MBMG International - Paul's Blog – June 2010

Paul Gambles

Recognized as a regional financial expert, Paul is a regular speaker at industry events on market forecasting, financial planning, investing and legal issues for foreigners living or doing business in Asia. Besides Paul’s blog, Paul previously distributed his ‘almost-daily’ email – “Daily Updates”, where he gave his views on timely issues affecting financial markets, macro economics, micro economics and everything in-between.

Born in South Yorkshire, England, Paul graduated from the University of Warwick with an Honours degree in English and European Studies. He began his financial career in the early 1980s as a technical inspector at HMIT with Inland Revenue. Following a successful career change to the Bank of Scotland in 1987, Paul moved to Bangkok in 1994 to help set-up an investment counseling practice, which today is known as MBMG International.

www.mbmg-international.com

11 June 2010

It’s not just a game

Every World Cup throws up its surprises, its shocks and has its winners and losers-the one just about to start will be no different. The losers will probably include yours truly, who drew Algeria in the office sweep. The winners may include our long term portfolio holding, Berkshire Hathaway. One of the Berkshire insurance companies has a big bet on the World Cup that France will lose. One of the conglomerate’s insurance units underwrote the policy.

“If France wins the World Cup, I think we are going to lose about 30 millions bucks or something like that,” Buffett recently told a cable news show. “We get all kind of risks that com into Berkshire.”

The longest odds remain North Korea, 1,000 to 1.

So MBMG portfolios benefit from French defeat as the world, of football and finance become increasingly linked. We noted that in Manchester United’s most recent financial filings currency losses were a bigger cost than player transfer fees.

We’re temp ted to remind Warren Buffett that in the long run no-one usually makes money from football.