City analysts have their beer goggles on

I read that our clairvoyant City analyst community is excellently briefed these days. Not in the leisure sector, it seems. Shares in pub operator JD Wetherspoon have slumped by almost 10% after weak third quarter trading - news that will give clients of UBS (who were told last week to buy JDW and dream of a price target of 590p) and Citigroup (price target 740p) a thumping hangover. The shares closed today at 491.8p, which just goes to prove SlackBelly's first rule of engaging with large pub chains: always go for the shorts.

Fancy that...

No mention in the Daily Mail this morning that Viscount Rothermere, chairman of Daily Mail and General Trust, has joined the likes of Michael Spencer at ICAP, Tim Martin at JD Wetherspoon and Brian Souter at Stagecoach, in pledging shares as security for a loan.
So we best go back to Ben Laurence's Mail column of January 10, to find out what the newspaper really thinks about this practice.
Then Laurence wrote: "The upshot is that directors who have used shares as collateral to obtain a loan without disclosing the fact will escape any penalty whatsoever. Frankly, this looks like a shambles. Too often, the regulatory regime covering the City and financial services looks rickety. The fact that people who have patently broken the directors' code and violated the spirit of the disclosure requirements are now going to escape censure or punishment is lamentable."
Oh well.