With Chrome Google attack rival where it hurt

By launching its new browser, Google Chrome, Google boss Eric Schmidt explained that he was to prevent Microsoft from Balkanize Internet. The comparison is legitimate insofar as the Redmond Group wants to shape the Web for his benefit, but it is less in the proper sense of the "balkanization" what is the fragmentation of an empire, where Microsoft continues, as elsewhere Google want to cement his own. The reference to the Balkans on the other hand becomes justified if it relates to the climate of hostility there. With Chrome, Google attack rival where it hurt. Today, almost 70 of Internet users surf the Microsoft's Explorer. By providing an alternative, and if it knows attract them, Google, which is already the most popular search engine, would be a fatal blow to the ambitions of his opponent on the Net. In the aftermath, through software in direct access on the Web, users may also escape from Windows the window opened by Google. And give reason to the market, which has, since 2004, quadrupling the value of Google and amputee 20 that of Microsoft.

Large gap

Look for the error. Two average weight of the stock exchange of Paris come to announce the terms of their capital increases which begin today. The first, EDF Energies Nouvelles, which is worth EUR 2.7 billion and will raise 500 million, of which 75 subscribed by its first two shareholders, offers a discount of 30. As its course capitalizes 42 times the benefits this year, and 30 times those expected next year, the investor still pay the respective PER of 31-20. The second, Natixis, whose course has dropped from 57 since the beginning of the year, offers an additional discount of 61 to 3.7 billion, of which 70 subscribed by its first two shareholders. At this price, the lean profit anticipated for this year is capitalized 15 times and the next year 4 times. This shows how much investors are skeptical about the future performance of Natixis that they have confidence in the new energy future. The fact that the subsidiary of the Banques Populaires and Caisses d'Epargne has stretched the sébile to Singapore, in the Gulf and until his former hated shareholder, the Caisse des Dépôts, illustrates the extent of the distress of its owners.

Cockpit view

If happiness is at the heart of the slogan of Club Med, it is not in the scope of its shareholders. With a title to fall by 32 since the beginning of the year, and a negative stock market balance over three years as over five years, the Group at the trident is not what to satisfy investors. If the focus to the top of range launched by Henri Giscard d'Estaing gave a few glimmers of hope, the crisis and the gloom spread for months cloud the horizon. The increase of the turnover in the third quarter thus marks a retreat on the rhythms of progress recorded in the first quarter and second. And if Asia and America are the most dynamic, Europe, which provides three-fourths of sales is an amplification of the wait phase observed in recent months. Which augurs little tomorrow singing, while management maintains its objective of profit result for the year after a first half deficit. Sentenced to the cockpit to view with the multiplication of particularly random last minute bookings, Club Med, which will pay 38 again the benefit expected for 2008 and 27 times higher than expected in 2009, therefore unlikely to soon a true bounce.