October172011

PRESS DIGEST-Australian Business News - Oct 18


THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW (www.afr.com)Rio Tinto is planning to transfer its least profitable assets into a new unit called Pacific Aluminium before a planned divestment, it was revealed yesterday. The new entity will house Alcan, all of Rio’s Australasian alumina smelters and the Gove bauxite mine and smelter in the Northern Territory. Deutsche Bank valued the assets at US$6.5 billion, along with a further US$1.5 billion in United States and European assets. Page 1.—Stephen Pearce, chief financial officer of Fortescue Metals Group , yesterday said the iron ore producer will proceed with plans to raise up to US$1.5 billion to fund the expansion of its operations in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. Mr Pearce said a number of funding options were available, including the United States bond and term debt market and Chinese lenders. Fortescue has budgeted around US$8.4 billion for the project. Page 20.—Customers are “starting to see a different Telstra” despite the telecommunications giant not meeting its customer service benchmarks, chief executive David Thodey will tell investors today. “We still have a long way to go,” Mr Thodey said yesterday. Telstra shareholders are expected to today approve the A$11 billion transfer of the firm’s fixed-line monopoly to NBN Co, the government company building the national broadband network. Page 20.—Energy Resources of Australia has raised A$380 million from institutions through an entitlement offer, but analysts were yesterday sceptical about retail investors’ appetite for the 12-for-7 offer. “This stock has been such a diabolical performer . a lot of investors are not going to have any inclination to perhaps throw good money after bad,” one analyst said. The uranium producer hopes to raise A$180 million more to fund an expansion of its Ranger mine in the Northern Territory. Page 21.—THE AUSTRALIAN (www.theaustralian.news.com.au)Stephen Sasse, Leighton Holdings’ general manager, organisational strategy, is understood to have left the construction contractor two weeks ago on cordial terms. Leighton senior executives, including chief risk officer Craig van der Laan, have taken up Mr Sasse’s roles. The departure is the first from executive ranks since the surprise replacement of long-time chief executive David Stewart with Hamish Tyrwhitt in August. Page 25.—The quarterly mergers and acquisitions (M&A) index, released yesterday by law firm Allen & Overy, revealed that “fairly solid” activity was being driven by the resources sector. “Year on year we are tracking ahead of the previous year, but quarter to quarter we are seeing quite a bit of volatility and that is probably symptomatic of the market as a whole,” Allen & Overy partner Michael Parshall said. Australia ranked fourth worldwide for inbound M&A deals. Page 25.—Bill Moss, former executive director of investment bank Macquarie Group, yesterday said the value of the commercial property market is likely to decline, although “relative to the world it’s in pretty good shape”. Mr Moss said “the property market begins to act like equities” with less access to cheap debt, suggesting that “we can’t afford to live the way we have lived”. Ageing populations will lead to lower land values and the introduction of property taxes, he added. Page 25.—The Palazzo Versace hotel on Queensland’s Gold Coast will be taken over by Sunland Property Group , it was revealed yesterday. The property developer will swap the remaining 49 percent held by its partner, Enshaa PSC/Emirates Investment Holdings, for the interests and obligations in two Dubai properties. Royal Bank of Scotland Morgan’s Fiona Buchanan said the takeover of the asset, valued at A$70 million on June 30, was a “positive outcome for the group”. Page 25.—THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (www.smh.com.au)The Federal Government’s pledge to return the budget to surplus by 2012-13 could be broken if the euro-zone sovereign debt crisis is not resolved promptly, Treasurer Wayne Swan said yesterday. “The impact on confidence alone has had consequences for our own growth and budget revenue, and there is every prospect this could get worse,” Mr Swan told an Austrade lunch in London. World policymakers had “absolutely no excuse for failure,” he added. Page B1.—A report released yesterday by online payments service PayPal has forecast online retail spending to grow to A$37.7 billion by 2013. “With 97 percent of Australian internet users having shopped online, retailers have woken up to the online opportunity,” the Secure Insight: Changing the Way we Pay report said. Department store chain Myer recently announced a A$9 million upgrade of its e-commerce platform. Page B3.—South Australian Greens MPs yesterday called for an inquiry into BHP Billiton’s planned expansion of the Olympic Dam gold, copper and uranium mine. Despite Premier Mike Rann’s call for Parliament to approve the mining giant’s plans quickly, the balance of power in the state’s upper house is held by seven minor party MPs. “It is time . to finally get some answers on this enormous project,” South Australian Greens leader Mark Parnell said. Page B5.—The New South Wales Land and Environment Court yesterday heard an application from the Environmental Defender’s Office to invalidate AGL Energy’s Gloucester Gas development. The legal aid service, representing the Barrington-Gloucester-Stroud Preservation Alliance, a Hunter region community group, alleged that the energy retailer’s coal seam gas project risked contaminating water supplies. AGL paid A$370 million for rights to the licence area in 2008. Page B8.—THE AGE (www.theage.com.au)Data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday revealed that commercial lending increased 7.9 percent in August to reach a three-year high of A$34 billion. Overall credit commitments grew 5.2 percent in August to A$57 billion, a 23-month high. “Credit growth so far has been somewhat soft, but these sorts of finance figures suggest it’s going to build up,” said Stephen Roberts, chief economist at financial services firm Nomura. Page B3.—Cougar Energy is suing three Queensland government officials for A$34 million in compensation over the closure of its A$550 million Kingaroy underground coal gasification development. The project was shut down after benzene was detected in ground water at the site. Cougar waited two months to notify authorities of the contamination. “At no time did Cougar Energy cause harm to the environment,” chairman Malcolm McAully said yesterday. Page B4.—Diversified conglomerate Wesfarmers yesterday came under fire from the Australian Shareholders Association over remuneration packages for senior executives and dividend payouts. The investor lobby group said the current level of dividend payouts may be unsustainable if retail conditions worsen, and called pay rises for Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder and chief financial officer Terry Bowen “unacceptably high”. Page B5.—Ansell chief executive Magnus Lincoln told a shareholder meeting yesterday that costs for raw materials such as synthetic rubber nitrile had risen, while latex rubber and cotton prices had declined. Mr Lincoln said the rubber glove and condom maker’s most recent guidance had been rightfully cautious due to ongoing market volatility. Flooding in Thailand has fuelled uncertainty about latex price forecasts. Page B5.—

