Brooking: Time is of the essence - Football
Published: 23 May 2012 - 14:47:04
Sir Trevor Brooking accepts new England manager Roy Hodgson would probably have liked more time to prepare for Euro 2012 - but is in no doubt the players will know just what is expected of them when they tackle France in Donetsk on June 11.
Hodgson will meet up with the squad for the first time in Manchester on Wednesday afternoon, having allowed players to take a short break. Chelsea's John Terry, Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard and Gary Cahill - plus stand-by player Daniel Sturridge - have been given extra time off after the Blues' Champions League final victory.
"Roy is an experienced coach, but I am sure if you asked him he would say he wanted longer in the job to prepare the side," said Brooking.
The former West Brom boss will have just 19 days, with friendlies against Norway and Belgium, to fine tune his plans ahead of their Group D opener.
Brooking added: "Chelsea did really well and we congratulate them on their Champions League success, but it does mean some of their lads will be coming in after the first warm-up game and I know there are three or four injuries as well at present.
"Maybe the game against Norway in Oslo is more about giving all the squad members a chance to play and even some of the standby players who at present will be wanting to show their worth to Roy for the future."
Brooking told Press Association Sport: "They meet up on June 5 and fly out on the 6th and then the first game against France is a really tough one, but by then everyone will know what is needed from them.
"It is about trying to get off to a good start, we all know group situations are pretty tight and looking at the group they will be very close affairs."
Related England News
Villa absence a hard blow, say Spain players - Football
Published: 23 May 2012 - 14:46:53
Spain's players on Wednesday rued the absence of star striker David Villa from their Euro 2012 campaign but said they were still geared up to become the first country to win three major titles in a row.
"David Villa's absence is a hard blow, especially when you think of his contribution during the World Cup," Malaga's Santiago Cazorla told journalists after a first training session in the western Austrian resort of Schruns.
"If he hadn't been in the Euro or the World Cup, we probably wouldn't have been champions," he said.
Defender Alvaro Dominguez, however, said La Roja cannot afford to dwell on Villa's absence.
"It's a difficult loss but we can't feel sorry for ourselves. We have to make sure we can make up for it and get on with it as well as possible," he said.
"He's an excellent player who brings a lot to the team... (but) there are very good players at this camp and in this team and hopefully we can compensate for this loss," added Jesus Navas, part of the successful Euro 2008 and World Cup 2010 squad.
Spain's football federation announced late Tuesday that Villa would not take part in Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine, as he had failed to get back to full fitness after breaking a leg in December.
Spain are looking to become the first nation to win three international trophies in a row.
But with key players like Villa and defender Carlos Puyol injured -- and stars from Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao getting ready for the King's Cup final on Friday -- there are many new faces at this year's training camp.
Atletico Madrid's Dominguez, however, said blending old hands with young blood could still benefit the team.
"We're all very eager. The important thing is to win the title and hopefully we can contribute to that," he added.
Cazorla added: "The philosophy is still the same. We have the same approach and we have very good players to help us with that."
La Roja are in Schruns until May 29, with two friendlies planned on May 26 in St. Gallen, Switzerland, against Serbia, and May 30 in Bern against South Korea.
Related Spain News
The expert's guide to Instapaper - PC Advisor
They arrive by Twitter, by RSS, and by email. They're passed around on social networks. They’re embedded in online articles and blog posts. I’m talking about all of those links to things you'd like to read but can’t. Making time to read everything you find on the Web the moment you find it is hard, so you probably don’t read it at all—unless you use a read-it-later service like Instapaper.
Instapaper makes it easy to save online articles for later reading: Just click a bookmarklet in your browser, and the story you’re looking at is saved, stripped down to just its text and essential images. You can then access your saved articles on the Instapaper website or using the Instapaper apps for iPhone and iPad.
If you’ve never heard of Instapaper, here are a few tips on how to get started. If you’re already an Instapaper fan, I’ve also got some ideas about using it efficiently.
Saving articles
If you don’t already have an Instapaper account, go to the Instapaper site, click on Create an Account, and sign up. (You just supply an email address and password.) That done, you’re ready to start saving articles. It’s so easy to do so in a variety of contexts.
On the Mac. Sign in to your Instapaper account online and go to the Extras page, then drag the Read Later bookmarklet from there up to your OS X browser’s bookmarks bar. One other option on the Mac: the popular RSS client NetNewsWire ( Macworld rated 5 out of 5 mice ) has its own Send to Instapaper button.
