The made-over Financial Times came today with a self-congratulatory special supplement about its charms. As a reader of the FT since the 1960s, when it was edited by Sir Gordon Newton, I found the new layout fine, but I miss “Lex”, the gossip column. I searched all over the paper and could not find it.

There used to be two gossip columns, the other called “Men and Matters.” Neither was particularly authoritative and anyone who invested based on these columns deserved all the losses of money which ensured. But it was fun to get a writer's opinion on businesses, stocks, or events. Now they seem both to have bitten the dust to make room for more photos, maps, and graphics, and wider headlines.

Today there was still Lucy Kellaway, who writes about the linguistic and logical failings of self-congratulatory businesses (but of course not her employer.) But she was writing about the perils of forecasting 50 years into the future, and it was a serious article. Give me back my breakfast dose of British understatement and humor.

On a day when Bill Ackman announced that his Pershing Square fund will issue stock for the very first time to raise $2 bn with shares listed at $25 each, I would have appreciated Lex's comment, since Mr. Ackman's retail-priced shares will trade... in Amsterdam, not Nieuw Amsterdam!

With two Mme. Presidents turning up for a South ABC program about Pres. Jacob Zuma's wife—and Mme Z 3 and Mme Z 4 practically coming to blows on camera—surely we need Lex today!

*Fund news first. The Thai Fund (TTF) is now over 27% owned by the London closed-end fund (investment trust) investing in closed-end funds, City of London. TTF is down because of political uncertainty in Bangkok as yellow- and red-shirts battle for power while the aging monarch is in ill-health. The amount rose from less than 7% a month ago. The fund of funds run by Barry Olliff is a major holder of US closed-end funds invested in emerging markets. We remain in TTF but sold half earlier this year because of political uncertainty, despite Paul Renaud, our Bangkok-based source, being disgusted with my failure to stay the course.

*Mexico has removed 4-year-old restrictions on businesses using US$ and the greenback can now be used to price international sales, and deposited freely in Mexican bank accounts, reports Eduardo Garcia in www.sentidocomun.co.mx with which we trade blogs. In my opinion, this relic of exchange controls being ended will boost the visibility and global strength of Mexican companies and our Mexico Equity and Income Fund (MXE) although the immediate impact will be on companies selling retail goods and service for cash rather than credit cards on both sides of the border. The regulations allow businesses to avoid expensive exchange rate fees which often leads them to holding on to the dollars themselves.

The resulting inflow of currency into Mexico should make the Mexican peso exchange rate stronger and less volatile, while also boosting Mexican tax receipts, as more money comes into the official system. (Special controls make sure that cash deposits doesn't come from criminals laundering money. Small businesses have to know their customers, have been operating for at least 3 years, and may only deposit $14,000/mo. )

As we reported last week, in Mexico American Express is now jointly issuing Mexican bank cards, hitherto the domain of Visa and Mastercard. The new cash rules further open the border across the Rio Grande.

*Our Mexican REIT, Fibra Uno (FBASF), which already reports its purchases in dollars, can now follow through in explaining the rentals it is buying. 

*Mexichem (MXCHF), a fast-expanding private-sector fluor and chloride chemistry group with global ambitions, will almost certainly switch to dollar billing and perhaps reporting. The world chemical production industry is dollar-based.

*Reckitt Benckiser hit a new high at GBP54.25 in London trading today. RBGLY was added to the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index; it was already on the DJ European Sustainability list. It scored high on innovation, emerging markets, managing its supply chain, and good corporate citizenship. It aims to cut its carbon and water impact by 1/3 by 2020 from 2010 levels. It hopes by then to get 1/3 of its revenues from sustainable products. It also works in the areas of health and hygiene and is altogether a good company as it aims to reduce waste and landfill use and help prevent childhood diarrhea and of course makes condoms.

*Morgan Stanley drew an original conclusion from China missing its 8.5% growth target. It figures Beijing is going to let investment pick up by Q4 and reverse the slide in global iron ore prices. From a current price level of $82/metric tonne, MS expects the level at year-end to hit $90. This jibes with a forecast last week by Vale which is even more optimistic, expecting seasonal factors plus Chinese easing to produce a price of $100/T by Dec. 31. But the broker is thinking along the same lines.

