After the Monday blog went out, activist investment guru Carl Icahn warned that earnings at many companies are the result of low borrowing costs rather than better operations. He thinks there will be a big drop in share prices. Remember Mr. Icahn was talking about the USA; we invest abroad.

Our stocks in the news:

*Ireland's Paddy Power plc reported on its results from July 1 to Nov. 17; it reports the way James Joyce might have. It now expects to achieve mid-single digit operating profit growth thisyear and moreover to suffer an estimated 3% headwind from currency translation into euros.

PDYPF is suffering from mounting competition in the UK and Australia for sports betting, plus the threat of a new British point of consumption tax to be applied at the end of 2014. The lowered growth only partly offset by higher online betting and eGaming. While the amounts bet continue to rise 5-6% from prior year at UK and Irish bookie shops, Paddy's core business, the amount of money it makes per bet is off 3-4%. However, Paddy continues to open new bookie shops in the UK (37 YTD) and Ireland (9).

Moreover, non-Australian on-line betting produced 15% more sports bets but the net revenue gained fell by 11% and the overall net was flat from last year. Oz is a bright spot with sales up 26% overal and online up 30%.

In Italy (where we garnered two new readers) Paddy was one of the first past the post under the Palinsesto Supplementare when the regulator allowed addition events and markets to be bet on in mid-Oct. Paddy's average monthly sportbook stakes rose by 84% (Forca Italia!) in the month to mid-Nov. compared to the average during the summer months. It has about 8-9% of the Italian sports betting market. (This does not include betting on the Palio, which is a local monopoly.)

As a pink-sheet traded ADR, Paddy doesn't have to produce quarterly reports under US SEC rules but it would help if they used a normal calendar.

*Drug firm Mallinckrodt plc, also Irish, is up sharply today. but I don't know why. MNK was spun out early this year by Covidien, maker of medical instruments, COV, also Irish.

*The Financial Times expects that Vale will accept a compromise over the attempt by Brasilia to hit it with a $14-17 bn claim for unpaid taxes on assets sold outside Brazil by the iron-ore giant between 1996 and 2008. While VALE started out a decade ago fighting the imposition in courts, the government now is offering a deal called Refix, which would lower the tax bill to $8.5 bn and allow it to be paid without interest over the next 15 years. The Vale share has suffered because the tax Brazil is trying to collect is roughly 3x annual net profit.

Brazil faces its own financial crisis, and Vale's recent asset sales are motivated in part by its need to chip in something. It sold 20% of two offshore gas exploration blocks to GDF Suez of France for $1.2 bn, a stake in Norsk Hydro for $1.8 bn, and is rumored to be in negotiation with Brookfield Asset Management of Canada (sold) for another chunk of its cargo port (with which it already raised $1.2 bn).

The Superior Court of Justice undid a suspension Vale won in a lower court and set Nov. 29th as the last day for accepting the Refix.

(Don't be tempted back into BAM; Roddy Boyd, whose investigative report on the Canadian asset management firm led us to sell has published today a note in Seekingalpha.com about how BAM massages its numbers to show profits.)

*It looks like shareholders of Finland's Nokia have voted overwhelmingly to accept the $7.36 bn offer for its cellphone devices and services operations from Microsoft. It is unclear if NOK will restore its dividend. We own Nokia bonds to gain income from the recovery of the stock. Amazingly, I got the initial results from E-trade brokers in Finnish!

*Short-term, NOK indicated to the Wall St. Journal that its new focus on building cellphone exchanges and infrastructure (building on its takeover of Nokia SiemensNetwork, renamed Nokia Systems Network) will not lead it to buying Alcatel Lucent. ALU was long a rumored target for the MSFT loot but we like it for its own future. ALU is down sharply on the news.

*While visiting India, CEO Andrew Witty of GlaxoSmithKline is supporting some price-control measures from New Delhi. This is not benevolence. GSK wants to produce its own cheaper generics in India, probably in Bangalore, thereboy protecting its intellectual property from copycat drug firms.

