Sir Richard Branson's solution just might help Britain cope with the EU exit process. He has joined Britons in calling for another referendum, because he fears that the vote last week will cause a British recession. Sir Richard, head of the Virgin Group, blogged that “misrepresentation by the Leave campaign” means Parliament must vote another referendum. My husband and his sister, both UK nationals, signed the petition for a new vote on Brexit, which gathered more than 3 million verified signatures.

Billionaire Branson supported Bremain before the vote but now his position is being taken seriously even by the Brexit team headed by Boris Johnson. Boris now wants to negotiate new terms for British EU membership and hold another referendum before formally applying to exit, hoping to get a better deal on what is really upsetting Britons—EU immigration into the country—by changing the rules on free movement of people within the economic bloc. There are plenty of other countries whose people are also upset by the free movement rules.

Ironically enough the list including Poland, source of the alleged price-cutting plumbers upsetting the French, and other eastern European countries fearing the influx of Middle Eastern and African refugees into their countries, although Brexit voters main grouse with the EU was eastern Europeans arriving in their towns where they pushed down wages and added to demand for school and hospital places. This issue was the key factor in the Brexit victory, according to analysts of the poll results.

Banking

*Moody's cut its outlook on the British banking system from stable to negative after the Brexit referendum. "We expect lower economic growth and heightened uncertainty over the U.K.'s future trade relationship with the EU to lead to reduced demand for credit, higher credit losses and more volatile wholesale funding conditions," it wrote.

Oddly enough, the weirdo consumer banks which have sprung up lately are less vulnerable to economic chaos that the larger, High Street banks, yet Sir Richard Branson's fledgling bank, Virgin Money,VM, has suffered more than most big banks in Brexit's wake, because of panic. Like Donald Trump, Sir Richard Branson is a master of branding, but more modestly uses the name Virgin rather than his own. VM does not fund industry or mortgages, but is a retail operator, financing credit cards using small investor deposits and bond purchases. It sells pensions and insurance products for UK residents and also offers cards linked to frequent flier miles on Virgin Air (but not in the USA).

Insiders have been buying: Chairman Glen Moreno bought 46,164 shares at a price of 215 pence peron Tues. and non-executive Director Colin Keogh 20,000 shares at 2.004 on Mon. Analysts love the concept and rated it buy-strong buy in London, admittedly before the Brexit vote. The numbers are excellent up to the end of 2015, the last reported. Revenues rose to £522 mn from prior year £438 mn, on which pre-tax profits came to £138 mn or 22.9 pence/sh vs £34 mn or minus 4 pence per share in 2014. Now that it has profits, its pe ratio is 16.6x. All in sterling of course.

VM's share price fell by a third, from £3.65 last Thursday to £2.15 yesterday. It called off a deal about which no details have been released. VM opened at £2.347. It has only a pink sheet GDR, an ADR issued for institutional investors, which, however, is “seasoned”, having been out for more than 90 days as it listed in late 2014. So US retail investors can buy it. The ticker symbol is VRGDF and you should pay $3.30 or less. Its rout reminds me of the Synchrony Financial selloff in the US where I own SYF, with the difference that VR did not issue more shares. I have an order in for the GDRs.

*Banco Santander (SAN) rose 3.4% in Madrid trading. It is suffering for its UK operations, based on the buy of Abbey National by the prior chairman, father of current chair Ana Patricia Botin, trained up by her family in English to run it before his death. She is a Bryn Mawr grad and also worked for McKinsey and JP Morgan before succeeding to the top at SAN and is internationally savvy and a banker by heredity.

*Standard & Poors reaffirmed its BBB/A2 rating for Banco Latino-Americano de Comercio of Panama. BLX.

*Validus Holdings, Ltd. is now covered by analysts at JPMorgan Chase who rate VR, a Bermuda re-insurance firm and member of Lloyd's of London as an "overweight" with a $55 target price.

Make In India

*I have a personal bank account with HSBC, which sent me a report on Brexit and another on the best stocks for the next 20 years. The latter included some of what follows, extracted from a longer equity research report by Herald van der Linde, HSBC's Head of Equity Strategy, Asia Pacific:

“Charge me: If the percentage of electric vehicles on the road rises to 3.8% in 2020 from 0.4% in 2014, demand for lithium-ion batteries will rise 14x. This benefits battery makers in Korea, such as Samsung SDI (006400.KS, KRW105,500, Buy). However, also think about the green car movement in Indonesia, India's hybrid car makers Tata Motors (TTM) INR449.40, Buy), and Chinese electric component makers, such as Hongfa.
“New media models: Across Asia, consumers are increasingly willing to pay for online video and music content. This marks a shift away from the advertising-driven business models to one where consumers pay. This offers growth opportunities for online portals Baidu ( BIDU, USD163.92, Buy) in China, but also content providers, including movie makers in China and Korea.
Asia's global challengers: To facilitate urbanisation, investments in urban infrastructure were required. Companies involved in connecting cities and urban lifestyles acquired new skills and technologies in the process. This allowed some to emerge as global challengers in their respective industries. Think of Infosys (INFY), INR1,211.60, Buy) in India, China's ZTE (763.HK, Not Rated) and Haier (1169.HK, HKD11.12, Buy), and also Jollibee (JFC.PH, Not Rated) in the Philippines.”

While I can buy Asian stocks with HSBC, they charge $65 per trade so I stick to the ADRs.