From iOS apps. Instapaper is integrated into a number of apps where you’re likely to encounter new articles. For example, my favorite RSS reader for iOS, Reeder ( Macworld rated 4.5 out of 5 mice ) lets me save articles I’m interested in to Instapaper with a couple of taps. My Twitter app of choice, Tweetbot ( Macworld rated 5 out of 5 mice ), does the same. So do Flipboard ( Macworld rated 4.5 out of 5 mice ), Twitter ( Macworld rated 5 out of 5 mice ), Twitterific ( Macworld rated 4.5 out of 5 mice ), and Instacast ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ), to name a few more. You'll find these apps listed on that Extras page or by tapping Settings in the iOS app (at the bottom-left of the app’s main screen) and then tapping App Directory.
From email. You can email URLs to Instapaper. To do so, go back to that Extras page. There, you’ll find your unique Read Later email address. Send a message to that address, with a URL in the body, and the content of that webpage will be saved to your Instapaper account. I recommend adding that address to your address book for ease of access. If you’re using Instapaper for iPhone or iPad, go to the app’s Settings and tap Add Read Later by Email. Any URLs you email to that address will show up in your Read Later folder.
Worried about saving multi-page articles? Don’t be. Instapaper automatically merges multi-page articles into a single, continous article.
Read anywhere
Instapaper’s greatest value may be the way it allows you to regain control over when and where you read. (Instapaper’s maker, Marco Arment, describes this as “time-shifting” your reading.)
There are actually three ways to access your saved articles: pointing a browser to the Instapaper website; syncing Instapaper with your Kindle account; and using the Instapaper apps for iPhone and iPad.
Of those three, reading Instapaper on my iPad is my favorite. When you launch the iPhone and iPad apps, they automatically download new articles that you’ve saved. The articles then stay on your device so they’re available even when you’re offline. And the new iPad’s high-resolution Retina display makes reading Instapaper’s beautiful fonts a true pleasure.
Once you’ve read an article in Instapaper, you can do one of four things with it: archive, delete, share, or like it. (You could, I suppose, do nothing at all, but your story list will become cluttered quickly.)
The easiest way to rid your Read Later folder of articles you've read is to archive or delete them. In iOS, archiving or deleting can be done with a simple swipe and a tap. If you archive an article, it can be found in (you guessed it) your Archive folder. If you delete it, it’s gone.
When you read something interesting, you might want to share it with others. Instapaper lets you post articles to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinboard, and Evernote. In the iOS app, tap the Friends button in the left-hand sidebar, tap Accounts, and add your credentials for whichever accounts you want to link. Once you’ve linked an account or two, you can share stories with them by tapping the Send To button (the one with the arrow) and selecting Share. That will summon a Share pane in which you can select the service you want to share to.
From that Share pane, you also have the options of emailing or copying the link or text of the story. It also enables you to turn the article into an item in other apps. Depending on which apps you have installed, your options could include turning stories into tasks in Omnifocus or Things (perhaps to remind yourself to create blog posts) or into notes in Simplenote.
If you particularly admire a story you've read and want to be able to find it later, mark that story as Liked by clicking the heart icon next to it at the Instapaper website or at the top of the iOS app’s screen. To go back to the stories you’ve liked, tap the Liked icon in the main screen’s sidebar. The iOS app can be configured to automatically post liked articles to the social-network accounts you’ve linked. Other Instapaper users can find you and see your liked articles via Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr—if you’ve linked those accounts.
Beyond the basics
Instapaper’s basic functionality—collecting articles for later reading and tidying them up for easier reading—is pretty straightforward. But there are two tools that can make the service much more powerful.
Folders. By default all saved articles land in your Read Later folder. But you can create folders of your own, too, and those folders can serve a variety of purposes.
For example, you could create folders for specific projects or purposes. I’ve used folders to temporarily store Cliffs Notes pages for books I’ve read. You might want to make folders that organize articles by length (long-form vs short ones). Or maintain folders according to where you want to view the content they contain—articles with videos that you’d rather watch on your Mac than on the iPhone, say. You could even set up a “greatest hits” folder for articles so good you want to revisit them once in a while.
Because each Instapaper folder has its own RSS feed, so you could use a folder as a way to build a custom feed, which could be published on your website. Articles can be sent directly to folders by adding folder-specific bookmarklets to your Web browser; each folder’s bookmarklet is found on the right side of the folder’s page at Instapaper.com.
Search. Instapaper isn’t really meant to be a long-term content storage facility. But if you’re like me, at some point, you’ll want to track down an article you’ve archived. There are several ways to do that.
