Ha'aretz, the leftish Israeli newspaper, in its English language edition accuses Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of “a seditious call to arms” and “an attempted coup” after the country's attorney-general indicated Bibi for fraud, breach of trust, and bribery. Israel's A-G, Avichai Mandelblit, an Orthodox Jew from his own Likud party, stood up to the PM when he followed up on police reports and revelations by his former supporters and financiers. Netanyahu “will fight tooth and nail to smear anyone threatening his hold on power,” the newspaper wrote.

You cannot miss the parallel with our own president whose attorney-general is more concerned about the party interest than the national interest.

El Presidente took credit for telling Xi Jinping that sending troops into Hong Kong would hurt the country's chances of a trade deal with the US. Chinese troops have been sent in but perhaps they are not shooting as many Hong Kongers as they might do otherwise. It may be that other factors are restraining Beijing.

More from South Africa and the Netherlands, where we have reporting companies, plus Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Japan, Israel, India, Hong Kong, Germany, Finland, Denmark, China, Britain, Brazil, and a few other places. Note that we have news today from all 4 Nordic countries.

*Rosy Prosy. Dutch-listed Prosus reported its first results, for the 6 mos to Sept 30, when all systems went green against pre-ipo levels for the prior fiscal year. Its revenues grew by 20% to $9.9 bn; trading profits by 7% to $1.9 bn; and core headline earnings by 10% to $1.7 bn. All revenues are in local currencies converted into US$s. However free cashflow fel to $14 mn from $96 mn. PROSY is 74% owned by Naspers (NPSNY) of South Africa and only listed in early Sept. Its good performance is mainly because of the gain of $559 bn from the exchange of its 42.5% stake in MakeMyTrip (MMYT), the Indian holiday booking system for a 5.6% warrant on Ctrip. It has $5.9 bn for growth investments.

Prosus invested in fintech firms Waymo and Red Dot Payments, and Carousell classified adds, all Asia-based. It has been active in seeking new e-commerce sales which accounted for $1.9 bn, up 28% with the biggest gain in food delivery sales, up 69% its largest investment area now including India, Russia, and Brazil. It is in a battle with German rivals to acquire Just Eat plc in London with an offer at GBX 710 in cash. The current deadline is Dec. 11, one day before the UK election so I expect it will be extended.

*Naspers itself delivered less rosy results having had real businesses before September. Its H1 revenues rose 9% to $1.73 bn from prior year $1.52 bn. Its GAAP net profit for H1 of the current fiscal year (to Sept. 30 also) saw a drop of 34% to because last year it booked a $1.8 bn gain by selling its 112% of Flipkart to Walmart. It also spun out MultiChoice Group, MCHOY, to shareholders, including us. CEO Bob van Dijk noted that the spinoff of PROSY unlocked $10 bn in value for its shareholders like us. Its core earnings EPS from continuing operations excluding one-off items rose 9% to $3.72/sh. Its current year investments focused on food delivery which CFO Basil Sgourdos said shows :our confidence in the strong underlying unit economics of the business.”

Chinese ADRs

*The Financial Times reveals that index trackers (whose number is larger than those who admit to it) are being misled by inclusion in the MSCI China All Shares Index of stocks which are duds. The worst of them is an outfit called ArtGo which mines marble, and rose 3,800% in a month before it was removed on Thursday. It promptly fell 98%.

Earlier a similar rise and fall in Hong Kong resulted from local regulators removing China Ding Yi Feng from the Hang Sung index, after which it fell to zero despite being on the MSCI index. Its listing is now under police investigation, although I suspect the cops in Hong Kong are busy with other things.

In any event even if MSCI gets some picks right, it is still advocating a bunch of stock picks traded in markets which do not meet adequate standards for reporting, shareholder protection, or valuation—to say nothing of human rights violations or espionage.

*Zymeworks further boosted BeiGene (BGNE, bought last week) by giving data on how the Chinese firm is helping it advance its cancer drug ZW25 in trials for Her-2 expressing tumors of the billiary tract, gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma, and pancreatic or colorectal cancer. BGNE treated 69 patients with these cancers who had failed up to 5.5 prior therapies, and 57 of the 69 had responses to the therapy before the cut-off date, a 70% response rate for disease control. The single pancreatic cancer patient may be the most important because it is currently uncurable. Survival was an average of 5.5 months and is continuing. BGNE can register patients in global studies under Chinese rules.

*The US FCC voted unanimously to block Huawei and ZTE of China from the $8.5 bn government equipment subsidy for rural telcos on fear of security breaches. This is good news for Finnish Nokia, NOK, and Swedish Ericsson which we own through Investor A/B, IVSBY, a fund.

Indian ADRs

*Abhimanyu Sisodia writes from India that the Bombay Stock Exchange removed two shares whose ADRs we used to own, Vedanta Resources (VEDL) and Tata Motors (TTM) on grounds of too low trading value and performance. This brings the number of Sensex top 30 index stocks back down to 30.

He is responsible for our buy of MakeMyTrip mentioned in the results from Prosus above, after he test drove a family cruise.
He also reported that Infosys, which we sold because of its risks from US 12B1 visa restrictions on its employees helping out in the US, is now facing even tighter US work visa rules, to boost US jobs. (Ed: Note that finding US techies able to replace the Indian crew is likely to prove impossible.)

Latin ADRs

*Cosan (CZZ) only managed to fund a single recommendation on line and the stock fell. I advised selling half of the Brazilian sugar and ethylene firm after a botched quarterly result report and a spate on fake recommendations by non-existent “analysts” it paid.

*Mexican REIT Fibra Uno rose 3.13% in Mexico City on Thursday.

European ADRs

*GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) will continue to work with US rheumatology autoimmune lab Exagen on a lupus diagnostic test.

*Johnson Matthey was rated buy by Deutsche Bank but its target price was lowered to £37 from 38. I got that wrong. Entschuldigen. There has been insider buying in London of JMAT. Its stock fell 5.28% overnight and about 10% this week.

*Norwegian Tomra Systems is gaining again in local trading but I am not sure it will hold for the ADR, TMRAY.

*Novo Nordisk was tipped in seekingalpha.com by Daniel Schoenberger as a better long-term investment than Eli Lilly. Its new partner Dicerna has seen heavy insider selling.

*After it reported Thursday, Hoegh LNG Partners was rated hold by Danish DNB Markets, from sell. This despite a downtrend in the prices of LNG in Asia. HOLHF.

Middle East ADRs

*Saudi Aramco is making headlines and I have no inputs as the eventual ipo will now be solely for institutional investors outside the country.

*Overnight Teva rose another 2.55% to $10.51 on excessive optimism. I already sold down my old holdings for tax losses and am resisting selling my more recent holdings which produced short-term gains.

*The bidding war over Siccar Point oil fields in Norway shows how smart Delek Group was buying up Chevron fields on the quiet. I bought into DGRLY because its founder and chief shareholder is a Mizrahi Jew aiming to do deals with Arab countries, but Yitchak Tshuva is also a shrewd investor.

DGRLY is down 2.7% and I am buying more at $14.05.