Morning Brief – Lufthansa

Lufthansa

The German airline and its subsidiaries Eurowings, Swiss, Austrian and Brussels Airlines have announced that as of next year Economy passengers will no longer be offered free meals and snacks but will have to pay for them like for example Ryanair, Easyjet and BA. Lufthansa and Swiss will however offer Economy passengers a complimentary bottle of water but the message is that if your choice of fare is predicated by complimentary food and refreshments, then you will need to stump up for Club. Lufthansa shares that started 2020 at just under EUR18 and fell to EUR7 are now, since the Covid19 vaccine news last week, just under EUR10. Before you pile in and buy Lufthansa shares,  it is worth knowing that for the first time the airline industry is now talking about passenger numbers not returning to where they were in December 2019 until ……..2025.

Atacama Desert

This area is where no less than a quarter of global production of lithium necessary for batteries in cell phones and electric vehicles is sourced. Albemarle Corp of the USA is in dispute with Chilean miner SQM because SQM is declining to share the contents of a sensitive environmental impact report with its US rival. The mining in the Atacama Desert is solely conducted by these two companies but concerns of the ecological damage have been mounting and not least for the negative impact on the flamingos that live there. The report is due for completion in February but the Chileans are understandably not committing to share it with their American rivals. For those wanting to get aboard the lithium rollercoaster, Albemarle shares currently unaffected by the environmental report and which are quoted on Nasdaq opened in Jan 2020 at $75 before falling to below $50 in the March fall out and now?…….$128.88.

John Denver

This day back in 1975, Henry John Deutschendorf Jr who had sensibly adopted the professional name of John Denver had a Double Number 1 in the Billboard Top Hot 100 chart with I’m Sorry and Calypso. Way ahead of his time, John Denver used his musical success as a platform for his political ambitions which were predominantly to do with ecological issues. At the age of 54 and with over 2,700 hours pilot experience, John Denver took his new Long EZ experimental plane out for a flight across Monterey Bay in California in  1997. Crashing in to the Bay for unexplained reasons but probably due to having run out of fuel, John Denver was killed on impact. Calypso was the name of marine environmentalist Jacques Cousteau’s exploration ship and the song was dedicated to his work.

“Calypso”

To sail on a dream on a crystal clear ocean, to ride on the crest of the wild raging storm.
To work in the service of life and the living, in search of the answers to questions unknown.
To be part of the movement and part of the growing, part of beginning to understand.
Aye, Calypso, the places you’ve been to,
the things that you’ve shown us, the stories you tell.
Aye, Calypso, I sing to your spirit, the men who have served you so long and so well.

Like the dolphin who guides you, you bring us beside you
to light up the darkness and show us the way.
For though we are strangers in your silent world, to live on the land we must learn from the sea.
To be true as the tide and free as a wind swell, joyful and loving in letting it be.
Aye, Calypso, the places you’ve been to,
the things that you’ve shown us, the stories you tell.
Aye, Calypso, I sing to your spirit, the men who have served you so long and so well.
Aye, Calypso, the places you’ve been to,
the things that you’ve shown us, the stories you tell.
Aye, Calypso, I sing to your spirit, the men who have served you so long and so well.

Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder

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