This blog update profiling Laureate Education’s plans for an IPO is courtesy of BloombergBusiness‘s article, “World’s Biggest For-Profit College Chain Plans $1 Billion IPO”, with an excerpt below:

Laureate Education Inc., the largest for-profit college network in the world, is interviewing banks for a $1 billion initial public offering in the U.S., people with knowledge of the matter said.

The company, whose honorary chancellor is former President Bill Clinton, has been meeting with potential underwriters for an IPO that could value the education juggernaut at about $5 billion, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing private information. The company, based in Baltimore, owns 84 universities, mostly in emerging markets.

Laureate was taken private in a management-led $3.8 billion buyout in 2007, backed by an investor group including KKR & Co. and Citigroup Inc. The company pursued an IPO three years ago, people familiar with the situation said then, which never materialized. It would be the the biggest school chain to go public, edging out Nord Anglia Education Inc., the second-biggest, which raised $350 million last year.

The market climate surrounding for-profit education could be better. The For-Profit Education Index of 13 companies, including DeVry Education Group Inc. and Apollo Education Group Inc., has plunged 55 percent through Wednesday since its peak five years ago. Enrollment has slowed amid recruiting abuses and student debt concerns, leading to a regulatory crackdown.

To continue reading this article on the world’s largest for-profit college chain’s quest for an IPO, click here. To find a brokerdealer to help you get in on this IPO and others like it, click here.

The post Laureate Education Inc. Planning $1 Billion IPO appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

AshleyMadison.com, a dating website for cheating spouses, wants to hook up with investors by pursuing an initial public offering in London this year.

The site’s parent company, which failed with a previous IPO attempt in Canada, said on Wednesday it is looking to raise as much as $200 million to exploit booming demand for its services.

AshleyMadison had sales of $115 million last year, an almost fourfold increase on 2009, Christoph Kraemer, its head of international relations said in an interview. It makes money by charging men for credits, which they then use for introductions to women.

The post Adultery Website Wants Hook Up With Brokerdealers In An IPO appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

GoDaddy Inc., the provider of domain names and website hosting, is seeking a valuation of as much as $2.87 billion in an initial public offering.

The company is seeking to raise as much as $418 million, offering 22 million shares at $17 to $19 apiece, according to a regulatory filing Thursday. Those terms imply a market value of $2.57 billion to $2.87 billion.

GoDaddy’s IPO comes more than three years after a group led by KKR & Co. and Silver Lake Management acquired the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company for $2.25 billion. Now that the price range is set, GoDaddy can officially begin marketing the sale to investors. The IPO is scheduled to price March 31, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

In 2014, GoDaddy posted $1.39 billion in revenue, a 23 percent jump from the prior year. Its net loss narrowed to $143.3 million over the same period, from $200 million in 2013, the filing showed.

To read the full article from BloombergBusiness, click here.

The post BrokerDealers Banking on GoDaddy IPO appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

About a month ago, the Brokerdealer.com blog profiled Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, a venture capital firm best known for backing tech companies including Facebook, SpaceX, Airbnb and Spotify, making a multimillion-dollar investment in Privateer Holdings, a Seattle-based private equity firm focused on pot. Now the further success of this private equity firm hangs on the outcome of a current pot court case in California.

A federal drug enforcement agent turned private-equity manager at a firm backed by PayPal Inc. co-founder Peter Thiel is watching the trial of a garden-variety pot grower with high hopes for the nascent marijuana industry.

It may sound like an only-in-California story — and it is, for now — but a win by the defendant may move the entire nation toward legalization of a business some value at more than $50 billion a year.

Patrick Moen, head of compliance and chief lawyer at Privateer Holdings Inc., an investment firm focused on cannabis, is following the case of a man described by prosecutors as the “go-to” guy at a sprawling marijuana plantation in the mountains of Northern California.

The defendant’s lawyers won the right to challenge the government’s treatment of marijuana as a controlled substance, as dangerous as heroin. They’re making their final pitch Wednesday for a federal judge to declare the government’s position unconstitutional in light of evidence of pot’s medical uses and steps the U.S. has taken to recognize legalization efforts in several states.

A defense win would boost the legal market for cannabis-related products and confirm for investors that the times for pot are changing.

‘Enormously Significant’

“It’s pretty obvious that a positive outcome would be well-received by policy advocates and the markets,” Moen said in an interview. “Just the fact that the judge has agreed to consider the issue is an enormously significant event.”

Moen, who in November 2013 became the first agent to leave the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for a job in the cannabis industry, according to the Privateer Holdings website, said he wasn’t alone at the DEA in believing that banning marijuana “was foolish and a waste of resources.”

While most of his cases involved crack cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, his team busted medical-marijuana growers in Oregon, he said. Moen said he came to the realization that “this whole policy is just wrong.”

Some DEA colleagues were disappointed with his new career, though most were supportive and share his feelings, Moen said, adding that he’ll be looking to hire former agents in the next year as part of his effort to professionalize the cannabis industry.