*Yandex was rated a buy in an initial rating by Canaccord Genuity with a target price of $38. YNDX closed last week at $31.56 after the Canaccord clients had been sent the report.

*Delek Group sent lots of news. It is taking to the Israeli Supreme Court its appeal against the Minister of Energy canceling its licenses for four offshore fields, supposedly to increase competition for the big ones DGRLY controls, Tamar and Leviathan. Israeli energy law is a work in progress.

Delek also reported that it has sold Roadchef, the UK highway fast food chain, for 900 mn shekels, about $250 mn. Our kids loved the diners which served British breakfasts all day (even in Scotland). The deal will close this month and create an NIS 220 mn capital gain for the Israeli group.

Delek said that it got an early payment by the buyers of its Delek Europe BV of euros 90 mn for its BP stations in France and the Benelux; the buyers had until August 2015 to pay but wanted to do the deal in now cheap euros. Delek is slimming down to focus on offshore gas.

*Israel Chemicals is reportedly negotiating with an overseas company to create a $100 mn joint venture in potash and fertilizers to exit from its dependence on the Dead Sea works (which are subject to new environmental restrictions. Among the goodies ISCHF can bring to the table is its stake in Allana Potash (ALLRF), a Canadian firm developing a potash site in Ethiopia.

*Veresen (FCGYF) is a possible beneficiary of new Canadian lobbying to treat gas liquefaction plants on the west coast as manufacturing rather than as infrastructure investments. Making stuff plants can be depreciated in 7 years whereas infrastructure depreciation takes 27 years.

*An article by Jack Banser in seekingalpha.com (signed!) says to buy Ecopetrol which has lost 25% of its value in the past year. Plus a nearly 8% yield. The big problem is whether it can resume growing its reserves in its native Colombia despite guerillas and its greedy government shareholder holding back capex. Mr Banser is a student at Auburn U who buys shares at under $10/sh but EC is out of his reach at $33 so maybe he is graduating.

*Nokia has been added to the Nasdaq Technology Dividend Index, which may help my worries that the Finnish firm will go astray as it builds up its exchanges and mapping businesses with Microsoft proceeds. The NQ96DIVUS index is of 100 stocks which are in technology but pay regular dividends. I fear that regular may not prevail because the big payout was a one-off. Oppenheimer upgraded NOK to outperform from neutral today with a $12 target price.

*It replaces BCE which is not techie enough.

*Schlumberger is expected to land half the wellhead wireline services contractsPetrobras and its partners are placing for cabling to repair or evaluate offshore sub-salt reservoirs. SLB is Dutch but run out of Houston TX. This came from Bloomberg.

*Ana Patricia Botin made her first speech as chair of Santander today and after a tribute to her father, who died last week, asked for a vote to allow SAN shares to be used to mop up enough shares of its Brazilian sub to consolidate its results with those of its parent. This will entail listing Spanish SAN shares in Sao Paulo. She said that “the country will overcome the period of economic slowdown it is experiencing at this time.” The odds are that the country will, like SAN, have a female head after the election.

*I am encouraged by lower prices to review a possible repurchase of the other half of Compugen, the Israeli drug discovery platform co. I want to buy back near where I sold half my CGEN a year ago.

*No sooner did my broker say it had to bust my purchase of OJSC Cherkizovo than CHE in London trading today rose 1.29% to $11.75. It was a rare gainer in the UK today. They failed to sell last week.

*Naibu fell 23.4% today to 23.75 pence. NBU is an AIM-listed Chinese sportswear and sneaker firm which had problems hiring labor for its new shoe factory and opted to outsource rather than overpay, resulting in lower profits and a halt in H2 dividends. I thought its 52% CEO shareholder would support the price but maybe it wasn't made clear by the Nomad-brokerage that this is what you have to do. I hope this is a mini-holding for others as it is for me. In a crunch I can use a tax loss but it is barely worth it for this one.