The week that was: Cocoa price squeeze as UK equities’ struggles continue
We recap another busy week in the City which in which we saw cocoa prices sky rocket, Flutter fly away and left Thames Water on the brink.
Will chocolate prices leave us bitter over Easter?
In the spirit of this being the Easter weekend, and in an attempt to a rail against one NHS boss’s pointless and pious advice against people eating ‘a whole Easter egg in one go’, we start this week with chocolate.
Or, more specifically, the nasty taste that shoppers will get at the tills this weekend due to the astronomical rise in the price of coca, the raw ingredient of chocolate.
Having traditionally changed hands for between $2,000 and $4,000 per tonne, this week we saw prices in the popular ingredient break $10,000 for the first time in its history.
Futures in the commodity—which are a contract to buy or sell it at a certain price in the future that essentially represents a bet on the direction a price will go—also hit record highs, meaning shoppers with a sweet tooth will find their it won’t just be their Easter eggs that are unpalatably expensive.
The cause for all this is a major shock to supply, which has been strangled by a combination of poor weather and disease in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Combined, the two countries produce two-thirds of the world’s supply of beans.
Water load of rubbish
Things were no less rosy for companies responsible for processing our precious commodity of all: water.
Thames Water goes into the bank holiday weekend with its future hanging in the balance after its shareholders refused to bail out the ailing utility provider. Investors’ refusal to stump up yet again, has left bosses facing the very real prospect of being taken into public owners.
Embattled is an adjective over-applied to companies going through a slightly testing patch. But it is an apposite one to describe the firm that is now creaking under a debt burden of £18bn.
This week, the Environment Agency also found it responsible for the largest increase of raw sewage discharges of any water company in the country.
But Thames Water regrettably, no anomaly in the Environment Agency’s findings. The quango revealed this year to be the worst on record for recorded sewage spills, the result of which being that we no longer have a single river in the UK that is in ‘good health’.
UK’s flapping continues after Flutter flies away
This week might have been a shorter one than usual, but there was still time for UK-listed companies exit from their British listing. Flutter, the owners of Paddy Power and Betfair, has bet big on the US, with the London Stock Exchange (LSE) the casualty. Alongside its results it announced it would shift its primary listing from London to New York.
It is also looking increasingly likely that Unilever’s ice cream business, which the consumer goods giant announced it would split last week, will list in Rotterdam rather than join its big brother on the LSE.
New boss Heinz Schumacher told a Netherlands-based television channel there was “a good chance” the ice cream business, which comprises Ben & Jerry’s, Wall’s and Magnum and valued in the realm of €17bn (£14.5bn), will go Dutch.
Meanwhile, the same grisly trading environment that is making companies reassess their listing has meant there is yet another bidding war afoot for an undervalued UK asset. Both Curry’s and Direct Line have shrugged off speculative approaches from foreign buyers in recent weeks, and now it DS Smith in bidders’ sights.
The paper firm goes into Easter weekend with its shares at a two-year high after US cardboard giant International Paper joined rival Mondi in bidding for the firm.