PRESS DIGESTAustralian Business News Oct 18 

3PM

The money manager version of ‘Moneyball’


NEW YORK, Oct 17 (REUTERS) -In “Moneyball,” the Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane puts together a baseball team on a budget by relying on computer-generated analysis to draft his players.has been pursuing a similarly quantitative, and unconventional, approach to finding money managers. The data on the best of his investors show he may be on to something.Instead of relying on smarts, education or work history - as most funds do - Kam’s Marketocracy upended the model by testing candidates with hypothetical portfolios that they managed online. Anyone could try their hand at the model portfolios, just for fun, and some 40,000 regular investors have.What makes it interesting is that Kam has then created separately managed accounts (minimum $100,000) of the real-time investments of the best of those investors. So far, just 16 have qualified, although not all are actively managing real portfolios right now. The company runs several mutual funds, including the Marketocracy: Masters 100 Fund , SWAN (for Sleep Well at Night) and ART (for Absolute Return Team), as well as separately managed accounts (SMA’s) with a $100,000 minimum investments.”Investing talent is exceptionally rare, and it’s been very difficult for anybody to find,” says Kam, who had become disillusioned with traditional money management after working at once-high-flying Firsthand Funds in the 1990s stock market boom.Marketocracy’s assets under management total just $25 million, but the performance numbers, which Kam has begun vetting in order to market the company, are intriguing. He released data to Reuters on the top three investors - Jack Weyland, Randy McDuff, and Justin Uyehara - who among them have some $6 million in assets. Year-to-date (through Aug. 31), investors in Weyland’s composite earned 19.6 percent after fees, while those in Uyehara’s got 28.6 percent, and those in McDuff’s received 9.8 percent, according to Marketocracy, in each case far surpassing the S&P 500 index’s 1.8 percent drop.The model portfolios show a far longer history: From his start in July 2002 through Oct. 10, Weyland, a retired military man with a penchant for biotech stocks, for example, posted an average annualized return of 34.3 percent, vs. the index’s 6 percent. That’s the kind of performance that makes you sit up bolt straight with a disbelieving look on your face. “When I show people the numbers, they have the same reaction: That’s crazy, but that’s what you’re looking for,” Kam says.To find his investors, Kam culls through the tens of thousands of people in the Marketocracy database. To rate an interview with him, an investor needs to have run a model portfolio that’s outperformed the market by at least 1,000 basis points a year for five years. “It’s a high bar, but it means I don’t waste my time on people who cannot perform,” says Kam, noting that he would not have qualified for such an interview when he started the company.Uyehara, a 41-year-old engineer with the California Department of Transportation, certainly isn’t the type of person you’d see running money for a major mutual fund company. He’s a frequent trader, with turnover well over 3,000 percent. He loves the process and has been doing it with his own money on the side for years. Lately, he’s been using inverse ETFs to short the market. “I don’t really have a strategy,” Uyehara says. “I just do whatever I can to make money. If I see a trend where I think I can take advantage of the situation, I will exploit it.”Uyehara figures that he works about six hours a day managing his own portfolio and the model Marketocracy one (starting at 5 a.m. before he goes to his day job at Caltrans). Since he started running the model portfolio in January 2003, it’s returned 32.2 percent annualized, far surpassing the S&P 500 index’s 5.9 percent annualized return during that period.Can an unknown investor like Weyland or Uyehara, who isn’t doing this as a full-time job, continue to post those types of stellar returns long-term? And what happens if they fail, as has happened to many a better-known investor?Here’s where the invisible hand of Marketocracy comes in: Kam will switch investors - replacing the existing one with someone else vetted and on the bench - if the person he’s using seems to have lost his touch. The key, as with the Oakland As strategy, isn’t in any one person, but in using the data to create the best team. “We’re just scratching the surface of the type of analysis that should be applied to everybody on the team,” Kam says.That process has encountered some bumps in the road. Kam’s first investment vehicle, Marketocracy Masters 100 Fund has lagged the market: It’s up just 7 percent for the past three years, trailing the S&P 500’s 12.4 percent rise, even before accounting for fees of 1.8 percent, according to Morningstar. Kam says he’s been rejiggering the fund’s strategy, but is constrained by its prospectus and is loathe to close it down because its original investors include a number of Hawaiian pineapple pickers he’d known since childhood, and he wants to do the right thing by them. He’s also moved the company’s strategy away from the fund, with its broad universe of 100 stockpickers, and to the more-concentrated SMAs.SMA clients can either invest directly with one investor - such as Uyehara, Weyland or McDuff - or in one of its composite portfolios, SWAN (for Sleep Well at Night) and ART (for Absolute Return Team). Both of the broader portfolios have outperformed the S&P 500 index since the firm began tracking their results, but both have struggled in recent months. SWAN, for example, is up an annualized 18.8 percent since May 2003, vs. 4.4 percent for the S&P 500, but has fallen 13.7 percent so far this year, vs. the index’s 8.7 percent decline.Jarrett Lilien, former president of E*Trade Financial Corp . and now managing partner of private-equity firm Bendigo Partners, argues that Marketocracy, like E*Trade before it, empowers retail investors and demystifies the investing process. “It takes a number of things the Internet does best, and applies them to active management,” he says.Betting on a new strategy isn’t for everyone, but Kam figures that assets will follow results. Says Kam: “I feel better about the money we have now than I did at Firsthand when we had billions.”

The money manager version of Moneyball 

3PM

The money manager version of ‘Moneyball’


