Ascendis Health a picture of good health
When a company finds itself in an economy that is moving forward with all the gusto of an elderly tortoise in thick mud, it has two choices. One is to start moaning — blaming government, the weather, the consumer, the alignment of the planets and the mysterious machinations of the Chinese — but never for a moment taking responsibility. The second is to say stuff this for a game of soldiers, this party’s dead so let’s stick on the pith helmet and the puttees and strike out for pastures new.
This is precisely the strategy adopted by the stout burghers of Ascendis Health, who have sniffed the wind in SA, whipped out the cheque book and embarked on an international spending binge. First the company bought Remedica Holdings, which manufactures generic drugs in Cyprus, and Scitec International, the third-largest European sports nutrition business, for the sum total of a cheeky €430m. Then it dropped a further R375m to pick up the Southern African veterinary operations of Cipla India.
But Ascendis’ appetite was still not sated. It recently announced the acquisition of a distributor of complementary and alternative medicines and food supplements in Romania, which will act as a springboard for a mighty plunge into the markets of Central and Eastern Europe.
Despite this frenetic splurging, the company is still long on ammo, with R750m in the war chest to be flung at new platforms before there’s any need to take the begging bowl back to shareholders. There should be plenty of synergies available, and the activity is unlikely to slow down.
British Pound taking a pounding
Admitting to an interest in historical economic data may well be the civilian equivalent of fessing up to enjoying the sort of exotic activity with a pig that has long been the swift route to political oblivion.
But it’s hard not to get excited when faced with a really juicy chart of the progress of the pound sterling versus its traditional adversary, the US dollar, dating all the way back to 1791. I may need to pause to run a cooling towel over my fevered brow.
What is immediately clear is that there have been some spikes of extraordinary volatility, all deriving from major historical events.
Fighting a war against an upstart corporal from Corsica? Boom — the pound tanks until Wellington steps in with a bit of hard pounding, the Rothschilds make a fortune and the currency kicks that Napoleonic ass.
Declare a civil war against your slave-owning cousins down south? The pound that was buying you five dollars all of a sudden gets you 10, time to jump on a boat and buy yourself a plantation.
There’s the end of the Gold Standard, Bretton Woods and the withdrawal from the European exchange rate mechanism. But it’s not until you peek at the aftermath of Brexit that you see a major tumble in the value of the pound that is entirely self-inflicted for no particularly compelling reason whatsoever.
All of a sudden sterling is duelling with the Argentine peso for the crown of most limp-wristed currency of the year — and even the rand is flexing its biceps and blowing raspberries at the Bank of England.
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