Voting is not a proxy for democracy, not just in Egypt or Ukraine, Russia or Libya, Tunisia or Afghanistan--but also not right here in the USA. I am struck by the similarity of the votes in Crimea and the trio of Egyptian polls done and to come to US party caucuses and primaries.

In all cases the choice is often between bad and worse and incompetent. So many people won't vote, in fact abstaining from a "choice" they want to avoid.

Money talks: the propaganda is brutal, the information full of misleading innuendo and lies, a barrage is relentless but unsourced, paid for by occult outside money-bags.

Foreign "volunteers" push a hidden agenda on voters by TV, robo-phone, or demonstrations (depending on which vote you examine). But the impact is to rally the committed, scare the opposition, and falsify the outcome.

In such polls, name-calling and sound bites replace normal political discourse and makes some reasonable options sound radical or stupid. Straw-men are used.

Moreover gerrymandering by ethnicity undermines the predictive usefulness of voting in a wider and constituency like the country as a whole. Religion which should not have much of a role in elections often is used to sway voters either way..

And there are other issues: Are the voting rolls correct? Do neutral observers have access? Are some minorities being denied access to the polling place?

More follows including a good company result, with mostly good news from China, Africa, Britain, Cuba, Finland, The Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, Canada, and Israel.

*Africa Opportunity Fund Ltd reset its target date for admitting its shares to the London Stock Exchange. As announced, AROFF proposes to raise up to 100 mn by placing C shares on the Alternative Investment Market where its ordinary AOF shares now trade. The new c's will be placed at $1 each on condition that the ordinary shares we own are moved from AIM to the Specialist Fund Market of the main LSE. However the earlier deadline for cancelling the AIM ordinary share listing of March 17 to 30 will not be met. Instead, AOF expects the moved to take effect between April 7 and 30.

*Chicago Bridge & Iron, the Dutch engineering firm, landed three contracts worth $6.725 bn in the last day. The largest is for its jv with Chiyoda of Japan to build a 3-train 13.5 mn tonnes/yr liquefaction project in Louisiana for export of natural gas. The 2nd was a subcontract worth US$625 mn fromBechtel for construction work on outside battery limits modules for the ChevronWheatstone project in Western Australia. No 3 was a $100 mn contract fromEnterprise Products Partners LP for a Texas propane dehydration unit. CBI.

*In troubled Spain of all places! UK cellphone firm Vodafone has surprised markets by decided to buy Ono SA for €7.2 bn, and it will have to shell out more to bring it up to scratch to compete with Telefonica. VOD's motive (apart from the $130 bn cash from Verizon burning a hole in its pocket) is the need to add to its Europe-leading mobile prowess by adding new integrated services to its customers beyong mere naked moble which has lost its appeal in Europe. So it wants to add land lines, internet and even TV and cross-sell.

Ono, a private company, was persuaded to drop its ipo by the huge payment from VOD. It has the largest, fastest, and most modern network in Spain,at over 200 MBytes/second. Thanks to high reserve capacity and presence in only 41% of households and only 13 of Spains' 17 regions, there is room for growth. VOD expects there to be savings from synergies with its own Spanish mobile phone system to enable it to save some €2 bn plus another €1 bn from cross-selling. So if all goes as planned, it only paid 7.5x earnings for Ono rather than 15x.

The threat is to TEF which luckily is no longer that engaged in its homeland. But the risk bears watching.

*Struck by the low price to which Anton Oil Services Group fell yesterday, off 8.8% a day before ATONY (also 3337:Hong Kong) was due to report, I bought more of this pricey stock tipped by Vivian Ng. It was highly rated by analysts: 8 strong buys; 8 buys, 7 holds, 3 underperforms, and only 1 sell.

Reuters out of Hong Kong reported that its metrics looked good: gross margin in calendar 2012 44.96%; operating margin 19.85%; net profit margin 15.85%; and interest coverage 13.69%. Also for 2013, return on equity was 16.63%, return on assets 10.43%; and return on investment 15.35% (which all measure how effective management is.) In 2013 it raised its dividend by 150% and EPS rose 3 1/2x.

From its interim report for H1 2013, Reuters upped its estimates of the stock's book value by 27% and the cash component of it by 24%, although the stock does trade at over 6x book value. All these number made me think that despite the current and potential decline in the yuan or RMB I wrote about yesterday, ATONY stock was worth buying.

Today Anton said full year profit attributable to equity holders of the company climbed to 382.57 mn yuan from 302.58 mn yuan in 2012. EPS rose to 0.1733 yuan from 0.1402 yuan but below the consensus (Reuters) forecast of 0.2 yuan.

Revenues increased y/o/y by 26% to 2.53 bn yuan vs a consensus estimate of 2.63 bn, missing by ~4%. Anton attributed its revenue growth mainly to continued expansion in the domestic natural gas market plus strong overseas demand. Today the ATONY Board recommended the payment of a final 2013 dividend 0.0547 yuan/sh vs 0.0456/sh in 2012. In the last year, the yuan has fallen 1.73% and the dividend has been raised 12.1%. I paid $130.25.