The easiest option is to become a paid Instapaper subscriber. While virtually all of the benefits of Instapaper are completely free, full account search is available to those who purchase a subscription (currently $1 per month).
If you aren’t interested in subscribing, there are two other ways to search your Instapaper content: First, you could export your archived articles as a CSV file using the Export CSV option at Instapaper.com. The resulting comma-separated file will contain article titles and URLs, which are searchable in a text-editor.
The second approach utilizes Pinboard, my favorite bookmarking service. In your Instapaper account settings, you link your Instapaper and Pinboard accounts. Once you do that, any article you star in Instapaper will be automatically added to Pinboard as a bookmark, making it easy to find later using Pinboard’s search field.
My preferred approach is to enter the URL for the RSS feed of any Instapaper folder in my Pinboard board account settings. I have Pinboard set up to bookmark every single article I archive in Instapaper. This effectively makes Instapaper a front-end service for capturing any article I encounter that makes any sort of impression on me. As long as I can remember any piece of the article’s title, I know I can find it later.
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t use the Internet—and I don’t know anyone who uses the Internet who doesn’t read articles there. That’s why I recommend Instapaper to everyone. When you gain control over the experience of reading on the web, you read more, and you read it whenever and wherever you want.
Eddie Smith (@eddie_smith) is an actuary who writes about Apple technology, productivity, personal improvement, and more at his blog, Practically Efficient.
Shareholders sue Facebook over botched IPO - CBC
Facebook is facing a lawsuit from angry shareholders and multiple probes from regulators over the disappointing handling of its initial public offering last week.
In a suit filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan late Tuesday, a group of Facebook shareholders are suing the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company, claiming insiders were selectively given secret information about the company's true financial projections from underwriters, while retail investors and other investment houses were left in the dark.
"The revised figures were only passed along to some investors who were therefore able to make profits by selling their IPO shares Friday while shares were on the rise," New York law firm Levi & Korsinsky alleges in the suit.
Facebook executives are shown ringing the bell to open Nasdaq trading on Friday. The shares have sunk since opening to the public last week. (Reuters)Morgan Stanley, the investment bank that shepherded the company through its highly publicized initial stock offering last week, is also facing a regulatory probe from the self-policing Financial Industry Regulatory Authority over whether or not the bank selectively withheld information about a negative analyst report ahead of the IPO.
FINRA head Rick Ketchum said the question is "a matter of regulatory concern" for his organization and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Similarly, the top securities regulator for Massachusetts, William Galvin, said his office will subpoena the company to pursue its own investigation of whether Morgan Stanley divulged to only some clients that one of its analysts had cut his revenue estimates for the social media giant.
The bank said late Tuesday that it "followed the same procedures for the Facebook offering that it follows for all IPOs," referring to initial public offerings of stock. It said that its procedures complied with regulations.
The questions about the role played by Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter for the deal, add to the confusion surrounding Facebook's IPO. In the most hotly anticipated stock debut in years, the offering raised $16 billion for the social networking company, valuing it at $104 billion.
"Who would have thought that Morgan Stanley's greatest coup could be their downfall," David Kaufman of Westcourt Capital Corp. in Toronto told CBC News. "One of the fascinating stories in all this is what effect this will have on other Nasdaq-listed tech companies, or other IPOs in the pipeline."
Shares in the Nasdaq itself have dropped more than $2, or 10 per cent, from where they were before Facebook's IPO on Friday, as negative fallout from the underwhelming debut — and a lengthy trading delay on Friday while the exchange struggled to process an order backlog — is dragging on shares.
Nasdaq CEO Robert Greifeld told shareholders of the exchange's parent company that "clearly we had mistakes within the Facebook listing."
After briefly trading above $42, the IPO plummeted through the trading day on Friday, closing at the IPO price of $38 after a furious defence of the level by lead underwriter Morgan Stanley. Trading Monday and Tuesday saw the shares fall below the $31 level before a slight rebound Wednesday had the stock trading just north of $32.
Some brokerages were still sorting out the aftermath of the trading delay on Tuesday.
'There are issues that we need to look at specifically with respect to Facebook.'—SEC chair Mary Schapiro
"Unfortunately, our clients continue to feel the effects of this in some cases," said Stephen Austin, a spokesman for Fidelity Investments, one of the country's largest brokerages. Fidelity was still waiting for some Facebook stock orders that it placed on Friday to be executed. Fidelity's systems had performed normally, Austin said.
