We were slow on the uptake yesterday and it took 4 hours from when the pair of miscreants cornered my husband for us to realize that they had opened his fanny pack and stolen his UK passport. (He is a British subject not an American although we live in the USA. Luckily they missed his wallet.) He filed a declaration yesterday afternoon with the French police who kept asking if the baddies were Eastern European or African, but they barely spoke to us so we think they were probably French.

Now mon mari is at the Paris UK consulate to try to get a passport replacement fast. About 15 years ago my US passport was stolen out of my backpack on the RER fast train so this is a familiar problem here in Paris. I think the passports are fed into the underground for use by terrorists or (I hope) displaced persons.

After that horror we went to a concert at the Billettes Church Cloister on the Rue des Archives, mainly because the rush of Chinese tourist groups kept us from visiting my favorite Paris Church, the Sainte Chapelle on the Ile de la Cité, builkt in only 8 years during the 13th century by Louis IX, later St Louis, to house Jesus's Crown of Thorns which some Jerusalem gonif had sold him. It is now available for veneration at Notre-Dame Cathedral. Louis paid for the relic about 5x what the perfect light-filled royal chapel with its brilliant stained glass and painted columns to house it had cost him.

The Billettes Cloister is the only remaining medieval cloister left inside Paris, and it is alongside a 19^th century Lutheran Church which on Sundayafternoon is full of emerging market Evangelical preachers and their flock. Martin Luther of course jumped over a Cloister wall to begin his career. The Cloister concert featured 2 soloists and 5 choristers singing secular and religious music from the high Middle Ages, led by senior choirmistress of Franco-African heritage with magnificent corn-rows. All the singers, who were unaccompanied by instruments, were women, 5 sopranos and 2 altos. In the Middle Ages they would have been boys or chaps like post-operation Abelard. It was comforting after the passport panic and the audience was encouraged to join in a few numbers with easy verses like Hallelujah.

*Portugal has paid euros 4.9 bn (about $6.6 bn) to bail out the Banco Espirto Santo using funds provided by the European Union. This will wipe out bondholders and stockholders in the crashed bank including the Espirito Santo family members because the holdings outside the commercial bank which is being refinanced will be put into a “bad bank” for liquidation. Private equity and hedge funds, plus banks in the US, Brazil, and Europe are reportedly interested in some of the financial and other assets to be sold.

The main BES is now renamed “Banco Novo” and will become the son of the old father, Espirito Santo International and other Luxembourg family entities. In fact there is now no Holy Ghost. But what makes matters a bit more confused, it was only 6 weeks ago that the Lisbon govt gave the old Espirito Santo owners the right to do a capital increase which hit trusting investors who listened to their friendly local bank advisors. Moreover, Portugal is on the hook to repay the EU for the bailout money.

This matters to us because the shorts, unable to trade BES, have been offloading Portugal Telecom which is a part owner of the defunct BES, and which is owed a huge amount by one of the defunct holding companies in Luxembourg, needed to complete its takeover of Oi, the Brazil cellphone firm. I expect a reversal of the PT price imminently.

*Anton Oilservices, ATONY of Hong Kong, today issued a warning that H1 profits would be below last year's level. The reason is not that China is not hunting oil and gas hard; it is that other places where the Chinese oil giants operate are in a political mess, starting with Iraq. This too shall pass. The share is now about $108 (my conversion), a new low. This may tempt me to average down if the price drop holds. ATONY was the A I did not include in my A to Z sells yesterday. About 20% of ATONY is owned by Dutch Schlumberger Ltd, SLB.

*GlaxoSmithKline debt was downrated by Moody's last week. It now plans to sell ãbout $1 bn of older drugs to private investors, who are also examining a larger offer for sale from Sanofi, from Paris. The idea is to create a vehicle for the income stream of old steady-selling drugs. Advising the potential buyers is an important role for a drug expert, a drug expert told The Financial Times today. The expert is former Teva CEO Dr Jeremy Levin who was ousted in a boardroom coup last Oct. Because I have very large gains and pay very high taxes to Obama, Cuomo, and de BlasioI am only cutting my GSK holdings marginally today. I hold the shares outright in a taxable account, mainly for income.

*I am also not selling Reckitt Benckiser which is restructuring its pharma arm because I think there must be money in pain-killer drugs and well as in the lines RBGLY will keep ranging from dishwasher soap and Air-Wick to condoms.

*Ecopetrol was not one of my sells yesterday either, for different reasons that ATONY. I expect that the Colombian oil giant will produce both growth and dividends over the longer term despite current quarter setbacks because FARC guerillas attacked a refinery and cut the main pipeline while native Americans object to another. EC is diversifying into US offshore and is splendidly to eventual help Mexico (and even Venezuela or Argentina) clean up the energy sector there. Bearishly-inclined Gen. Joe Shaefer is also hanging on to EC in his managed accounts.

*Liberty Media will report on the 2^nd quarter tomorrow. There is wide variation in analyst forecasts for the John Malone vehicle for snatching cable, telco, cell, and content within Europe. Estimates for per share earnings range from minus 90 cents/sh to plus 21 cents. LBTYA took over our former holding of Virgin Media, and we are well up mainly because I sold the C shares distributed after various deals this year. However my brokerage statement treats the stock are having lost half its value so this can be useful if I opt to exit later this year, for offsetting gains to be taken this week, I hope.

*Zurich Financial reports on Thursday. While there is less confusion over the earnings outlook for the Swiss insurance company, mainly because like all Swiss financial institutions, it uses reserve funds to smooth out results, the big number in this sector is not EPS. What matters is the combined ratio. The lower itis below 100 the better the performance of the stock. What the ratio combines is the amount the insured pay in premiums and what the pot of money earns. JP Morganwhich rates ZURVY overweight expects the combined ratio to go right down to 94.4, which is very good but it has no estimate for earnings at all. I fear Swiss political risks and the impact of lousy European weather will hurt the Property +Casualty insurance business going forward so am taking some profits with ZURVY.

*China Minsheng, a private bank in China, sold too soon, was a top performer in the last month, up 14.5%. I worried it would not be able to compete on loan terms against government controlled banks dealing with buddies or corrupt companies. I was surprised today that an Indian state-sector banker was arrested for accepting bribes.

*If you want to gamble, try our Irish bookie. Britain's Betfair revealed yesterday that it had made GBP 80 mn in payments since its 2010 IPO to its founder shareholders which violated UK accounting rules and it will have to cancel shares issued in its buyback. Gambling stocks are high-risk but Paddy Power plc of Ireland has been at it longer and is more closely scrutinized as a cross border player.

*Trading alert. The last of my Tsumara (Japan 4540) went out at Yen 2518 this morning Tokyo time.