilian, German and French papers today. I also learned that beleaguered Deutsche Bank (DB) may be bailed out, not by being allowed to buy the government's stake in Commerzbank, but by a move on its rival by JPMorgan Chase. Someone has to take the place of China's HNA which owns 9.9% of the country's leading bank. Speculation today has boosted DB's beaten down share price by over 3%, but I am not buying.

We used to own CRZBY which unlike its larger rival mostly did straight deposit-taking and lending. Chase, where my mother worked for years during David Rockefeller's tenure, really is a rival to DB (why my German-born mother was at the Chase Plaza, then-HQ, in the first place.) I don't think the Bundesbank would welcome Jamie Dimon but I may be wrong.

Ambiguous too is the resignation of Scott Pruitt. Despite his departure for excessive self-dealing even by the current Administration's standards, he leaves in place his successor and his boss who are also climate-change deniers and stalwart supporters of burning filthy coal to generate power.

The other ambiguous news is the US unemployment data, showing both more people employed and, because more people are also seeking jobs, more people unemployed. The other ambiguous news is how stock markets are treating the start of the biggest trade war ever which began overnight between the US (the instigator) and China (the unworthy victim.)

Grupo Bimbo,which I bought as a bit of joke on World Women's Day, is the stock which rose 4.8% in Mexican trading today. Because of the peso gaining it should be even higher in US trading. Alas, GRBMF, the world's largest bakery group, trades on the pink sheets and market-makers in New York hope to get to the beach before the thunderstorms hit. So on Friday was still at Thursday's price of $2.03.

Japan's Mitsui is looking to increase its stake on iron ore producer Vale of Brazil, a victim of the metals glut, which doesn't apply to materials-short Japan. Under its new unified listing the former powerhouses of the state sector are no longer able to order the board around, with the BNDES now only holding 5.51%, part of which Mitsui may nab. Iron ore is at a 7 mo low and VALE has some of the lowest cost mines. Vale gained 2.1% on the news.

Fellow Brazilian Cosan via its Raizen Energia (RE) 50:50 ethanol jv with Royal Dutch Shell (ultimately British) is making a bid for Usina Açucareira Frulan SA of Santa Barbara d'Oueste (Brazil) a leading supplier of ethanol from sugar-cane. Last fall sugar harvest shortfalls led RE to shut in 2 mills in the São Paulo area for 2 years. The RE partners want to buy 2/3 of Frulan and São Martinho, a private company owned by LJN Participações, will own 1/3, pending CADE government antitrust approvals. LJN bought São Martinho from Petrobras, the Brazilian state firm which bribed many of the country's politicians, for the equivalent of $137 million in Feb. this year. São Martinho will boost its crush capacity by a third.

The parties will pay a total of Reais 118 million, 2/3 from RE, to own the Frulan mill canefields which grow 700,000 metric tonnes/y and the mills which process a million MT of sugar-cane per year. Sugar-cane and waste can be used to make bio-diesel fuel or gasoline With the Real at about 3.9 US cents, that means the cost to CZZ is trivial, $6 million. Sugar and ethanol are less cheap than last year.

RE this spring bought the Shell-branded Argentina gas stations and convenience stores which mostly sell gasoline and diesel fuel at world prices, not discounted as diesel now is in Brazil.

Nokia of Finland is doing another deal to bring its 5G platform to the market, not quite as notorious as working in Khartoum, Sudan, but still provocative. NOK will work with China Mobile to develop machine learning and artificially intelligence for cellphones. CHL, formally China Mobile Communications Corp is Mainland China's largest phone company and the world's largest cellular operator. Its attempts to differentiate its own technology from the rest of the world did not survive 3G. Its Hong Kong sub is listed on the Hang Seng and has an ADR. CM offers mobile telecommunications on the disputed Spratly Islands and also operates the Zong phone company in Pakistan.

If moving to New Jersey makes economic senses of course a company will move to Parsippany. And that is what Teva is doing, shutting its US HQ in Philadelphia in response to a state tax break from Trenton worth $40 million plus estimated savings of $247 million over the next 20 years. TEVA is Israeli and has debts to repay (including a convertible bond we own in addition to its common shares) .
 

Standard Life-Aberdeen's investment sub is creating a real Cuba Fund, unlike the one with that ticker symbol which stands for US closed-end Herzfeld Caribbean. SLFPY is taking over the management of CEIBA Investments, which owns stock in hotels and commercial property in Cuba. It will invest £100 million to take control of CEIBA, whose current capital is ~£130 million, and retain its existing management under CEO Sebastiaan Berger. Then SLFPY will list CEIBA on the London Stock Exchange where it will be the first Cuba entity there.