Rolls-Royce broken up?

If certain stock market leeches had their way…

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/analysis-should-rolls-royce-stick-to-aero-engines-406714/

According to London investment bank Investec Securities, R-R is an underperformer that has been following a misguided strategy to become a diversified industrial group – when it should, perhaps, be focusing on its core business of gas turbine engines for civil aerospace. This accounted for 42% of 2013 group sales, and is expected to show good growth over the next couple years (see chart).

Unsurprisingly, powerplants for military applications don’t show such growth prospects, but sales represented 17% of group revenue in 2013 and Investec recognises “tangible benefits and synergies” from running the civil and defence aerospace businesses side-by-side. However, it claims that investors “continue to doubt the rationale of combining this grouping with other industrial assets”. Those assets – which accounted for half of 2013 revenue – include land and marine gas turbines, nuclear power systems, design of ships and other marine equipment and marine piston engines.

Yet another example of investment bank f__kwits being utterly incapable of understanding the complexities of the companies they “own”.

If I’d my way, anyone that buys shares in a company cannot divest those shares for a significant time period, say 5 years. It would end the destructive short-termism that is evident throughout the investment world and endemic at board-room level where instantaneous share price is king to the detriment of long term stability and growth.