Marijuana Investments

Thiel’s venture capital firm, Founders Fund, last month announced its investment in Privateer. The Seattle-based holding company owns marijuana-related businesses, including the information website Leafly, Canadian medical marijuana company Tilray and Marley Natural, a cannabis brand venture with the family of singer Bob Marley that will offer Jamaican marijuana strains and cannabis- and hemp-infused topical products and accessories.

Founders Fund didn’t say how much it contributed.

“This is a multibillion-dollar business opportunity,” Founders Fund partner Geoff Lewis said in January.

Voters in Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana, and medical use of the drug is allowed in 23 states.

Pot smokers and investors are tracking the Sacramento, California, case of Brian Pickard, one of 16 people charged in 2011 with growing almost 2,000 marijuana plants in a national forest and in gardens off a dirt road in Hayfork, a town of 2,000 about 100 miles south of the Oregon border.

U.S. District Kimberly Mueller, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, decided last year to allow Pickard’s lawyers to argue that classifying pot as one the nation’s most dangerous drugs is irrational.

The post Pot Court Case May Be Pot of Luck for Investors: $Billions At Stake appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

For the past few years, only risk-taking brokerdealers have had the courage to invest their clients’ money into the Russian Market. Many brokerdealers have not been able to see what opportunity there was in Russia. Bloomberg’s Ben Steverman has been able to crack the code and found the opportunity.

On paper, there’s no good reason to invest in Russia right now. The country’s dealing with a collapsed currency, plunging oil prices, recession, conflict in Ukraine, sanctions, and a government that’s hard to predict. The MSCI Russia Index lost almost half its value last year, and those losses could continue in 2015 and even into 2016. On Monday, as fighting in Ukraine intensified, the ruble dropped another 2.3 percent against the dollar, to its lowest level since Dec. 16.

For the intrepid, the thrill-seeking, or the very wealthy, however, Russia still has an appeal. Since August, investors have poured $861 million into the Market Vectors Russia ETF (RSX), the largest U.S.-based Russia fund. “In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable,” according to investment firm Research Affiliates in a new analysis. “Investing in Russia now is definitely discomfiting, but it might pay off in the long run.”

Here’s the opportunity they see:

Investors are watching Russia’s inscrutable and unpredictable government for any signs that President Vladimir Putin might be ready to make nice with the West or reform the Russian economy. So far, no dice. But, historically the Russian government has been more “business-friendly and reform-minded” when oil prices are low, Bank of America strategist David Hauner said in a Jan. 12 research note. Oil under $50 a barrel could spur Putin to do something about Russia’s economy, famously unproductive and overly reliant on the energy industry.

Sanctions are depriving Russia of the foreign technology and capital it desperately needs, to the tune of $100 billion in capital this year, BofA estimates. But, Research Affiliates notes, those sanctions are “relatively mild” compared with those imposed on Iran, Cuba, or North Korea. And Russia still has relatively low debt and high currency reserves, while it continues to provide much of Europe’s energy. “Logically, this crisis should pass,” Research Affiliates says.

Finally, in exchange for the extreme risks involved with Russia, investors are getting some outstanding deals. The MSCI Russia Index’s price-earnings ratio is 4, compared with the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index’s 18.1. Based on their valuation, Research Affiliates calculates Russian stocks could return 16.9 percent per year over the next 10 years, more than any other developed or emerging market.

Then again, the firm also expects Russia to be the second-most volatile market in the world during that time span, after Turkey. Investors may need strong stomachs for quite a while: Without reforms, Bank of America estimates Russia won’t fully recover from this downturn until 2019.

For the original article from Bloomberg Businessweek, click here.

The post Risk is Worth the Reward: Brokerdealers Still Have Faith in Russia appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has been banned from the brokerage industry forever on Friday.

Anastasios Belesis

, the former head of John Thomas Financial Inc., was barred from the brokerage industry for life by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for trading ahead of clients’ orders.

Belesis dumped the New York-based firm’s position in a penny stock that was surging while 14 customers tried and failed to sell their shares, Finra said today in a statement. The industry-funded regulator ordered Belesis to pay about $1 million plus interest to customers and fined him $100,000.

Belesis has appeared on business television and had a minor role in the movie “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” before his boiler room across from the New York Stock Exchange closed in 2013. Trainees at the brokerage were forced to stand and bark memorized sales scripts for as long as 14 hours a day, Bloomberg News reported at the time, citing interviews with 20 former employees.

Finra said in the statement today that John Thomas didn’t hold the customer orders intentionally. Ron Cantalupo, a John Thomas broker who was accused of intimidating a colleague, was cleared by the regulator, which also dismissed charges against Michele Misiti and John Ward.

Finra’s fraud charges against Belesis were dismissed as well. He agreed to pay $500,000 in 2013 to settle accusations by the Securities and Exchange Commission that he pressured a hedge-fund manager to steer fees to John Thomas.

