Daily Brief Financials: Bank Of Queensland, KakaoBank, Lippo Karawaci, iShares MSCI ACWI ETF, Martin Currie Portfolio Invest, Uniswap and more

• The Aussie local press is discussing renewed merger talks for Bendigo And Adelaide Bank (BEN AU) and Bank Of Queensland (BOQ AU).
• Talks of a merger are not new. And we have been here before when BOQ twice made overtures to Bendigo in 2007, but was rejected. 
• The swift removal of BOQ’s CEO, a lifetime high ratio – BEN/BOQ – and ANZ (ANZ AU)‘s tilt for Suncorp Bank – suggests a merger makes a lot of sense.

• There is only one large, liquid, listed, internet bank in all of the Asia-Pacific markets
• Earnings have been strong, with uplift in NIM and loan balance to support this
• Regulatory change to provisioning not likely to affect this bank, but big peers

Lucror Analytics Morning Views comprise our fundamental credit analysis, opinions and trade recommendations on high yield issuers in the region, based on key company-specific developments in the past 24 hours. Our Morning Views include a section with a brief market commentary, key market indicators and a macroeconomic and corporate event calendar.

• Lippo Karawaci

• With the MSCI ACWI (ACWI-US) approaching the top-end of our expected 2023 trading range at $93, we see limited upside from here, and we believe caution is warranted.
• We want to remain overweight Europe and the UK, but we prefer to buy only on pullbacks.
• The Hang Seng and MSCI China (MCHI-US) are both getting rejected at their important resistances discussed last week, and we would expect to see a basing process develop below resistance.

Martin Currie Global Portfolio Trust (MNP) has been managed by Zehrid Osmani since 1 October 2018. Despite a tough period of absolute and relative underperformance in 2022 as growth stocks have been out of favour with investors, the manager continues to adhere to his long-term strategy of focusing on high-quality companies with sustainable growth potential. He believes that valuation discipline is a very important element of the investment process, even more so in periods of rising interest rates. Osmani only invests when he has high conviction in a company’s positive long-term prospects; this is evidenced by no new holdings (or complete disposals) in the five months from May to September 2022, although portfolio activity has subsequently picked up.

• This piece was originally going to compare the average and median size of liquidity events – meaning any mint (deposit) or burn (withdrawal) to/from a DEX liquidity pool – on the most popular Ethereum DEXs: Uniswap V3, V2, and Curve. 
• There have been some excellent Twitter threads comparing DEXs and considering whether providing liquidity on Uniswap V3 can be profitable.
• But after taking a look at the Uniswap V3 liquidity event data, it became clear that I had to write about an under-explored and rapidly developing topic: just-in-time (JIT) liquidity.