Poor Cousin P was insulted by GH, one of my readers, who wrote “I don't think he got to be a 'magnate' with the brain he uses today.” Actually he inherited the family real estate business.

Moreover, Cousin P turns out to be a piker. A mere New York real estate taipan cannot match the donation announced today by the Chan clan from Hong Kong which pledged to donate $350 mn to the Harvard School of Public Health, where Gerald Chan studied in the 1970s. The money will go for, among other things, dealing with pandemics like Ebola and bird flu.

The third reply was the most revealing. SB worried that he cannot get performance data about www.global-investing.com before paying up. Actually he can. The website offers everyone access to our closed positions table. Just visit our website and click to “performance” under the masthead. It is public information. You can also go to www.marketwatch.com and see another calculation of our performance by Mark Hulbert (who includes open positions but doesn't give the names of the stock or bonds or funds.) With permission from Dow-Jones, we post these charts on our website for public viewing too.

We don't go in for publishing “come-on” subscription offers telling the world that we have a stock which may produce profits of 983.45% and if you pay up you can make this kind of easy money. We let our track record speak for itself.

Deutsche Bank told Forbes that it is “not the slightest bit worried about the Brazilian Socialist's Party's chance to take over in Oct.” They argue that Marina Silva's “social welfare policies wouldn't be much different from that of the Dilma administration.”

What Deutsche really fears: “Brazil's GDP declined 0.6% in the 2^nd quarter and 1^st quart3er data was revised to show a 0.2% contraction putting Brazil in a technical recession.” It adds:

“Something is wrong. Theories abound. Lackluster productivity. Poor corporate investment. The super-tight labor market. Inflation. Corruption is also high on the list of what's ailing Brazil.”

Deutsche however likes Brazilian local government bonds, particularly NTN-B T-bonds yielding 6%.

*After going over the plans for the C-series planes at Bombardier, Scotiabank analysts have figured out that BDRAF will get zilch in value from the new lightweight single aisle planes. BNS says that about 75% of the potential market has already opted for rival planes. It cut Bombardier earnings estimates while raising its capex forecasts. Slim pickings for cash flow are also cut. “Under our revised estimates, the C-series will add not value to BBD.” (BBD is Canadian for BDRAF.) We will sell but not today with the news out. BDRAF is down 0.7% now is US trading but it will fall further.

*Infosys will provide IT services to BP whatever happens over its US Gulf fines. INFY will provide services ranging from corporate support, upstream and downstream processes, energy trading and marketing apps to offices of the British oil giant in its British homeland, Houston, Azerbaijan, Angola, Brazil, and Singapore. The value of the contract was not revealed.

*Damien Conover CFA writing in morningstar finds that there is another advantage in Novartis's neew LCZ696 which reduces heart failure. Because NVS will be selling the as-yet-unnamed likely blockbuster directly to heart specialists rather than to general practitioners or primary-care doctors, it can use a smaller sales force, meaning bigger profits.

Separately, NVS yesterday sold to Merus Labs of Canada the right to make Sintrom (acenocoumarol), an anticoagulant for heart disease and stroke which has been on the market for 50 years (and which killed my friend Kathy D.)

*Delek Group and Noble Energy of Texas will be more easily able to divest stakes in Karish and Tanin offshore Israeli gasfields now that they have been classified as proven finds. The sales are required by Israel's Antitrust Authority. DGRLY.

*Standard Life's mid-cap mgr Harry Nimmo told Citywire it sold down its stake in Paddy Power plc to 3.6% because of a rotten H1 result which PDYPF blamed on football game results going against the house during “dream weekends” for betting customers. However, Paddy expects a recovery in H2 so we are sticking with our gamble on bookies. Deutsche Bank has cut the Irish shares to hold with a euros 60 target price vs an earlier forecast of euros 64.

*Meanwhile Standard Life of Edinburgh is one of the companies most threatened by a possible vote later this month for Scottish Independence, right after Royal Bank of Scotland which is nearly 82% owned by the UK (unitary) govt. Other potential problems face Scottish Widows (an insurance co owned by Lloyd's Bank which also got a UK govt bailout in 2008. We own RBS preferred shares which retain their guarantee from Britain.