*The prospect of taking on GSK is one reason that Dr Reddy's Pharma, RDY, an Indian generics leader, is seeing a fall in stock prices.

*Bombardier is exhibiting in the air show in Dubai and yesterday signed a contract with Palma Holding, a leasing firm, worth US$282 mn for Q400 Next Gen jets. Four are firm orders and the other 4 are options. The planes to to Ethiopian Airlines which already operates 13 Q400 jets from BDRAF today announced it would sell 5 C-series single aisle 100-120 seat regional jets to Iraqi Airways for $387 mn.

*Canadian DIF, a fund group, will buy 4 solar plants currently under construction in Ontario by Canadian Solar when they go live next year, paying the price per megaWatt which then applies for the 40 mn mW/year power stations in Pefferlaw, Scugog, Kawathat Lake, and Georgina, names Joyce would have loved. As reported last week, CSIQ wants to create its own vehicle for ownership of operating power plants which can be spun out to shareholders. Separately, Canadian Solar was the major winner at Arizona's Cape Verde school zone which installed a solar array to generate electricity and cut the school's utility bills and carbon footprint. It provided 1628 solar panels and rival Trina Solar533 to produce 1040 mW/yr. CSIQ was tipped by green investor Max Deml of oekoinvest in Vienna. Danke schoen.

*Three readers wrote about my tip for Marine Harvest ASA yesterday. Californian retired broker asked what the ADR to ordinary ratio for MNHVY (ADR shares) to MNHVF (ordinary shares) might be: it is 20:1. Also a European-based reader bought the share as MHG in Oslo. Another reader said I misidentified the place from which the Norwegian-ancestry fund manager operates as being in Arizona; actually it turns out to be in Nevada. Today Reuters reports that the finance minister, Ms. Siv Jensen, said Norway needs to create new incentives and reforms favoring businesses outside oil and gas, by cutting taxes, import duties, and labor costs, and by diversifying Norway's sovereign wealth fund. This should help Marine in which the SWF already invests. Marine's ordinaries rose to $1.15 this morning before falling backs to $1.14, my acquisition price yesterday.

*Telefonica paid a cash dividend today after a year's suspension. TEF is Spanish and active in Latin America which helps offset Spain.

*Eduardo Garcia in sentidocomun.co.mx writes after a meeting with Evercore Casa do Bolsa that the Mexican arm of the US investment bank plans a dozen IPOs of Mexican firms in the next 3 years, among them Fibra Hotel, which is building hostelries in cooperation with Marriott and Fibra Danhos. Fibras are the Mexican equivalent of Real Estate Investment Trusts. We recommend the only Fibra currently accessible to investors in the US, Fibra Uno, which trades as FBASF.

*France's Banque Nationale de Paris is rumored to be the lead bidder for Royal Bank of Scotland's equity derivatives business, which is for sale. RBS, whose US-dollar denominated preferred stocks are our best income idea, is trying to get its common share price above the level at which 82% was acquired by the British government, so it can be re-privatized. We would not buy the common with a barge pole.

*I sold my remaining Posco at $77.20 yesterday. PKX may benefit from China's resumed growth (if it happens) but I sold because of politicalized sacking of Posco's CEO reported last week by Abhimanyu Sisodia, based in India where this stuff goes on often. We will not tolerate state interference at a major Korean multinational company. PKX is generally rated a buy by analysts and is owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. I took a loss.

*Oops. In my note about Teva developing a cancer franchise yesterday I failed to include its Phase III treating of OncoGenex Pharma's custirsen in men with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer. The Syngergy Trial covers 1023 men in 140 sites in the US, Canada, and Europe. Half get the enw drug and all get docetael chemotherapy in a double-blind trial whose results will be announced next summer. OGXI is a US firm. We sold 75% of Teva.