I played hookey last weekend and did not do tables. The main reason was that for the second week in a row, Barron's failed to provide updates on net asset value of closed-end funds investing in foreign bonds or stocks. This creates problems for those withoutBloomberg machines (like me) and opportunities for those with them. I assume Rupert Murdoch can afford to keep a Bloomberg at hand, but maybe his sons are demanding higher salaries. The firm is letting journalists go, including several I know and respect and further reducing its coverage of foreign stocks.

This would not matter except for the fact that my brokerage account is now in quarantine for transfer to Interactive Brokers from e-trade which will halt all tracking and trading on foreign markets—even Canada!--next month. So I have lost another major source of information.

So instead of producing tables, I spent my weekend at a beach resort in Connecticut, celebrating my daughter-in-law's cousin's high school graduation and then Father's Day.

Pictures of Narendra Modi doing yoga appear to have helped the Bombay Stock Exchange rise on Monday.

On Monday we also had a relief rally in the euro, stocks from the common currency, and neighboring countries. The focus is on telcos because there is another mega-deal on the table in the highly competitive French cellular-cum-Internet-cum TV “quadruple play” industry. While there is a lot of spiteful anti-French chatter across the water, some of it justified by the country electing a Socialist as president, our chattering classes ignore that several French sectors are more competitive than their counterparts in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Another place where telco is highly competitive is south of the border – not in Mexico, but in Brazil.

Our long and murky history of breaking up AT&T for anti-trust reasons orked less well than the French or Brazilian decision to open up to what amounts to a free-for-all.

Voilà. The result is that the cheese-eating surrender monkeys beat us in quadruple.Their internet is faster and more widespread and cheaper than ours. And what's worse, so is Brazil's! Que chatice.

One cannot generalize about the bankruptcy of Hypo Group Alpe Adria, the bank used by Austrian neo-fascist Jeorge Haider which went bankrupt. And one cannot generalize about French capitalism either.

Our French plays include sectors where there is no real US alternative except on the Monopoly board, like waterworks. We also shifted funds into lands using the Euro this year, now gaining from the boost in the currency. Some of this will help our own faltering economy.

Fearing Greek default and exit, European companies hoarded cash, now an average of about 4.5% in the balance sheet of large companies across the pond. Meanwhile US multinational companies have run their cash down to 2% despite low interest rates and a declining dollar. MNCs needed it as the high dollar hurt their quarterly results, to keep up dividend payments and buybacks.

Some European cash will be deployed in takeovers on our side of the pond either by US companies which piled it up offshore to avoid taxes, or by legitimate European MNCs. I discuss sectors for this below.

One is telcos where I own a potential US target, Frontier Communication. Amazingly, it was down earlier. The battle for wireline assets to be combined with wireless has only begun. FTR is a buyer and eventual target for a European champ, while also gaining from US govt subsidies and low priced assets sales by the majors to boost our supposedly free-market competitive system. FTR also pays a huge 8.4% dividend, why it is in my IRA and should be in yours. I also own less-undervalued Comcast.

Another sector in play is power, where I own PPL, which just spun off Talen Energy(TLN), a likely takeover candidate for a European or British power firm.

Meanwhile, based on my happy experience with US Williams Cos, now under offer fromEnergy Transfer Equity, we reiterate our taste for pipelines in foreign lands selected by Martin Ferara. I expect that Monday's takeover news will rebound with our foreign pipeline outfits.

Be aware that the upgrades in share ratings and target prices coming out this morning were all prepared last week, before the European rally this morning.

*My tip is Cameco of Canada after Palladin, an Australian firm, won Ottawa permission to built a uranium mine in Newfoundland, where our webmaster hangs out. This ends the requirement that Canadian uranium mines be majority Canadian-owned. CCJ may become a takeover target. I was just bought out of my other uranium firm, Uranerz, URZ, and being a nuclear nut want to own more.

Drug Dealers

*GlaxoSmithKline divested again, selling to Pfizer its meningitis vaccines for ~$130 mn. I thought the GSK policy was to build up jabs while divesting OTC and cancer meds, but maybe the PFE offer was just too good to pass up. More below.

*Galapagos fell back a bit despite the news about its ulcerative colitis drug, and despite further euros 4.4 mn of buy-ins by exercising options, called warrants in Europe, by its brass, led by Onno van de Stolpe, CEO. GLPG of Belgium is now US listed but I own the Dutch share which trades as GLPGF. They move together. Its hot drug is filgotinib, a JAK1 inhibitor to treat rheumatoid arthritis and possibly other inflammatory diseases. It also signed a deal to work on CFTR genes which cause cystic fibrosis with AbbVie.

*Teva does not have a clear run in the migraine cure race. There are 2 rivals who also presented at the Headache Conference over the weekend.

*Benitec Biopharma did a 1:4 reverse split with its future ADR depositary Bank of NY-Mellon, and its new ticker symbol is BTBD and its cusip now 082053307. I reiterated my liking for the stock of the company developing distributed DNA gene therapy for hepatitis C and other illnesses in a note for Dick Davis Digest where I already recommended the share at the start of the year.

