All posts for the month September, 2008

Mid-Cap Beltway Bets

As part of our Washington coverage on Forbes.com, we take a keen interest in companies doing significant business either directly with the U.S. federal government or with the big contractors catering to it.

One reason: investment opportunity. Sometimes it pays to make a bet on a company with products or services that have struck have the fancy of a huge, sophisticated and deep-pocketed customer: Uncle Sam.

We’ve used our annual list of the 100 Best Mid-Cap stocks to test the proposition, with good recent results. The seven stocks we highlighted in this 2007 story show a 12-month total return of 2%, through our price date of market’s close on Sept. 18, versus a 19% drop (total return) for the S&P 500.

Full story at Forbes.com

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Best Countries For Business: Stock Bets

Washington, D.C. – The International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank, releases its annual “Doing Business” report this week. The report, based on a survey of 6,700 business experts across the globe, ranks 181 countries by their hospitality to private enterprise.

The IFC describes its report–which looks at criteria such as enforcement of contracts, taxes and cross-border trade–as “a kind of cholesterol test for the regulatory environment.”

By the IFC’s tally, Azerbaijan, consistent with reform-happy Eastern Europe and Central Asia, has made the biggest improvement to its business climate recently. Meanwhile, 28 African countries have taken steps to make doing business easier, a number the IFC calls a record.

For the last several years, we’ve used “Doing Business” as a tool for stock pickers. The gist: International investors should stick with companies in countries with the most business-friendly regulatory frameworks. We start with the 30 countries taking the top spots on the IFC’s “Ease of Doing Business” rankings. You can find the full list here.From there we look for publicly traded companies from those countries.

Full story at Forbes.com

Pentagon Worries About Chinese Chips

Washington, D.C. – At a conference in Washington, D.C., this week, a Department of Defense official sounded a startling alarm.

“The defense community is critically reliant on a technology that obsoletes itself every 18 months, is made in unsecure locations and over which we have absolutely no market share influence,” said Ted J. Glum, director of the DoD’s Defense Microelectronics Activity unit.

“Other than that,” he cracked, “we’re good.”

Glum addressed his comments to a crowd of defense officials and industry execs gathered for the 2008 Common Defense Conference, or ComDef, an internationally focused event held annually in Washington.

This year, threats to computer networks were front and center. But Glum underscored that the Pentagon has hardware headaches too, particularly when it comes to microprocessors. Ninety percent of the department’s obsolescence problems, he said, are related to electronics.

Full story at Forbes.com