Givaudan recorded sales of CHF 2,971 million, an increase of 4.7% in local currencies and a decline of 9.5% in Swiss francs compared to the previous year. Givaudan is successfully implementing price increases in collaboration with its customers to compensate the increases in input costs. The company forecasts that it will mitigate half of the impact in 2011 and the full impact in 2012. Givaudan continues to have a full project pipeline with win rates sustained at a high level. Link: Click Here

Kuehne + Nagel has entered into an agreement to acquire Carl Drude GmbH & Co. KG, located in Hauneck / Bad Hersfeld, the geographical centre of Germany. This transaction is in line with Kuehne + Nagel’s strategy to further expand its European overland network and to establish an European hub & spoke system. As of mid 2012, Kuehne + Nagel will operate daily lines to 50 European economic centres via this central platform. Link: Click Here

u-blox, the Swiss positioning and wireless chip and module company, announces the LISA-C200 wireless voice and data modem supporting the CDMA2000 1xRTT mobile communications standard. The low-cost, surface-mount module is ideal for a wide range of M2M applications. The new modem is based on CDMA technology gained through the recent acquisition of San Diego-based Fusion Wireless. Link: Click Here



Economy
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August French industrial output posted a surprise 0.5% m/m rise, while we (-0.5% m/m) and the consensus (-1.0% m/m) expected negative monthly growth. This confirms our view that Q3 growth will likely be positive (+0.3% q/q, in line with the Insee forecast, from flat growth in Q2). Link: Click Here

Eyes turn to G20 meeting in early Nov. Sarkozy and Merkel's meeting. As we expected, the meeting between French President Sarkozy and German Chancellor Merkel did not lead to concrete steps toward a resolution of the European crisis. But, the leaders committed to unveil a plan at the G20 meetings on 3-Nov. The plan will include a solution to ensure financial stability in Europe and address Greece's problems. No further details have been released. Link: Click Here

European High Yield - Crossing the Value Rubicon. As we’ve stated earlier this year, we think the European high yield market is presenting us with some very interesting opportunities. As of 6th October, one of the high yield indices that we track had an average yield to maturity of 12.0%. This equates to a risk premium above and beyond government bonds of around 10.4%, a level that we believe more than compensates investors for expected default risk over the next few years. To put it bluntly, we think high yield bonds are cheap. Link: Click Here

Assessment of the macroeconomic impact - report issued by the Basel Committee and the FSB. The MAG assessment concludes that the transition to stronger capital standards on G-SIBs is likely to have at most a modest impact on aggregate output, while the benefits from reducing the risk of damaging financial crises will be substantial. Raising capital requirements on an illustrative group of potential G-SIBs by one percentage point over eight years is estimated to lower GDP by less than one one-hundredth of a percentage point (0.01%) per year during the implementation period. Link: Click Here