NEW YORK, Oct 17 (REUTERS) -In “Moneyball,” the Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane puts together a baseball team on a budget by relying on computer-generated analysis to draft his players.has been pursuing a similarly quantitative, and unconventional, approach to finding money managers. The data on the best of his investors show he may be on to something.Instead of relying on smarts, education or work history - as most funds do - Kam’s Marketocracy upended the model by testing candidates with hypothetical portfolios that they managed online. Anyone could try their hand at the model portfolios, just for fun, and some 40,000 regular investors have.What makes it interesting is that Kam has then created separately managed accounts (minimum $100,000) of the real-time investments of the best of those investors. So far, just 16 have qualified, although not all are actively managing real portfolios right now. The company runs several mutual funds, including the Marketocracy: Masters 100 Fund , SWAN (for Sleep Well at Night) and ART (for Absolute Return Team), as well as separately managed accounts (SMA’s) with a $100,000 minimum investments.”Investing talent is exceptionally rare, and it’s been very difficult for anybody to find,” says Kam, who had become disillusioned with traditional money management after working at once-high-flying Firsthand Funds in the 1990s stock market boom.Marketocracy’s assets under management total just $25 million, but the performance numbers, which Kam has begun vetting in order to market the company, are intriguing. He released data to Reuters on the top three investors - Jack Weyland, Randy McDuff, and Justin Uyehara - who among them have some $6 million in assets. Year-to-date (through Aug. 31), investors in Weyland’s composite earned 19.6 percent after fees, while those in Uyehara’s got 28.6 percent, and those in McDuff’s received 9.8 percent, according to Marketocracy, in each case far surpassing the S&P 500 index’s 1.8 percent drop.The model portfolios show a far longer history: From his start in July 2002 through Oct. 10, Weyland, a retired military man with a penchant for biotech stocks, for example, posted an average annualized return of 34.3 percent, vs. the index’s 6 percent. That’s the kind of performance that makes you sit up bolt straight with a disbelieving look on your face. “When I show people the numbers, they have the same reaction: That’s crazy, but that’s what you’re looking for,” Kam says.To find his investors, Kam culls through the tens of thousands of people in the Marketocracy database. To rate an interview with him, an investor needs to have run a model portfolio that’s outperformed the market by at least 1,000 basis points a year for five years. “It’s a high bar, but it means I don’t waste my time on people who cannot perform,” says Kam, noting that he would not have qualified for such an interview when he started the company.Uyehara, a 41-year-old engineer with the California Department of Transportation, certainly isn’t the type of person you’d see running money for a major mutual fund company. He’s a frequent trader, with turnover well over 3,000 percent. He loves the process and has been doing it with his own money on the side for years. Lately, he’s been using inverse ETFs to short the market. “I don’t really have a strategy,” Uyehara says. “I just do whatever I can to make money. If I see a trend where I think I can take advantage of the situation, I will exploit it.”Uyehara figures that he works about six hours a day managing his own portfolio and the model Marketocracy one (starting at 5 a.m. before he goes to his day job at Caltrans). Since he started running the model portfolio in January 2003, it’s returned 32.2 percent annualized, far surpassing the S&P 500 index’s 5.9 percent annualized return during that period.Can an unknown investor like Weyland or Uyehara, who isn’t doing this as a full-time job, continue to post those types of stellar returns long-term? And what happens if they fail, as has happened to many a better-known investor?Here’s where the invisible hand of Marketocracy comes in: Kam will switch investors - replacing the existing one with someone else vetted and on the bench - if the person he’s using seems to have lost his touch. The key, as with the Oakland As strategy, isn’t in any one person, but in using the data to create the best team. “We’re just scratching the surface of the type of analysis that should be applied to everybody on the team,” Kam says.That process has encountered some bumps in the road. Kam’s first investment vehicle, Marketocracy Masters 100 Fund has lagged the market: It’s up just 7 percent for the past three years, trailing the S&P 500’s 12.4 percent rise, even before accounting for fees of 1.8 percent, according to Morningstar. Kam says he’s been rejiggering the fund’s strategy, but is constrained by its prospectus and is loathe to close it down because its original investors include a number of Hawaiian pineapple pickers he’d known since childhood, and he wants to do the right thing by them. He’s also moved the company’s strategy away from the fund, with its broad universe of 100 stockpickers, and to the more-concentrated SMAs.SMA clients can either invest directly with one investor - such as Uyehara, Weyland or McDuff - or in one of its composite portfolios, SWAN (for Sleep Well at Night) and ART (for Absolute Return Team). Both of the broader portfolios have outperformed the S&P 500 index since the firm began tracking their results, but both have struggled in recent months. SWAN, for example, is up an annualized 18.8 percent since May 2003, vs. 4.4 percent for the S&P 500, but has fallen 13.7 percent so far this year, vs. the index’s 8.7 percent decline.Jarrett Lilien, former president of E*Trade Financial Corp . and now managing partner of private-equity firm Bendigo Partners, argues that Marketocracy, like E*Trade before it, empowers retail investors and demystifies the investing process. “It takes a number of things the Internet does best, and applies them to active management,” he says.Betting on a new strategy isn’t for everyone, but Kam figures that assets will follow results. Says Kam: “I feel better about the money we have now than I did at Firsthand when we had billions.”

