A couple of days after Greene King (GNK) got scooped up by a Hong Kong billionaire, and on the day that Cobham (COB) announced the scheme particulars for its mooted takeover by a US peer, I read that plumbing and bathrooms kit company Ferguson (FERG) is thinking about switching to a US market listing. So woe betide the future of the UK market? In my opinion not at all...but you just have to face facts…

I have written about Merlin Entertainments (MERL) before, noting back in February that 'from a stock market perspective it is a hard share to love as it seems to need to pour in a lot of capex to keep relevant and this crimps the valuation you would pay. Risk-reward feels more exciting in the lower third of the aforementioned 300-400p range'. Well the lower end of that share price range was (again) the area the share bounced from earlier in the week when it was announced that the activist investor ValueAct was agitating for change…

Not much has got me fired up so far this week looking at the various regulatory disclosures but I did notice an article in the newspaper that purports to be America's leading financial journal yesterday with the worrisome headline of 'Barclays Mulls U.S. Push as Activist Looms...Executives debate whether greater exposure to the U.S. retail market could both generate revenues and fund its U.S. operations more efficiently'…

I read in today's Sunday Times  that:  'An activist hedge fund has opened fire on the boss of Mr Kipling cakes maker Premier Foods (PFD), accusing him of leading the company into a "zombie-like state" through "five years of failure" '

Of course the title is a nod to the sad passing of music legend Mark E Smith a couple of weeks ago...but given the demographic of readers on this website I expect many of you are familiar with his 1981 penned epic which so famously was also used in The Silence of the Lambs. As one wag put it in a YouTube comment 'i find its (sic) the perfect song to play when you're being chased through your dungeon-like basement by an FBI special agent'. Absolutely! Anyhow...back to finance and investments.

I first wrote about Duncan Soukup’s antics at Thalassa Holdings (THAL) two months ago HERE and it’s worth an update with the aggression level’s stepping up at its corporate battle with London Shopping REIT (LSR) and also worth covering what I imagine would have been a pretty strange exit interview.