“He was never ever charged with running a boiler room,” Ira Sorkin, Belesis’s lawyer at Lowenstein Sandler LLP, said in a telephone interview. “To the extent there were charges brought against him for fraud, they were dismissed.”

For the original article from Bloomberg’s Zeke Faux, click here

The post FINRA Bans Penny-Stock Broker Anastasios Belesis appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

Six banks are developing a new not-for-profit platform to trade European equities called Plato Partnership Ltd.

Barclays Plc (BARC), Citigroup Inc. (C), Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley (MS) plan to use the venue to reduce trading costs, increase transparency and simplify markets, according to a statement.

“The platform would seek to ensure market integrity and the protection of orders with the goal of ensuring fairness for all participants,” the consortium said in the statement.

The banks intend to set up the trading venue under a trust, or similar structure, to prevent them from reneging on the principles at a later date. They will spend any profit from the platform on academic research designed to improve Europe’s market structure.

Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management and Norges Bank Investment Management have also joined Plato Partnership.

“We feel that the time is right to launch this proposition, which would seek to enhance the market by delivering additional liquidity and functionality to market participants,” Stephen McGoldrick, Plato’s project director, said.

Brokerdealer.com can provide you with the ability to work with the above mentioned brokerdealers on the new equity trading platform they have created through one of Brokerdealer.com’s many databases.

For the original copy of Hadfield’s article from Bloomberg, click here

The post European BrokerDealers Band Together For Equity Trading Platform appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

For example, a good approximation is Market Vectors ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:MOAT) that looks through 1,500 companies,  of which 10% receive a wide moat categorization, then only 20 with the best valuation (low price – good performance) are selected to compose the index. With only six overlaps compared to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.B)‘s choices, it’s not the best approximation and it further deviates as its turnover is of about 100%, but Market Vectors ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:MOAT) acts like a good enough approximation.

Following next is iShares Trust (NYSEARCA:QUAL), which tries to depict factors that cause changes in the market’s alpha (a measure of performance on a risk-adjusted basis).

“[...] Alpha can come from small cap tilts, momentum, volatility, so this one [iShares Trust (NYSEARCA:QUAL)] is an ETF that looks for characteristics in stocks that exhibit quality. It looks for return on equity, earnings growth, and low debt, things Buffett likes. […] It’s a Buffett philosophy, but not exactly Buffet,” said Eric Balchunas.

The last, but not least is Direxion iBillionaire Index ETF (NYSEARCA:IBLN), which looks at the top 10 best performing billionaires, Warren Buffett being the 11^th is not in the list. The ETF analyses 13F filings and the overlapped stocks to put a portfolio together. There’s neither an economic formula nor a valuation concept behind the picks made by Direxion iBillionaire Index ETF (NYSEARCA:IBLN), but it relies on the intuition of the best investors, which in most of the cases can help you a lot, but will not be able to guarantee a progress like Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.B)’s.

The post High-profile ETFs and how to garner Alpha from them appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

In an attempt to gain acceptance into broad MSCI Inc. (NYSE: MSCI) Europe indices, and potentially into related exchange traded funds, Israel’s Tel Aviv Stock Exchange could end its Sunday open schedule and switch over to Western trading days.

Julien Assous, chief executive officer of Israel Brokerage & Investments and a member of the TASE board of directors, revealed that the bourse is considering changing the exchange’s Sunday-to-Thursday trading days, following feedback from MSCI about potential hurdles for wider acceptance, reports Gabrielle Coppola for Bloomberg.

The TASE board is contemplating shifting open days to a Monday-through-Friday schedule.

“If one of the obstacles to us becoming part of the MSCI Europe was us trading on Sunday, hopefully this will take away one of the obstacles,” Assous said in the article. “There are many issues, but being a part of a major MSCI index is the big issue.”

Chief Executive Officer Yossi Beinart is trying to meet with MSCI representatives in October for talks over TASE’s inclusion in the European Index. Former TASE CEO Ester Levanon has stated that a move onto the Europe Index could help attract as much as $2 billion in foreign capital.

A broad Europe stock ETFs, the iShares Core MSCI Europe ETF (NYSEArca: IEUR), which tries to reflect the performance of the MSCI Europe Investable Market Index, does not include exposure to Israeli company stocks. However, MSCI were to accept Israel into its broader European index, IEUR could track some Israeli stocks down the line.

MSCI upgraded Israel from emerging market to developed market status back in May 2010.

Investors can still track Israeli stocks through country-specific ETFs like the iShares MSCI Israel Capped ETF (NYSEArca: EIS), which tries to reflect the performance of the MSCI Israel Capped Investable Market Index.

The trading-day changes would likely still have little effect on Israel-related ETFs as normal operating hours on the TASE do not correspond with normal hours that the U.S.-listed ETFs trade. [The Underlying Value of an ETF’s Portfolio]

The post Tel Aviv Disrupt may carry Israel to MSCI Europe ETFs appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.