*The Guardian newspaper reports that $4 Ringing Bells Freedom 251 Android cellphones previously thought to be scam will ship in a batch of 200,000 starting this week. The company will make $2.20 loss on each handset shipped but it appears to think the hoopla will enable it to sell phones at a higher price after the launch. The 3G Android 5.1 smartphone has a 4-in screen, 8-megapixel rear camera, 3.2-megapixel selfie camera, a 1.3GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage, with a microSD card slot for adding more. Ringing Bells says that it has nearly 200,000 Freedom 251s ready to ship, with plans to open up orders again in the near future and ship 200,000 handsets a month. It may still be a scam. The UK newspaper was unable to get a sample phone to examine, and losing $440,000/month is not good business.

Drugs

*GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) hit a new 52-wk high in London trading.

*So did Reckitt-Benckiser, (RBGLY).

*Jefferies analysts rate Indivior (INVVY) a buy and raised the target price from GBX 245 to GBX 285. INVVY earns dollars for its opioid anti-addiction products sold in the USA. Its selloff was dumb, as I noted at the time. It was spun off by RBGLY.

*Novo Nordisk (NVO) was downgraded by analysts at Goldman Sachs from a "conviction-buy" rating to a mere "buy" rating. NVO is a Danish specialist in diabetes drugs.

*Teva (TEVA) and its partner Shire will sell to Prasco Labs for an undisclosed sum their distribution rights to amphetamines so TEVA can meet the conditions for its takeover of Allergan Generics. TEVA was up 2.5% in London yestrday.

Heavy Green Industry

*French top officials affirm that the Hinckley Point nuclear power station will be built by EdF in England despite the Brexit vote because it is covered by a bilateral commitment that has nothing to do with the EU. This is an argument for Canada uranium mining stock Cameco, CCJ, which I think can sell its future output even without the British nuclear plant facing delays and worries about its expensive output.

*Bonus stock Ormat Tech, Israeli owned but US-incorporated and listed, counts as Gentile in Utah. In 2009, Utah became one of the first states to recognize turning waste heat into power as a renewable energy source.

ORA just completed construction 4 months early of the Veyo Heat Recovery Project there under a $22.3 mn engineering, procurement and construction contract with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS). It features an air-cooled Recovered Energy Generation (REG) unit at UAMPS' Kern River Gas Transmission Veyo natural gas compressor station. The original contract was signed in Nov. 2014. Ormat Energy Converter generates power from heat that otherwise would have been released into the atmosphere adding to warming and going to waste.

Ormat which is mainly in geothermal energy also sells its REG power systems to access the energy potential from industrial processes, like gas compressor stations and processing plants, paper mills, oil and gas refineries, cement factories, incinerators, chemical plants, glass manufacturers etc. It also makes storage systems for renewable energy which turns off: dams, wind, and solar.

*Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District extended the largest US public-private partnership in wastewater services with Veolia Environnement for another 10-year contract worth $500 mn. VEOEY being French is good at operating in partnership with a public service and has done so since 2008. It serves over a million people in 28 communities, and is funded by water rates rather than general taxes, under a relic of Wisconsin's former taste for public services, while 250 people work for Veolia in WI.

*While we focus on its lithium, Australian Orocobre, ORL-Toronto or OROCF also produces borax decahydrate and pentahydrate in Argentina and its plant there will hit full production of 100 metric tonnes/day on time and on budget.

Other Sectors

*UK telecom operator Vodafone informed its shareholders that if required for operational efficiency it may move its HQ outside Britain. VOD stock is widely held by Americans after they got shares from its distribution after it broke its jv with Verizon.

*Morgan Stanley sort of raised its outlook for iron ore prices because of Chinese steel demand. MS upped its 2016 iron price forecast to $46/metric tonne, up 17%, and the one for 2017 to $42/t, up 13%. However it also called for a level of $35/ton for the last quarter of the current year, which is below last year's low. This affects our VALE and Vale pref shares of Brazil but they are down, the common by 2.5%.

*Ecopetrol rose 3.1% yesterday in NY but it may suffer after its being Colombian was attacked by Standard & Poors in a rating update which also berated EC for oil price volatility. It yields 11%+.

*Finnish Nokia was up 3.8% in London trading.

*Mexico's Empresas ICA delisted its NYSE ADR shares. It is bust and is being taken over by its creditors led by an arm of US Fintech, Eduardo Garcia writes.

Fund-amentals

*New Ireland Fund announced that its Board approved a modified “Dutch auction” in-kind tender offer for up to 25% of the Fund’s outstanding shares of common stock at a price per Share of 95% to 97% of the net asset value in increments of 0.5%, as of the business day immediately following the day the In-Kind Offer expires. The Fund will determine the lowest per Share price within the Range that would enable it to purchase 25% of the Shares outstanding as of the business day immediately following the Expiration Date , or such lesser number of Shares that are properly tendered and not withdrawn, based on the number of Shares tendered and the prices specified by tendering shareholders. The Fund will repurchase Shares tendered and accepted in the In-Kind Offer in exchange for a pro rata portion of the Fund’s portfolio securities, subject to certain adjustments. The In-Kind Offer is subject to the Fund’s receipt of an exemptive order from the SEC to permit affiliated persons of the Fund to participate in the In-Kind Offer.

If the exemptive order is not obtained by March 28, 2017, the Fund will make a tender offer for cash for up to 30% of the outstanding Shares at a price per Share equal to 98% of the NAV per Share as of the business day immediately following the day the Cash Offer expires. The commencement of the potential Offers are pursuant to a Compromise and Standstill Agreement between the Fund and Karpus Management, Inc. (including certain affiliates thereof).”

IRL has been a stellar performer but the above legalize needs a dose of the Blarney Stone.

*Another former closed-end fund raider, Phil Goldstein, of Bulldog Investors, has upped his group's stake in Mexican Equity and Income Fund, MXE, by 60% after cutting it last year. John Cole Scott, closed-end fund specialist, says Goldstein owns over 10% of the shares out. MXE.