Reuters reported Tuesday that a Morgan Stanley analyst, Scott Devitt, cut his estimate for Facebook's revenue this year to $4.85 billion from more than $5 billion earlier. The news agency reported it was unclear whether Morgan Stanley had told only select clients about the reduced estimate.
Reuters reported that the analyst cut his figures for Facebook while the company's executives, including founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were shopping the stock to potential investors in the weeks ahead of the IPO, a process known in investing as a road show.
Filing said shift to mobile might limit revenue growth
Morgan Stanley, in its statement, did not specifically address which clients might have been told about a reduced estimate from one of its analysts. It said that "a significant number" of analysts, including those from other firms underwriting the stock issue, had reduced their estimates for Facebook to reflect publicly available information about the company.
That was a reference to a May 9 regulatory filing in which Facebook said a shift by many Facebook users toward mobile devices might limit its revenue growth. Social media companies have struggled to make as much money as they would like from mobile advertising. Advertising accounts for more than 80 per cent of Facebook's overall revenue.
Morgan Stanley also said that revised analyst views were taken into account in setting the stock offering price at $38 per share. Facebook, working with Morgan Stanley, first set a range of $28 to $35 for the offering price, then raised the range to $34 to $38 before setting it at $38 on the night before the IPO.
Reports suggest Facebook's chief financial officer, David Ebersman, along with Morgan Stanley decided to increase the size of the offering by 25 per cent early last week. Selling too many shares at too high a price has the appearance or trying to let insiders cash out at the public's expense. That perception is what has led to the heightened regulatory scrutiny.
"A little understanding of who sold their own shares should have been the signal that something wasn't right," Kaufman said.
When the stock started trading Friday, it jumped several dollars, but quickly fell back toward $38. It never crossed below that level on its first day, and outside analysts said that was probably because Morgan Stanley, eager to avoid the embarrassment of a first-day decline in the stock price, had rushed in with thousands of buy orders at $38.
A spokesman for Facebook Inc., which is based in Menlo Park, Calif., said late Tuesday that the company had no comment.
The SEC had already said on Friday that it was looking into problems surrounding the IPO. On Tuesday, the agency's chairman, Mary Schapiro, said: "I think there is a lot of reason to have confidence in our markets and in the integrity of how they operate, but there are issues that we need to look at specifically with respect to Facebook."
With files from The Associated PressTEXT-S&P summary: EuroChem Mineral and Chemical Co. OJSC - Reuters UK
That said, management is committed to retaining what we believe is a moderate financial policy, which encompasses a 2.5x net debt-to-EBITDA cap. Leverage was only 1.2x on March 31, 2012, 1.35x in December 2011, 1.1x in 2010, and 2.2x in 2009. We assess EuroChem's liquidity as adequate owing to, among other factors, its proactive and successful refinancing in the past several years, and access to bank funding and debt markets. EuroChem also generates significant free operating cash flow (FOCF) under top- and mid-cycle industry conditions, excluding growth projects.
S&P base-case operating scenario
We see EuroChem's EBITDA remaining high in 2012, but potentially falling by about 10%-15% from 2011 to between RUB40 billion and RUB44 billion, as we assume lower, but still very favorable fertilizer prices. We continue to see China supporting industry-wide profits by setting a high floor price for nitrogen-based fertilizers. This mainly reflects expensive and restricted feedstock, less efficient energy use, and high export taxes. We believe there is substantial upside to our base-case EBITDA, as year-to-date fertilizer prices are much stronger than our assumed full-year average, and industry fundamentals could support continuing high prices.
On the negative side, we assume high inflation in Russia, including for gas, electricity, and rail costs.
EuroChem acquired Russian gas supplier Severneft-Urengoy LLC (not rated) in January 2012 to alleviate gas cost inflation. This company is able to produce about 1.1 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 220 thousand tonnes of gas condensate a year--a quarter of EuroChem's gas needs--with gas being the largest cost in ammonia production. EuroChem has said the assets have total proven and probable reserves of 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 32 million tonnes of recoverable oil reserves.
EuroChem finalized its acquisition of some assets of German chemical company BASF SE (A+/Stable/A-1) this year, in line with our assumed timetable and according to plan. We view this transaction as large, given the EUR830 million purchase price, including a deferred part of approximately EUR130 million payable over 2013-2016. We conservatively factor in only some modest EBITDA from these assets. After 2012, we expect larger gains.
S&P base-case cash flow and capital-structure scenario
We expect EuroChem's key credit metrics to remain strong for the rating at the end of 2012, with funds from operations (FFO) to debt at about 45% and debt to EBITDA at about 1.6x. This compares with FFO to debt at 55% and debt to EBITDA at 1.5x at the end of 2011.