Yesterday RBS began a 25% spinoff of its US banking arm, Citizens Financial Group at $23-25. RBS's ousted former management, which caused the bank failure, was close to Scottish Nationalist Party leader Alex Salmond who leads the independence movement but I don't think he wants to take back RBS. The vote is Sept. 18.

*Teva's monoclonal antibody product for asthma and allergies, anti-IL-5 reslizumab, only works to improve lung function if the patients' blood shows the presence of acid-loving white blood cells called eosinophils as moderators of their reactions. Luckily, eosinophils can easily be tested for as they turn red in a dye test. But it means reslizumab is not a one-shot fits all allergy nostrum. Teva is down on the details today after enthusiasm last week over its phase III trials showing improved lung function against placebo.

*Facing criticism after a good phase III outcome for a different IL-5 biologic against eosinophils is GlaxoSmithKline whose mepolizumab halved exacerbations and asthma attacks. Asthma expert Parameswaran Nair wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine today that the real alternative to an expensive new drug may well be adhering to existing guidelines like sputum cell counts which are more cost-effective than the new drug which might cost $10,000 or more per year.

GSK yesterday published in Nature the results of giving macaque monkeys a dose of its anti-Ebola virus vaccine and expositing them 5 weeks later. The treated monkeys all survived while the untreated ones died within 6 days. Oops: It is launching phase I trials in British volunteers this month, to prove the vaccine is safe, but not phase II trials which seek to set the dosage as I wrote mistakenly earlier.

GSK with Pfizer and Japan's Shionogi won EU rights for their JV ViiV Healthcare to sell Triumeq, a combo of 3 HIV drugs expected to achieve sales of as much as $5 bn. Combos increase compliance when multiple drugs are needed.

Finally GSK is going to be unable to fill orders for its 3-virus seasonal flu jab this year because of problems at its Quebec “flu Laval” plant for the US and Canada.

*A rival move on the plague by Johnson & Johnson has enlisted via a sub of a sub our Danish vaccine maker Bavarian Nordic under the auspices of the US Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, a part of the NIH.

*Norway's Statoil will take via a farm-in deal stakes in two Colombia offshore energy concessions, Tavropa and Guajira, from Repsol and Petrobras. The post-distribution Guajira operator is Ecopetrol while that of Tavropa will be PBR. Both fields are offshore Cartagena and Repsol has completed 2D seismic survey if Guajira. Separately, STL won an interest inf COL4, another field in the same area of the Caribbean in July, where it is operator.

Fund Notes:

*Electrolux's planned purchase of GE's appliance arm won the support of Investor AB, IVSBF, a listed investment vehicle for Skandinavska Eniskilde Bank and the Wallenberg family, our proxy for a non-existent Scandinavia fund. The deal will be funded by an SEK 6 bn rights issue. IVSBF owns 15.5% of ELUXY's capital and 30% of its voting rights so it has to approve. This probably explains why Investor fell last week, as insiders left.

*With a stash of Brazilian equities I am not tempted into a Brazilian yield play, despite Deutsche Bank and Forbes. Legg Mason, manager of the 2 Western Assets Emerging Markets Income and Debt Funds we own, EMD and ESD, can filter these bond risks better than I can on a daily basis. It has now acquired Martin Currie, a venerable UK investment specialist (130 years old!). This will shift Legg's legs away from western hemisphere ideas.

*Mongolia Growth Group is off 8.5% on huge volume today, 5x normal full day levels at 145,000 shares stateside and 90,000 in Toronto. It trades at MNGGF here; YAK in Canada. I caught a lot of flak taking a loss with this share in August from a Mongolophile reader. It may be that Canadians are switching to Turquoise Hill, TRQ, a sub of Rio Tinto operating Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia.

*Oops. The correct ticker symbol stateside for Canadian General Investments, a closed-end fund, is CGRIF. I wrote CGIRF but reader DG spotted the error.

*I bought another big round lot of Gemalto, GTO in Europe or GTOMY here, for $47.30 today. No problem this time getting a full 100 shares even though I nipped a bid off the ask. As you know e-trade waived the brokerage commish on my earlier trade at $48.71 so I was happy to buy more.