Analysis of ArcelorMittal

Company: ArcelorMittal

Business: Mining (iron ore + coal) as well as steel production. I found it funny that they are talking about up stream and down stream just like oil companies to describe the two parts.

Active: At least they claim to be the largest steel producer in the Americas, Africa and Europe. They have 16 mines running or under development (globally) and are running steel-mills in 20 countries.

P/E: -5.1

Analysis of Barclays

Company: Barclays

Business: Financial services provider engaged in personal banking, credit cards, corporate and investment banking as well as wealth and investment management. A funny sentence that I found on their homepage "Barclays moves, lends, invests and protects money for customers and clients worldwide." I wonder what the difference is between a customer and a client? Is the money protection against thieves or tax offices?

Active: Global activity with presence in Europe, North and South America, Africa as well as in Asia. In total they are present in 50 countries world wide so in a way they are a diversification on their own.

P/E: -36.5

Analysis of Handelsbanken

Company: Handelsbanken

Business: Classical banking with traditional corporate transactions, investment banking and trading, as well as consumer banking, including life insurance.

Active: They claim to have six home markets. I would claim that they have one home market which is Sweden and then they have presence in five others: the UK, Denmark, Finland, Norway and the Netherlands. I kind of like that they did not run to the Baltic countries like many other Nordic banks did but instead they have started to establish themselves in the Netherlands which means they are confident that their business model can beat the Dutch banks model and they also then avoid the throat cutting experience that the Baltic countries might offer...

P/E: 12.2

Update on the personalized index fund II: Mai 2013

As maybe some of you can remember I was thinking about how to make a personalised index fund from DAX for old blog please see here. I created an excel-sheet with all the companies and I was thinking about how to arrange the fund by calculating five year P/Es etc. etc. etc.

Analysis of HSBC

Company: HSBC Holdings plc

Business: Financial industry. One of the largest financial institutes in the world operating within Retail Banking and Wealth Management, Commercial Banking, Global Banking and Markets, and Global Private Banking.

Active: Serving their 58 million customers in Europe, Hong Kong, Rest of Asia-Pacific, Middle East and North Africa, North America and Latin Americ. What is interesting here is that HSBC having their HQ in London is making over 50% of their profits in Asia.

P/E: 14.3