*To pay for the overnight Hong Kong incorporated Chinese oilfield services company, in which Schlumberger Ltd owns 20%, I halved my holdings in Yandex, the Black Sea internet services provider, and in Singapore-based Indian REIT Ascendas India Trust. My logic was simple: the Ukraine standoff is not ended yet although YNDX is up; I sold my most recent YNDX purchase for a loss. And I am worried about the impact of Modi's possible win on Indian IT and consumer investment by the mostly foreign companies in ACNDF where I took some profits. Readers may want to also do the financing trades.

*I also sold the remainder of my Semen Indonesia, PSGTY, at $29/sh vs cost of $34.54.

*Another fund investment has me worried. I got the first half year report on Herzfeld Caribbean Basin Fund, CUBA, from its newly-named portfolio manager, Erik, son of founder Thomas Herzfeld. It appears to show that 59.15% of the fund is invested in the US (including Puerto Rico) which means it is outside our investment zone. However, going over the details of the holdings, I found that there appear to be foreign stocks not attributed to foreign countries, (there is no 'other' in the total) like Norway, Britain, Belize, Venezuela, and Canada. Young Herzfeld may want to reassure investors by overstating the red-white-and-blue coloration of outfits like Margo Caribe, Impellam, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, or Tahoe Resources. I ask Herzfeld Sr for clarification.

*Sampo Oyj got upgraded by Barclays analysts to "overweight". SAXPF or SAXPY is a Finnish insurance firm with wide Nordic financial interests.

*The former fellow-Israeli partner of Teva in investigating umbilical cord-stem therapies, Gamida-Cell, is reportedly in the sites of both TEVA and SwissNovartis for ~$600 mn in up-front and milestone payments. Teva is a minor minority shareholder in the developer of the "Stem-Ex" progenitor cell treatment for leukemia and lymphoma where no matching bone marrow donors can be found. Our FDA would not accept Stem-Ex without a full and costly phase III trials, which led to the privately-held firm being put up for sale. The largest stakeholder is Elbit Medical followed by Clal Biotech.

*Dutch biotech firm Prosensa (RNA) rose to $9.05 after it reported "encouraging" data from a Phase II study for a Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) treatment, drisapersen. DMD is a rare, fatal muscular disorder affecting boys. RNA reported data from a 48-wk U.S. phase II study in 51 boys with DMD. Higher-dosed boys experienced stabilization and some improvements in muscle function and physical activity for the 24-wk treatment period, maintained in the 24-wk follow-up. The shares rose by over a third in after-hours trading. Prosensa ipo'd last June at $13 a share and traded as high as $34.55 late last summer, but then plummeted after RNA said the DMD drug didn't meet a primary endpoint in a Phase III study. RNA this year regained drisapersen rights fromGlaxoSmithKline which had the worldwide license, giving RNA full rights back. GSK dropped the drisapersen after it failed phase III.

*Galapagos NV will present favorable pre-clinical data on GLPG1790 in triple-negative breast cancer at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting in San Diego April 7. GLPPY will disclose that its GLPG1790 is the first selective small molecule inhibitor of the ephrin receptor kinase family, which may play a key role in other ephrin-driven melanoma, pancreatic, ovarian, prostatic, and colorectal cancers, besides triple-negative breast cancer. GLPYY of Belgium is selling 2 contract research subs to Charles River Labs, a drug discovery developer for €134 mn, to close next quarter.

*CHS Inc., a US farmer cooperative invested in global energy, grain, and food assets, will acquire some Canadian retail assets from Crop Production Services.CPS is wholly by Agrium. Under the agreement, 16 retail agronomy sites in Alberta and Saskatchewan will be bought by CHS. The transaction is should be completed April 1. Financial terms were not disclosed. The CPS business will sell in Canada fertilizer from CHS's new 42,000-ton plant near Shelby, Mont. The plant, with 110-car shuttle loader access to the BNSF railway, will be completed in time for the spring 2014 planting season.

This further marks the AGU strategy of diversifying away from selling fertilizer.

*The Financial Times reports that Royal Bank of Scotland is in advanced talks with officials to buy back a provision allowing the UK Treasury (owner of 81% of RBS shares) to be paid dividends before other shareholders may be given them. Buying back "the dividend access share," (DAS) would cost RBS ~GBP 1.5 bn. This would help it treat shareholders better and pave the way for a government exit from ownership. Near-term the chances of a common divvie are slight as the bank needs to restructure and build its capital. The FT warns that there won't be a meaningful common share dividend until 2017. Stick to preferreds from RBS and NatWest which yield ~8%,

*UBS last week dropped its stake in Paddy Power plc to 6.64% from prior level of over 7%.