The money manager version of Moneyball 

2PM

Goldman Sachs’s exceptionalism takes another knock


By Antony Currie and Rob Cox The authors are Reuters Breakingviews columnists. The opinions expressed are their own. The exceptionalism of Goldman Sachs took another knock this week. For a brief period on Wednesday, shares of the Wall Street firm traded at a bigger discount to book value — or assets minus liabilities — than those of megabank rival JPMorgan. This rarely happens and suggests that investors fear the bank’s franchise, both as a trader of securities and financial adviser to corporations and governments, is somehow damaged. Compared to other banks, Goldman historically commanded a premium valuation relative to its book value. That has traditionally given the bank a strong defense against critics of its business model, the assets on its books or indeed its management team. And for years this has mostly been deserved. For one, Goldman marks its assets to market prices more aggressively than rivals. Second, Goldman’s return on equity, a measure of its ability to make money above its cost of capital, usually has bested rivals. Take the boom years from 2005 to 2007. Goldman cranked out an average annual ROE of 29 percent. JPMorgan came in around 11 percent. As a general rule of thumb, if Goldman’s weighted average cost of capital was 10 percent, then those returns on equity justified a share price trading at up to three times its book value. Yet last week, Goldman shares fell below $95, taking it below 72 percent of its June book value of about $130. At certain points, that was bang in line with, or even below, investor perception of JPMorgan’s worth. To be fair, this convergence was brief, especially thanks to JPMorgan’s disappointing third-quarter results. But the last time Goldman shares crossed that line for a prolonged period was in late 2008, when Goldman’s very existence was under threat. Survival isn’t the issue this time round. But Goldman’s ability to generate returns above the cost of funding itself is clearly not being taken for granted by shareholders. True, compared to Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup and others, Goldman’s valuation is still quite exceptional. But a sustained belief by investors that JPMorgan’s broader spread of retail and other businesses offers more of a cushion for shareholders wouldn’t be lost on Goldman’s board, no matter how good or bad its results may be.

Goldman Sachs’s exceptionalism takes another knock 

October142011

Behind closed doors, China leaders to ponder big choices


This year, the five-day annual meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee will ostensibly focus on enlivening the nation’s “cultural system”: its state-run publishers, performance troupes and broadcasters struggling to balance the pull of the marketplace with the dictates of propaganda.But the gathering will give central and provincial leaders a chance to discuss clouds gathering over China’s economy, and the delicate politics of choosing a new leadership to take over when President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao step down after the party congress in 2012.The central committee plenum will bring together some 370 officials — more than 200 of them full committee members, the rest auxiliary members — and it usually gathers at the walled-off Jingxi Hotel in west Beijing.The government does not disclose details of what transpires at such meetings, and usually issues a vague summary of the outcomes after they end, allowing only guesses on the directions being mapped out.In China, power resides in the party elite, and meetings of the Communist Party Central Committee are chances for powerful provincial chieftains to push their agendas and lobby for promotions for themselves or protégées.”These plenums always have a theme or excuse to meet, and this year it’s culture, but that’s also an excuse, or front, allowing the leaders to meet and discuss other issues,” said Chen Ziming, a Beijing-based political analyst who was imprisoned after 1989 protests for advocating democratic change.”Whatever the theme, Hu Jintao or whoever has the opportunity to depart from the theme and explore other issues.”However, China’s top-down decision-making usually works in increments, and it’s early for leaders to make big leaps in economics or politics, said analysts. When it ends on Tuesday, this meeting could emit rumblings of changes to come, but not thunderbolts of instant change.CAUTIONAdditionally, the advent of leadership changes makes officials even more cautious, discouraging them from policy gambles that could damage their prospects.”I think that at this level a lot of things are quite uncertain because it’s really up the top leaders to negotiate who should stay, who gets promoted and who is not. I think this part is not clear,” said Bo Zhiyue, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore’s East Asian Institute, referring to the leadership to succeed Hu and Wen.Although Vice President Xi Jinping and Vice Premier Li Keqiang are the front-runners to succeed Hu and Wen respectively, the membership of the rest of the next standing committee, the party’s leading core, will be settled only in the coming year through complicated give-and-take, said Bo.”Gradually, they are going to narrow it down to two or maybe one long list of candidates for the 18th central committee. But for the top leadership — the politburo members and the politburo standing committee members — it is really up to, more or less, bargaining among the elites,” said Bo.The 18th central committee will be chosen at the party congress due to convene in late 2012, succeeding the current, 17th central committee.Potential contenders for top positions who will gather in Beijing include: Bo Xilai, the charismatic boss of Chongqing municipality in the southwest, who has promoted an ambitious programme to narrow economic inequalities; Wang Yang, the boss of export-driven Guangdong province in the south, who has cast himself as a more liberal leader; and Yu Zhengsheng, the boss of Shanghai, the country’s coastal business center.One player who will not attend is Jiang Zemin, the retired president likely to still have some say over key personnel decisions. But he attended a big anniversary meeting at the weekend, signalling that rumoured ill-health has not incapacitated him.DISCUSS, NOT RESHAPE, ECONOMIC POLICYIn economy policy, too, the central committee meeting is, at most, likely to flag government thinking, but not settle on any major changes to an economy that has grown rapidly but has suffered from nagging inflation and concerns about a global economic downturn.Data released on Thursday showed China’s trade surplus narrowed for a second straight month in September, with imports and exports lower than expected, reflecting global economic weakness and domestic cooling.The central committee meeting also could “be an occasion to discuss contingency policy plans to any fallout of the euro zone sovereign crisis”, Tao Wang, head of China economic research at UBS Investment Bank in Hong Kong, said in a research note.Any big steps were likely only in late 2011, when leaders hold their annual conference to set broad economic policy, said Wang.”By then, we think policy-makers would have observed the deceleration in export growth as well as inflation, which would then prompt them to revise (their) policy stance,” he wrote.

