new star investing

Petrofac shows equity flair

This year Petrofac Resources will submit plans for the West Don and Don Southwest oil fields in the North Sea, decide whether reserves at the Cendor field offshore Malaysia warrant a second development phase, and bring onstream the Chergui field offshore Tunisia.

There would be nothing unusual in this if it were not for the fact that Petrofac is primarily an oil industry engineering and services group. Its Resources division was created in 1998 to take equity stakes in selected development projects, the rationale being that it would provide long-term cashflow to a 鈥渓umpy" core business and leverage to win more and bigger engineering jobs.

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expatriate brokerage

Broker tips: Unilever, Tesco, Barclays, William Hill,

LONDON (SHARECAST) - Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant Unilever continued its rally after Citigroup upgraded the shares to buy from hold following Thursdays first quarter results. The broker also raised its price target to 25.5 from 21.3 as maker of Knorr soup and Lux soap posted a pre-tax profit of 1.33bn for the period, up from 1.31bn the previous year as it improved operating margins. Analysts had expected profits of between 1.137bn and 1.245bn. Tesco marched higher Friday as ABN Amro lifted the UK supermarket to buy from neutral and upped its price target to 602p. The broker reckons Tescos intention to do more property deals, unlocking value from freehold assets, was justification enough for the upgrade. Last month the firm reported record full year profits and announced plans to return 3bn to investors from the sale of property assets.

residential real estate investing

Going Global Or Staying At Home

Sydney, Apr 27, 2007 (ACN Newswire) - The rise of the Australian dollar doesn't only make foreign travel and imports more attractive, foreign shares, especially ones classified as 'global', have become more interesting to some investors.With our strong dollar we can afford to look at shares in the US and Japan a little more closely, or look at indirect investments offshore through managed funds or through investors, such as the about-to-list Platinum group which has made its money out investing offshore.The head of Strategy at the AMP, Dr Shane Oliver says there is a theoretical case for Australians to have a higher allocation to global shares on a very long term view ."The recent out performance by Australian shares and the loss of their valuation advantage has made the case for global shares a bit stronger."But, he says that on a 3 to 5 year view Australian shares still provide better return prospects than mainstream global shares thanks mainly to the China boom and higher dividends.Here's his thinking...........................Australian shares have outperformed global shares dramatically so far this decade returning 14.2% pa over the last 7 years versus 1% pa from global shares in local currency terms.