Today after Eid El-Fitr I have hopes of getting my notebook computer repaired here in the East End by my friendly Pakistani expert. I managed to break the monitor screen when I dropped it Sunday. He is working on getting the spare parts needed from Samsung and then installing it on my computer. I am terribly dependent on technology as I wander around Europe.
When I went yesterday afternoon to the computer shop, the area was full of people dressed to the nines to go to parties celebrating the end of Ramadan. The level of smartness and cost in ladies' outfits was wide, with some of them meeting the sophisticated standards for bridesmaids in a US wedding. The men were more boring, either in long white robes or Bangladeshi suits, but one little fellow barely more than 5 was dressed in a perfect British 3-piece white suit.
Many little girls barely older than he was both had their hair covered (although they were well below puberty) and also wore adult makeup, lipstick and mascara, which I found jarring. This may represent a compromise between their old-fashioned mothers and their new British freedom. One of the things that struck me most was that almost everyone was speaking English. This is not Londonistan but London.

There are no more debtors' prisons even in Dickens' city, but there are certainly a couple of countries now eligible for incarceration. First is Argentina which is deliberately going into default because Cristina Fernandez doesn't want to deal with the hold-outs on the earlier debt extensions. A last-ditch set of talks may yet find an out, but don't hold your breath. Meanwhile Russia's bill was set by the Hague Permanent Court for Arbitration at $50.2 bn plus another $60 mn in legal costs. This was for the expropriation of former shareholders in Yukos (part of the Putin plot to remove Mikhail Khodorkovsky from challenging his regime). The ruling was by three judges, one of them named by Russia.

More from Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal, Mexico, China, and Britain. I completed the performance tables which I was working on Sunday when the notebook crashed to the floor but I cannot post it from the desktop computer I am reduced to working with while it gets fixed.

*Fibra Uno reported net Q2 net income of NMP1.722 bn and adjusted funds from operations of 1.197 bn,up 108.8% and 109.3% respectively. FBASF is growing phenomenally even without the future Samara buy which is plans to complete after various approvals from independent advisors and regulators. Revenues were strongest in retail which accounts for nearly 57% of its real estate portfolio, up 13% on a same store basis, and up 4.4% per sq meter.
The commercial occupancy reate is 94.7%. The other properties are industrial plants and warehouses, ~28% of the holdings; and offices, ~16%, with occupancy rates of 95.7% and 87.9% respectively.
Net income was NMP 1.722 bn but nipped by overheads and by a NMP 333.2 mn foreign exchange loss, vs a prior year forex gain, mainly because of the rising peso. Part of the was offset by VAT rebates.
It managed to sharply cut maintenance costs by 41% on existing properties. Interest costs rose 10.3% to NMP 563.2 mn mainly related to dollar borrowing.
FBASF has dollar denominated loans from Deutsche Bank, which helped its launch, GE Real Estate Mexico, and most recently, MetLife, from the Hilton acquisition. While Fibra Uno likes to buy properties for stock it also assumes sellers' debt. These bonds and other peso borrowings have covenants limiting total debt levels and sale of assets by FBASF. In Q2 it was the 2nd largest REIT borrower in the world.
For Q2 it declared a dividend of 40.114 pesos/sh, down from the prior year, and only 32 pesos of the total came from earnings in the quarter. This may be a yield stock but it is not without considerable risks.

*Also reporting today, Yandex, a Dutch operator of search in Russia, Ukraine, and Turkey which reports in rubles, came up with revenues up 32% in Q2 of 9.2 bn rubles, or $361.5 mn. However, profits were nowhere as good as before and YNDX offset the heft traffic acquisition and Yandex money operations to get income to rise by 23% year over year, to RUR 7.73 bn, which still is a huge margin on sales. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation hit RUR 5 bn or $149.5 mn. Net income fell 18% y/o/y to RUR 2.9 bn, still an amazing third of sales. The net income margin was 19.7% and the adjusted net income margin even higher.
Yandex faces future problems with its revenues paying off. Its text ads, placed by people, are growing fastest but the display ads placed by businesses are more profitable. But Russians use the site mostly for plain old notices without lots of color and glitter, a mark of the country's poverty and also its lack of marketing skills dating back to Communist days. 

*The new ticker symbol for Coca Cola Hellenic Bottling, a UK-listed company now incorporated in Switzerland, but with Greek Cypriot roots, is CCHBY. It delisted its ADR. I am meeting with a rep of the firm tomorrow but this is now moot.

*The trial in China of the two investigators for GlaxoSmithKline will open August 8, an auspicious day in Chinese numerology. They were called in to find the whistleblower accusing GSK of bribing doctors and hospitals and violated Chinese privacy laws in their detective work. Since the lady half of the detective company is an American of Chinese heritage, maybe the double 8 will help her. Her husband is British. The trial will be open to foreign observers, a change from the original plan. Now Microsoft is China's target.

*Also from Britain, the withdrawal of GBP4 bn from a client's managed portfolio in the last quarter cut the Aberdeen Asset Mgm's level of assets under management to GBP 322.5 bn and its emerging markets equity AUM to GBP 200 mn. This was a stock I considered buying, the manager of among other funds, our Aberdeen Asia Pacific Income and Aberdeen Global Income Funds, FAX and FCO. AAM also bought out Scottish Widows Investment Partnership earlier this year and is under threat from Scottish Independence moves. It has lost 13% YTD plus a further 3% yesterday.

*Martin Ferera followed up on my quickie on the H1 results of Reckitt Benckiser yesterday. He points out that the RBGLY pharma sub generated the losses I reported while the rest of the company made gains of 4% in sales to GBP 4.3 bn and pre-tax profits up 16% at GBP 1.04 bn, both at constant currencies.
There is an awkward misfit between the drug arm which is the maker of Suboxone, a heroin substitute, and its main business of footware, condoms, household products, and cleaning and washing lines. But the valuation of the pharma arm had proven difficult. The Financial Times today says estimates range from GBP 1.1 bn to 4.3 bn, or somewhere between 4x earnings and 18x earnings. Pick a number. Or better yet, find another seeker of tax inversion who will buy us out when the spinoff is completed. The new pharma holding, whose Suboxone sales are almost all to the US, will be UK listed in sterling. A demerger could be derailed if a buyer came along with something like GBP4 bn, but that hasn't happened in the last 18 months since the pharma arm was put on the block.
RBGLY expects to see profits overall rise ~5% this year despite relatively flat sales of its non-drug lines, thanks to margin expansion and lower taxes. Martin reports that Merrill Lynch set a target price of GBP 58 for Reckitt which closed yesterday at 52 and a fraction, up GPB 1.35 on the half figures.