*Liberum Capital raised Reckitt Benckiser to buy. RBGLY.

Cross Selling Finance Products

*The biggest stock market rally was however in Germany, boosting our SAP by 3.4% for no good reason.

*The main beneficiary of the rising Euro and the odds for a Greek deal improving appears to be Banco Santander, SAN, up 5.66%. SAN bought a bunch of British banks during the global financial crisis, a deliberate policy undertaken by its current chair, Ana Patricia Botin, and her predecessor and late father, Emilio Botin.

*Soon-departing Royal Bank of Scotland chairman Sir Philip Hampton told The Financial Times that foreign banks have an easier time cross-selling products in Britain than British banks do. Cross selling would include offering brokerage services, peddling insurance, and offering services to small businesses and their owners as individuals. Sir Phil will now chair GSK. Meanwhile RBS will probably be privatized in small tranches to reduce the state-ownership below 81%, according to Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.

*Allianz was upgraded by Jefferies analysts to hold from underperform. It was also upgraded by HSBC which raised its target price from euros 625 to euros 630. (There are 10 ADRs per German share.)

*Jefferies also upgraded Zurich Insurance with a buy and raised the target price to SwFr 320 from 316.

Industrials and Telcos

*”Mr or Ms Value Ideas”, an anonymous contributor to www.seekingalpha.com, called Tata Motors “a good bet” for an expected turnaround based on growing sales in India of passenger cars and trucks. Our India reporter, Abhimanyu Sisodia, has already positioned us in TTM for its India future rather than its Jaguar-Landrover past.

*Both Nokia and its target, Alcatel, are up over 2% after the US DoJ waived its right to anti-trust objections. NOK will use ALU (incorporating the former Lucent) to boost its presence in the US market for telephone exchanges and to cut production costs. It was up over 2.5% in trading on Monday. NOK also will gain from increased patent revenue from Lucent and its software license to LG Electronics plus its plan to build its own future branded phones when its standstill with Microsoft ends at the start of next year. It will not make the phones or sell them directly, but LG may turn out to be a partner as it is the No. 4 US smartphone maker after Apple, Sony and Google.

*VeoliaEnvironnement is our play on waterworks. VEOEY won a 4-yr contract worth euros 13 mn t o manage the modernization of Electricité de Guinée. Guinea, whose capital is Conakry, is a former French colony. This follows a bigger deal with another former French colony last week for sewage and waste disposal, for New Orleans, LA.

*Pharol (PTGCY), the rump from the sale of Portugal Telecom, still a telco, rose 8.5% this morning from a combo of Euro euphoria and the focus of markets on deals in this sector, mostly by PT's buyer, Altice of Luxembourg. The betting may be that Pharol will attract a bid from Angola's Isabel dos Santos, the richest woman in Africa.

*I also reiterated her liking for CAE in Dick Davis's Dividend Digest after tipping it I Jan.

Pipelines

*Delek Group has completed its sale to Fosun of China of control (52.31%) of itsPhoenix Insurance sub for NIS 1.8 bn ($~470 mn). DGRLY will invest the money into offshore gasfields and pipelines, which I expect to be a growth industry.

*Veresen could become a target for a bidder, FCGYF is Canadian but operates a pipeline to Jordan Cove in Oregon. Unlike nuclear or telco sectors, where Chinese may not be welcome, I doubt if there would be objection to its buying into the pipeline to the Pacific Ocean and the attached natural gas liquefaction plant.

*Less obviously, we should also gain from Origin Energy, OGFGF, in Australia.

*Brazil's Cosan, CZZ, was up smartly in trading earlier in the week, perhaps because of its energy ops. It makes ethanol from bégasse (sugarcane waste) which piped around in its ALL sub and used to cut the country's gasoline costs. The US for now bans imported ethanol instead requiring that we make it from Iowa corn, boosting the price of feed and food thereby.

Trading notes

*Nomura has cut its rating of Imperial Tobacco, ITYBY, to reduce. We just bought it.

*Having bought the US version of the Deutsche Bank MSCI Pakistan ETF, HK:3106, I am trying to sell the Hong Kong version at around HK$16.18, its closing price in HK. The US entity goes by the easy name of PAK and I paid $15.38. Thanks to TC Ali of Lahore for finding us the earlier version. This is a long-term bet on better relations with India and Pakistani industrial growth.

*Israel Chemicals has completed its acquisition of Allana Potash, AAA up north and ALLRF here.

Buys and Sales

*SoQuiMich of Chile we sold in a hurry when its dominant shareholder fiddled to buy more shares via a sub on the cheap. I put the money into Allana Potash, now acquired. It has now crashed.

*A purely domestic idea is 8point3 Energy Partners, CAFD-Q, a US LP, tipped by our green reporter Max Deml from Vienna (Austria, not Virginia.) The name refers to the time in minutes it takes for the sun's light to make it to earth. Max loves solar. CAFD runs solar parks which produce power for utilities and was spun off by SunPower.