Behind closed doors China leaders to ponder big choices 

October122011

Tim Allen’s “Last Man Standing” off to solid start


The 8 p.m. comedy, with a special one-hour running time, debuted to a 3.5/10 in the cherished 18-49 demo and 13 million viewers. At 9 p.m., “Dancing With the Stars” scored a 3.2/8 — up 10 percent from last week — and 16.6 million total viewers. At 10, “Body of Proof” had a 1.9/5 and 9.4 million.”Standing” was up 9 percent from the premiere of the now canceled “No Ordinary Family” in the timeslot last fall. ABC said it was the most-watched comedy series debut at 8 p.m. since September 2004. Allen’s star power, however, couldn’t earn it a bigger debut than “2 Broke Girls” and “The New Girl,” both of which had better premiere ratings. (“2 Broke Girls” owed its outstanding premiere ratings in part to a huge lead-in from “Two and a Half Men.”)Allen starred on ABC’s “Home Improvement” from 1991 to 1999. “Standing” will create a man-centric Tuesday night comedy block with another new sitcom, “Man Up,” which debuts Tuesday.It was unclear what network would win the night Tuesday because number’s for Fox’s broadcast of the MLB American League Championship Series Game 3 were not immediately available.But CBS’s “NCIS” was the top-rated show, earning a 3.9/11 and 18.7 million total viewers at 8. “NCIS: Los Angeles” at 9 had a 3.3/8 and 15.4 million total viewers. At 10, “Unforgettable” had a 2.3/6 and 11.8 million total viewers. It was down 8 percent in the ratings and hit a series low.NBC’s “The Biggest Loser,” from 8-10, had a 2.0/5 and 5.5 million total viewers. It was the show’s lowest-rated regular fall airing. But “Parenthood,” at 10, was up 5 percent, earning a 2.1/5 and 5.3 million total viewers.

Tim Allens Last Man Standing off to solid start 

3AM

UPDATE 1-PE firm Bain to buy Japanese restaurant chain-Nikkei


Nomura, which acquired the restaurant chain operator in 2006 along with a U.K. investment fund and Skylark management, will likely turn a profit on its investment with the Bain deal, the Nikkei reported.Bain began talks with Nomura to buy Skylark last fall and reached a basic agreement in late August, but an outbreak of dysentery at a Skylark group restaurant right after the agreement delayed negotiations, the paper said.Some of Skylark’s Gusto brand outlets had been closed until late September as a result of the outbreak, but Bain does not appear to be concerned as sales have recovered to year-earlier levels since the locations reopened, the daily said.

UPDATE 1PE firm Bain to buy Japanese restaurant chainNikkei 

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