I wrote two important emails today. Here they are:

Dear Advogado RG,

Thank you for your note. We are determined to go ahead; the problem is to find an authority on Portuguese securities law to take our case about Portugal Telecom.

My hope was that, assuming your firm is not subject to a conflict of interest because of representing various Portuguese oligarchs who are part of the problem (which I hope is not the case), you might find the nature of our complaint of interest as an international securities law expert.

We made a supposedly safe investment in a multinational telephone company from a supposedly developed and well-regulated country in the European Union. Its American Depositary Receipts were registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for listing on the main New York Stock Exchange.

Frankly, to have the Portugal Telecom cash horde of nearly $1 billion disappear into a black hole in a Luxembourg entity owned by the second largest bank in Portugal is unusual, astonishing, and an indication of a gap in the EU securities and banking regulation.

That is what I am trying to lure you into thinking about.

This history undermines the future appeal of any share listed in Lisbon to foreign investors who will fear toleration of insider dealing and shareholder abuse from both the Bank of Portugal and the CMVM, the supposed regulators. What this means for your country may be another reason to be willing to take on this case.

We have collected (in 3 days) $700 in US currency, not euros 700. The amount appears to be growing in euros by the day. I converted for your convenience. As I said, we can raise more from our readers if we have a representative working on our complaint in Portugal. I contacted you because you have published impressive material on cross-border securities regulation, what this case is about. I am prepared to use my position as editor of Global Investing to solicit further contributions from the readers. But I wanted to warn you that we do not have large funding such as a corporation might have.

Our purpose is not merely to gain compensation in cash. It is to highlight a scandalous misuse of corporate funds to the detriment of the shareholders so that it will not be allowed to happen again. New laws are needed, and you could write them.

If you are certain you do not want to take this case please let me know. We have been given by a British solicitor the names of two Portuguese colleagues he works with, and I will then contact them.

obrigada and best wishes

Vivian Lewis

to: Jimmy@marketacross.com
Dear Jimmy Rodela

Thank you for your offer to pay us for accepted articles about Israeli companies which are your clients. Global Investing does not accept planted articles about stocks. Our earnings come only from subscription and advertisements labeled as such. (I resisted the temptation to send Jimmy the names of some other bigger and richer newsletter groups with lower ethics.)

More for Portugal (of course), Brazil, Angola, and a few places where they do not speak Portuguese, like Canada, India, Scandinavia, Colombia, The Netherlands, and Spain, including two new annual reports from our companies. Plus two trade alerts. Our special report on Portugal Telecom is now posted on the www.global-investing.com website. All proceeds from sale to non-subscribers goes to our PT legal fund. There is plenty more about PT below.

Canada

*Veresen is up on what looked like a mass of good news for a Friday the 13^th. Its results led Scotiabank to raise it from neutral to outperform. It is in the process of creating a limited partnership for income investors via a jv with KKR, in midstream gas of which we will publish more details when they are out. I hope US shareholders will not be treated less well than Canadians, as is FCGYF's wont. The results were good for Q4 with net income of C$21 mn (8 loony¢/sh vis 12.6 mn or 6 loony¢/sh in Q4 2013. For 2014 the net was C$52.4 mn or 24 ¢/sh, virtually flat from the C$53.2 mn and 27¢/sh earned in 2013.

The largest sector, natural gas pipelines, did well, but midstream, its current no. 2 business, did poor.

What worries me is the degree to which VSN is getting money from forex trading. This produced gains of C$33.8 mn in Q4 and C$38.7 mn in 2014 overall. Of course there are good reasons for playing the US$ against the loony given that the large gas liquefaction plant Veresen is building will be in Oregon, USA. But fir a company whose revenues came to only 68 mn in Q4, that dependence on currency trading present a risk.

*Another Canadian reported as well, Pure Technologies. PPEHF reported a loss for 2014 and for Q4 because it opted to take a C$12.7 provision against ever seeing payment for its work in Libya, because of conflict and instability in the country. We first went into Pure after the fall of Qaddafi took down its share price, and we and everyone else were optimistic about the outlook including for its Great Manmade River project there. The new regime opted to continue to build the system to bring water to the Libyan coast but now nobody knows who is running Libya and where the new regime is.

The full-year loss came to C$3.9 mn despite a jump in sales of 28% to C$77.89 mn. The Q4 loss was C$4.73 mn vs a prior year Q4 gain of C$1.8 mn, equivalent of minus 9¢/sh vs a plus 4¢/sh in Q4 2013. Sales in Q4 came to C$27.6 mn vs only $17.2 mn in Q4 2013.

PUR-Toronto published adjusted figures showing a profit last year of C$5.7 mn vs 2.5mn in 2013. Its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amoritization (cash flow) rose 21% to C$15.6 mn. Its cost of goods sold and taxes grew in proportion to much higher sales, and it has C$33.6 mn of cash at hand.

Europe

*Spanish Abengoa closed on the $60 mn financing for its project to build a solar power plant in South Africa.

*GlaxoSmithKline raised only $854 mn with its half sale of Aspen, less than the target $1 bn. CFO Simon Dingemans told Dow-Jones the disposal will help its flexibility to invest in new opportunities in the wake of its $20 bn asset swap with Novartis and protect our dividends. He also seems to have said that there are lots of opportunities to write-off losses by linking them to the divested cancer side of GSK which it has sold to NVS.

*Meanwhile Jim Jimenez of NVS can play the other side. He told The Financial Times: he plans to squeeze out costs and boost profit margins. The FT wrote: “Novartis can strike off any costs associated with its low-performing vaccines unit, for one, because that's now in GSK's hands.” Paper profits!

