Our monthly round-up of the best quotes from the financial world.
When looking for the most quotable quotes of the past month, the obvious place to start was with the annual results of Panther Securities (LSE: PNS). These announcements are relished not just by the company's 500 or so shareholders, but also by a legion of followers who enjoy the famously outspoken commentary of the Chairman and CEO, Andrew Perloff. He didn't disappoint.
"The year under review has been difficult for many property companies BUT NOT FOR US." [His emphasis].
While Panther was able to take advantage of the market, Perloff also had an apology to make:
"A report in Property Week ... put our company at number two for overall increase in shareholder return over the previous 10 years out of 28 of the fully listed property companies. For this, I apologise - we should have been top!!"
His Chairman's Report, and Supplementary Ramblings, take us on highly critical tour that includes the Financial Reporting Review Panel (FRRP), "this dreadfully incompetent government", and climate change.
From thin cats to fat cats
You can read more detail on Panther in David Holding's recent article. In addition to his outspokenness, another characteristic of Perloff is his alignment of his interests with those of the shareholders, making him one of our favourite 'thin cats'.
Having just set aside $5.5bn of its $12.8bn first quarter profits for pay and bonuses, the term 'thin cat' can hardly be applied to Goldman Sachs, some of whose employees must be in the running for the gold medal at this year's Grand Prix des Chats Corpulents.
The results announcement came days after the decision to charge Goldman Sachs with fraud, in relation to its creation and sale of products allegedly designed to fail. In response to the defence that this was a one-off event, Quentin Hardy of Forbes Magazine told Fox Business News:
"I walked passed a dozen 7-Elevens, and I didn't hold up one of them -- you're blaming me for one I did?"
From Greece to the UK
Elsewhere, in a development that Satan described as "the commencement of Phase II", the EU and the IMF have arranged a €110bn three-year bailout for Greece. Not everyone is impressed.
Jim Rogers thinks it will merely prolong the problem. He told BBC:
"You cannot solve a problem of too much debt and too much spending with more debt and more spending … it's just ludicrous, it defies comprehension … I doubt [Greece will default] in 12 months time, there's too much money being thrown at them right now. Can they default in five years, yes, and they probably will."
Rogers sees Europe's response to the Greek crisis as the start of the end for the euro:
"Longer term I don't think the euro will survive. It's unfortunate, I think the euro is a very sound concept … I don't expect there to be a euro in 20 years or even 10 years, because it's continuing to weaken itself from within. If countries can defy the Maastricht Treaty and spend money they don't have and run up huge debts … eventually [the currency] falls apart."
Despite his longer-term prognosis, Rogers owns the euro but does not own sterling:
"I am worried about sterling, I don't think sterling has a great future … I don't see a solution on the horizon, I don't see any politician in the UK acknowledging the extent of the problem or willing to do anything about it."
Rogers was not the only one to sound the alarm about potential problems for the UK. Jeremy Grantham of GMO, the asset management company that James Montier joined last year, still sees bubbles in the housing markets of both the UK and Australia:
In a Financial Times video, brought to my attention in this article by Cliff D'Arcy, he warns:
"if [house prices] do not in both cases go back to the old trend-line multiple of family income, which is what should drive house prices, it will be the first time in history that such a bubble has not broken. This is not something I would want to bet on if I was thinking of buying a house right now."
Finally, I can't help being tickled by this comment from Jon Moulton, formerly of private equity group Alchemy Partners, and recent founder of Better Capital; when asked by the FT to name his three best features, he cited "determination, curiosity and insensitivity -- it lets you sleep when others can't".
I'm sure it's a very useful trait.
More from Padraig O'Hannelly:
