评论
打印
A few months ago Trian, a hedge fund, revealed that it had built a 6% stake in Ferguson,
几个月前，一家名为Trian的对冲基金公司透露已在Ferguson建立了6%的股份，
a London-listed company that supplies the building trade.
这是一家提供建筑交易的伦敦上市公司。
Trian is run by Nelson Peltz, who has a long history as the sort of activist investor who buys stakes in firms
Trian由纳尔逊·佩尔茨经营，佩尔茨长期以来一直是购买公司股份的激进投资者
and then uses his influence over management to boost the share price. Ferguson makes most of its profits in America.
然后他再利用自己对管理层的影响力来推高股价。Ferguson的大部分利润来自美国。
Yet its shares traded at a discount to peers listed there. Perhaps something could be done to change this.
然而，该公司的股价却低于在伦敦上市的同行。也许可以做些什么来改变这种情况。
Sure enough, Ferguson said last month that it would spin off the British part of the business to focus on its American operations.
果不其然，Ferguson上月表示，将脱离英国业务，专注于美国业务。
It also said it was considering moving its stockmarket listing.
其还表示正在考虑转移股票上市市场。
Should the firm leave, it will be part of a broader trend in Britain: the shrinking supply of equity capital.
如果公司离开，这将是英国更广泛趋势的一部分：股权资本供应的萎缩。
America's stock of equity has been getting smaller for a while, because of share buy-backs,
一段时间以来，由于股票回购，新上市公司数量的长期下降，
a secular fall in the number of new listings and the growing incidence of leveraged buy-outs,
以及低利率债务取代股权的杠杆收购越来越普遍，
in which low-interest debt replaces equity.
美国的股票一直在缩水。
Britain is now the leading candidate for such "de-equitisation", says Robert Buckland, of Citigroup.
花旗银行的罗伯特·巴克兰德表示，英国现在是这种“去股权化”的主要人选。
The net stock of equity outstanding has fallen by 3% since the start of 2018, faster than in America.
自2018年初，已发行股本净值下降了3%，比美国下降得还要快。
Cheap debt is a factor. But debt is cheap everywhere.
廉价的债务是一个因素。但债务在任何地方都很廉价。
What makes Britain so ripe for the picking is its culture of accountability to shareholders.
英国对股东负责的企业文化使之成为了一个成熟的选择。
Activist investors, like Trian, can get results there.
像Trian这样积极的投资者可以在那里获得回报。
The backdrop is a shift in the relative costs of debt and equity finance.
背景是债务和股权融资的相对成本发生了变化。
One way to look at this is through the prism of expected returns.
看待这个问题的一种方法是透过预期回报的棱镜。
A rough-and-ready gauge of expected returns on stocks is the earnings yield—the inverse of the price-to-earnings ratio.
一种简略的衡量股票预期回报的指标是净收益率—市盈率的倒数。
It is a measure of real returns: if a burst of inflation raised prices (of assets as well as consumer goods) at a uniform rate,
它是对实际回报的衡量：如果通胀的爆发以统一的速度推高了(资产和消费品的)价格，
the earnings yield would not change. The prospective earnings yield on the FTSE All-Share index of London-listed stocks is 7.6%.
那么收益将不会改变。伦敦上市股票的富时全股票指数的预期收益率为7.6%。
Compare this with a proxy for an expected real return on corporate debt—
与之相比，企业债务预期实际回报率—
the yield on investment-grade bonds less the current inflation rate, which is below zero.
投资级债券的收益率减去当前的通货膨胀率（低于零）。
The gap between the two is the reward demanded for holding riskier stocks.
两者之间的差额就是持有更高风险股票所要求的回报。
It is also, by symmetry, a measure of the relative cost to companies of issuing equity versus debt.
根据对称性，它也是衡量公司发行股票与发行债券的相对成本的一个指标。
This "financing gap" is noticeably wide in Britain.
这种“融资缺口”在英国明显扩大。
The size of the gap, says Mr Buckland, "offers a potential arbitrage opportunity for private equity and other debt-funded investors".
巴克兰德称差额的大小“为私募股权和其他负债经营的投资者提供了潜在的套利机会”。
In other words, there is plenty of scope to replace dear equity capital with cheap debt capital.
换句话说，用廉价的债务资本来取代昂贵的股权资本还有很大的空间。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
