*More details have emerged about Bombardier's coup in landing the GBP 1 bn contract for 65 Crossrail trains for London's future link between Heathrow and Canary Wharf. The system will run “Aventura” trains developed by BDRAF for GBP 20 mn. They will have air-conditioning, a first for a London rail system (symptom of global warming)?

Despite my worries that a messed-up canceled London Transport contract for signaling systems would derail the deal, BDRAF beat out Hitachi and CAF of Spain. While it is HQ'd in French-speaking Quebec (Canada), Bombardier counts as British because it has a Derbyshire plant making railroad carriages for export as well as Britain employing 3,300 workers. It will add to this a depot at Watford in a London development area. This is terrific for the Bombardier! It earlier was outraced in 2011 by Siemens for another London infrastructure project, Thameslink.

Crossrail is boring ever eastward and the first Bombardier trains will run in May 2017 from Shenfield north east of London to Liverpool St. By the end of 2019, the 90-mile system will cover all major London business districts from Maidenhead west of the airport to Shenfield, along with a spur to Canary Wharf (and near Mudchute Manor where I am now, currently 75 minutes from the airport.)

The total cost of the project is c GBP 15 bn and funding has been provided by, among others, a loan from the European Investment Bank

*Reckitt Benckiser is still in focus even though I haven't dared exit the Dockland Light Railway for the sardine-like and snail-like underground until today, and so have missed seeing the stock price roll around the Reuters building at Canary Wharf. The share is up because RBGLY is expected to bid for Merck's consumer health lines. This normally would hurt a stock price, but Reckitt is expected to peddle off its own pharma business (focused on methadone in safe packaging for heroin addicts) to buy the maker of Coppertone and OTC drugs. The theory seems to be that RBGLY will need $10 bn to buy the Merck lines and will get as much as GBP 4 bn ($6.4 bn) for what it will sell. RBGLY reports Feb. 12. HQ'd in Slough, RBGLY will gain from the new train line.

*Australia's Woodside Petroleum via a sub and Delek Group via 2 subs, along with Noble Energy of Texas and Ratio Oil of Israel have signed a non-binding MoU for Woodside to take up a 25% stake in the Leviathan Israeli offshore gas field. It is to be followed by Mar. 27 with a definitive contract and Woodside paying $850 mn which will be paid to the existing partners net of royalties, $153 mn in the case of Delek, the valuations made by Woodside (thereby reducing their Israeli capital gains tax). Delek, the largest shareholder, will continue in its leading role but its shareholding via 2 subs will be cut by 11.465% to admit Woodside. A further $350 mn payment to the existing partners will be made by Woodside if a liquefied natural gas plant is built or the same amount in two stages if another gas export option is chosen, at 340-450 mn cu ft of exports per day, and at 700-900 cu ft/d. Woodside is the designated operator of an LNG or export project.

Woodside will pay 5.75% of its royalty income from gas exports of over 900 cu ft/d to the existing partners. If an independent assay results in a highest estimate for the Leviathan resources and reserves than the present one, Woodside has 2.5% royalties and up to $50 mn. The parties will work together to find a common source of finance from developing Leviathan and the contract has to be approved by Israeli authorities.

The new shareholding after the contract is signed will give Woodside 25% and reduce Noble's stake from 39.66% to 30%; Ratio's from 15% to 11.1225%; and the Delek subs (Delek and Avner) from 22.67% each to 16.93875% each.

*Portugal Telecom is summoning holders of its debt to a convocation Mar. 3 in Lisbon to vote on an extraordinary resolution allowing it to redeem early its high-yielding bonds. The bonds are euros 400 mn of Lisbon-listed euro-denominated bonds, and seven series of foreign euro notes collectively worth euros 6.6 bn issued by PT's Dutch international finance sub. (Some may have already been redeemed.) The international bonds yield 4.375% to 5.875%. These were issued between late 1998 and June 2012, before PT sold its Brazil stake in Vivo (VIV) to Spain's Telefonica. The non-Portuguese bonds come due between 2016 and 2025 with Citicorp as trustee, and have cusips. There are quite modest fees of 0.15% to 0.25% of the face value holders get for giving up their bonds early.

For common share-owners like us, saving money on interest payments by restructuring PT debt will improve our earnings. Just how much money PT can now borrow and for how long at what yield is still unknown but I suspect it will save heaps while also giving fees to C, Barclays, and BofA Merrill Lynch, who are soliciting the existing bond holders.

*Saneamento Basico de São Paulo, our waterworks, sewage, and power ute, is preparing for a water shortage by giving its customers discount incentives for cutting their water consumption from the low level Cantareira system which supplies 9.3 million people, its main supply line. The Cantareira water table is at under 22% of normal capacity. Consumers, businesses, or official offices which cut their water use by 20% in the next 12 months or until water levels are normalized (earliest likely in Sept.) will get a 30% cut in their water bills, all based on their billing history.

Fitch's Ratings estimates that the impact on SBS cashflow will be minimal, at 4-7% of revenues. It will increase leverage from 2.5% to 2.7% last year. SBS yields 2.7% to shareholders like us

*Aberdeen Asia Pacific Income Fund (a CEF or closed-end fund) reported that it lost 10% in net asset value in 2013, and 20.7% in its stock price. Eight of its top 10 positions (20.2% of the total)remain Australian central and local bonds, a relic of its former existence as First Australia Income Fund. We have owned FAX since those days and tipped it, wrongly, as a way to gain from my mistaken assumption that the A$ would recover in 2013. Its NAV  closed out the year at $2.35 bn or $6.54/sh (US of course). Despite the fall in the A$, thanks to leverage by the closed-end fund we got a dividend yield of 7.2%, not a boomerang. It continues to pay 3.5 cents/sh/month this year. There is a theory that investors in exchange-traded funds are excessively trigger happy, but to judge from the FAX share performance, so too are investors in CEFs. Tie me kangaroo down, sport!

*The green eye shade prize goes to NY reader BB who rightly discovered that I have been giving the wrong US ADR ticker symbol for Tencent Holdings, the Hong Kong Internet games, shopping, and social media operator. Its HK ticker is 0700 but its ADR is not TCFZF as I have been writing, but TCTZF. Nihao BB; you can become my copy-editor if you have time. I lost my last one 20 years ago because she preferred to work as a waitress.

*Oops. The head of Tata Motors' Jaguar Landrover sub who committed suicide in Bangkok was not John but Karl Slym. He is being succeeded by a committee headed by Tata CEO Cyrus Mistry, also  a British subject, as the Indian firm prepares to move its manufacturing to India.