*Nokia was downgraded by analysts at Berenberg Bank from a buy rating to a hold. Our new Norway ETF, NORW, is down. But Novo Nordisk, Marine Harvest Group, and Investor (NVO of Denmark, MHG of Norway, and IVSBF of Sweden resp.) are all up on the sinking euro.

Emerging Markets

*Brazilian Oi S.A. in accordance with the decision of the Comissão de Valores Mobiliarios, which made granting of the waivers requested by OIBR with the exchange and option to purchase shares contemplated in the Exchange Agreement and Option Agreement of Sept 8, 2014, by and among Portugal Telecom International Finance B.V., PT Portugal, SGPS, S.A., Portugal Telecom, SGPS, S.A., Telemar Participações S.A. and Oi, conditional on approval of these agreements by the general shareholders' meeting of Oi thereby calls its shareholders to assemble in an Extraordinary General Shareholders' Meeting, to be held March 26, 2015, at 2:30 p.m., at the Oi company's headquarters, Rua do Lavradio, no. 71, Centro, Rio de Janeiro, each common and preferred shareholder entitled to vote.

(My translation. The first paragraph was one sentence also in Portuguese only longer.)

Portugal Telecom shareholders are excluded from the Oi vote. Former IR nuno.t.vieira@telecom.pt who was instrumental (according to ADR depositary Deutsche Bank)in keeping us PT ADR owners from voting on the Oi deal in Jan. has now become unreachable, “user unknown” according to PT.

*Thomas Fischer of NZZ wrote about the daughter of Pres José Eduardo dos Santos of Angola, Africa's richest woman, calling her "one of the most powerful economic figures in Portugal". Here is my translation and summary of the article about the lady who last year offered euros 1.2 bn for PT before being forced to withdraw it.

Now the 42-year old MBA in engaged in the restructuring of Portuguese banking thanks to her 18.6% holding in Banco BPI which Caixabank of Spain wants to buy by boosting its current 44.1% stake to over half. She made known her preference for an alternative merger with Banco Comercial Português (BCP) in which the Angolan govt owns 19.4% via state-controlled oil co Sonangol. Dos Santos and Sonangol hold about 17% of the euros 7 bn Portuguese energy holding company GalpEnergia.

Isabel dos Santos operates under holding companies too: Kento, Santoro, Esperaza, Terra Peregrin, with which she undertakes moves in Portugal.

She is an elegant lady with 3 children and considered a discrete member of the corrupt Angolan elite. Jornal de Negócios calls her father the 3rd richest Portuguese, and Isabel the 4th richest.

Isabel was born in 1973 in Baku, Azerbaijan (then part of the Soviet Union) where her father was studying. (Her mother is white.) She has an electronic engineering degree from King's College London and worked for Coopers & Lybrand while getting her MBA. Her first Angolan business was the Miami Beach Restaurant in Luanda with her former husband.

Later she diversified into diamond dealing and and telco Unitel, where she has done well. Her diamond deals in 2012 led her to become a silent investor in Swiss watch and jewelry company De Grisognono (of Plan-des-Ouates). She also owned 29% of Zon, another telco which in 2013 merged with Optimus, itself part of the powerful Sonae Portuguese supermarket group. This gave her a foothold in Angolan retailing as well as telephony and diamonds, helping offset the decline in oil revenues. And she is also a financier, reputed to have assets of euros 2 bn in Portugal alone.

*Ecopetrol rose over 7% yesterday after the Colombian government announced it would accept a cease-fire before all the terms of a deal with the FARC guerilla movement have been worked out in talks in Havana. Today second thoughts intervened and EC fell back.

From India, Abhimanyu Sisodia writes:

Friday the 13th was bad luck for Indian markets as the Bombay Stock Exchange's benchmark Sensex crashed to a 2015 low over worries about inflation. Sesa Sterlite declined the most of metal stocks, despite resuming mining in Kerala.

Vivian notes that “tax terrorists” have now targeted not just the UK Cairn Energy plc, but also the 10% Indian shareholder, Cairn India Ltd (CIL), which SSLT controls. India's Income Tax Dept demanded that CIL pay 204.95 bn rupees ($3.3 bn), half of it interest, alleging that CIL failed to pay taxes on capital gains made by its former parent in a share transfer transaction over 8 years ago.

The private sector oil and gas explorer riposted: "This was in respect of the transaction of Cairn UK Holdings Ltd. transferring the shares of Cairn India Holdings Ltd. to Cairn India Ltd. as part of internal group reorganisation in 2006-07 to facilitate the initial public offer of Cairn India Ltd." CIL also said that it has always been fully compliant with all Indian income tax laws and it had completed the tax assessment for the 2006-07 financial year which included the transfer pricing of the intra-group transaction. "Cairn India Ltd. does not agree with this alleged demand and will pursue all possible options to protect its interest," it said.

Cairn plc revealed earlier this week that it got a demand from India's income tax dept to pay $1.6 bn in taxes on capital gains allegedly owing on the 2007 transfer plus another $1.7 bn in interest and penalties.

Retroactive tax demands are a major hassle for global companies in India. Among them is Vodafone, also hit with retroactive taxes over a restructuring. The “business-friendly” rep of Narendra Modi is undermined by Delhi's inability to the taxmen over SSLT et al, discouraging foreign investors, VOD.

Trades

*We sold half our Galapagos NV overnight at $23.81/sh.

*We sold half our Bavarian Nordic at $46.45.

Both are biotech startups which have gotten ahead of themselves, and both have misleading names. Galapagos is not Ecuadorian but Belgian, with its primary listing now in Amsterdam. Bavarian Nordic is not German but Danish.

*A dividend notice is expected after the close for Eaton Vance Tax Managed Global Income CEF, EXG today.