These 2012 ratios reflect our assumed base-case EBITDA, sizable capex, the acquisitions of selected BASF assets, and the Russian gas producer.
Because of EuroChem's plans for heavy capex tied to two greenfield potash projects to come on-stream in the next few years, we expect FOCF to be limited or negative until one of the projects starts to generate full-year revenue in 2015, assuming there is no delay. Related capex should total a high $3.3 billion between 2012 and 2015, with $2.2 billion for the Gremyachinskoe mine, with revenue to start at the earliest in 2014, and $1.1 billion for the Verkhnekamskoe mine, with revenue to start in 2016. We think that greenfield potash projects, which are large scale and complex, contain substantial execution risk which could lead to delays or cost overruns.
EuroChem is also investing in growth ventures and efficiency improvements, which should help alleviate inflation pressures.
Liquidity
We classify EuroChem's liquidity as "adequate."
Our base-case scenario for EuroChem shows liquidity sources surpassing needs by more than 1.2x in the 12 months starting on March 31, 2012. We take into account the following positive factors:
-- RUB16.5 billion in cash and equivalents at the beginning of the period, of which we view RUB3 billion as tied to operations and therefore do not net from the group's adjusted debt;
-- The successful and proactive refinancing of its debt and main bank lines in the past several years. Most recently, the group signed a new and sizable five year $1.3 billion committed line in July 2011, with a two-year grace period (amortization free). EuroChem used $500 million to repay outstanding debt due under a $1.5 billion line maturing in September 2013, fully refinancing this line well ahead of maturity. We view the interest rate as very low, at one-month LIBOR plus 180 basis points;
-- Full availability under a long-term RUB20 billion line with Russian state-controlled Sberbank (not rated);
-- Over EUR100 million available under other committed lines maturing in the medium term;
-- FFO around RUB32 billion--RUB35 billion assumed under our base-case scenario. We believe FFO could be much higher, in line with the EBITDA upside detailed above; and
-- Our assumption of continuing full covenant compliance. We assume the group will sell assets or delay capex if necessary. Covenants include a 2.5x net-debt-to-EBITDA limit, tested every quarter. Leeway was very ample at the beginning of the period, since net debt to EBITDA was only about 1.2x.
We take into account the following liquidity needs for the 12 months starting on March 31, 2012:
-- Debt maturities of RUB587 million;
-- Capex of around RUB30 billion, of which a large part is devoted to the greenfield potash projects;
-- Acquisition of German fertilizer producer K+S AG's (BBB+/Stable/A-2) nitrogen assets for an enterprise value of EUR140 million. This transaction should close in second-quarter 2012, subject to legal and other custom approvals.
Recovery analysis
The recovery rating on two domestic ruble bonds totaling RUB10 billion issued by EuroChem is '3,' indicating our expectation of meaningful (50%-70%) recovery in the event of a payment default. The issue rating is 'B,' in line with the corporate credit rating on EuroChem. (See "EuroChem Mineral and Chemical Co. OJSC Recovery Rating Profile," published on Dec. 5, 2011 on RatingsDirect on the Global Credit Portal)
Outlook
The stable outlook reflects our expectation that supportive industry conditions will allow EuroChem to post EBITDA between $1.3 billion and $1.5 billion in 2012. The stable outlook also depends on EuroChem retaining its moderate financial policy and adequate liquidity. We view an FFO-to-debt ratio above 30% in mid-cycle conditions as rating-commensurate. We would expect a higher ratio under more favorable industry conditions.
We might consider lowering the rating if the group departed from its moderate financial policy, especially if its net debt to EBITDA was higher than stated or financial covenant compliance tightened. We might also consider lowering the rating if fertilizer prices dropped significantly for a prolonged period and the group did not reduce its capex, or if the group's ability to obtain new financing became constrained.
Given EuroChem's significant capex plans and Russia's country risk, we currently do not see rating upside in 2012. Further broadening of the portfolio through the greenfield potash expansion projects or significant new equity could eventually support a higher rating.
Related Criteria And Research
-- Criteria Methodology: Business Risk/Financial Risk Matrix Expanded, May 27, 2009
-- Key Credit Factors: Business and Financial Risks In The Commodity And Specialty Chemical Industry, Nov. 20, 2008
-- 2008 Corporate Criteria: Ratios And Adjustments, April 15, 2008
-- Methodology and Assumptions: Liquidity Descriptors for Global Corporate Issuers, Sept. 28, 2011
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