News of the theft of 82 bottles of wine worth GBP67,000 last week. Presumably the insurance company will fork out for the replacement cost of these bottles at an average GBP 817 cost per bottle. Incidentally at a normal restaurant mark up of 3 times that equates to GBP 201,000 of wine for diners or the cost of each bottle a stonking GBP 2451. So by any definition definitely high end wine which since it was stolen in a very short time suggests prior specialist knowledge. Maybe a case of cherchez la femme for M Poirot and the boys in blue, but it seems to us amateurs that it would be more fruitful to cherchez le sommelier!
Friday saw more demonstrations and the closure of the tunnel connecting Hong Kong Island to Kowloon and the mainland. This weekend students and demonstrators have taken over the Polytechnic University which they have turned into a fortress in anticipation of a much tougher crackdown by the police with the now 6 month old unrest degenerating into urban warfare at increasingly more frequent times. Additional police have been drafted in from Western China and there is an increasingly tough message coming out of China. Poor Hong Kong: our thoughts are with everyone there.
Soon it will be possible for food processors and food manufacturers to hedge the price of cheddar cheese on Chicago’s Mercantile Exchange with the introduction of cheddar futures and options contracts early next year. Each contract represents 20,000 pounds of block cheddar. This will trade alongside the existing barrel cheese contract which is normally used in processed brands which are becoming less popular as tastes change. With the change in consumption towards more healthy and specialist brands, there is a need to be able to hedge block cheese. So coming soon: the possibility to trade two types of cheese-block and barrel: cheese spreads!
Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder
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