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Even a few of our detractors have now come around
Did you see the weekend press article that mentioned Persimmon (PSN) might lose out on future Help to Buy contracts? As I started discussing here just under a year ago, such support mechanisms distort, fail to help the really needy and have allowed the housebuilding sector to do rather well in terms of profitability. This in turn led to the bonus scandal at Persimmon, where clearly a remuneration committee were asleep at the wheel in not capping more aggressively the rewards senior executives could make…
This may surprise a few people given my pessimism on the housing market and the housebuilding sector but I am not bricking it about the world of bricks. Now maybe it is because I am a sentimental old fool who lives near an area whose heritage is wrapped up in the world of bricks, but my simple observation is...
Not too much in today's larger cap corporate earnings to get excited about. Suffice to say comments from the housebuilder Berkeley Group (BKG) were suitably patchy, with chat from the company that profits would be down a third next year. I stick with my recent cautious views towards the sector. My thoughts therefore turn towards other areas of the market.
