Sunday newspaper share tips: Satellite Solutions Worldwide, JLIF – and is it a good time to buy into Barclays?

By THIS IS MONEY REPORTER

Updated:

Every weekend, we round-up the share tips from the newspapers. Today, the Mail on Sunday take a look at Satellite Solutions Worldwide and update on the John Laing Infrastructure Fund.

Both the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph run the rule over banking giant Barclays.

MAIL ON SUNDAY

Most people under 30 find it difficult to imagine life without fast and easy internet access – and even older citizens can barely remember how they managed without it. The speed and extent of internet adoption is breathtaking and it is likely only to increase.

Over the past nine years, for example, the number of British adults going online almost every day has more than doubled from 16million to more than 39million – or 78 per cent of the adult population.

But speedy online access for computers and laptops is heavily dependent on fibre-optic cables and about 15 per cent of Europeans live in areas where cable companies cannot or will not go.

Satellite Solutions Worldwide aims to help these disadvantaged folk – and provide strong returns for investors. The firm is small now, and the shares are just 4.35p, but there is real growth potential over the next five years and beyond. 

>> Read the full Midas Extra column

Investments that provide stable, long-term, inflation-linked returns can be hard to find these days, with stock and bond markets increasingly prone to attacks of the jitters.

John Laing Infrastructure Fund aims to fill that gap. The company owns and operates hospitals in Newcastle and Vancouver, schools in Edinburgh and inner London, court houses in Avon and Somerset and part of the M40 motorway. It even owns police stations, tax offices and street lighting.

Despite the wide range of these assets, they all share certain important characteristics. They provide essential services and are run under multi-decade contracts with the Government or local authorities.

>> Read the full Midas Update column

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

Investors in Barclays should be careful what they wish for. Former chief executive Antony Jenkins was sacked last July for too much dithering over changes its new chairman thought should have been made.

New chief executive Jes Staley was cast as a man of action when he joined in December, but he's not the only one on the move – the shares are down 20 per cent in the last month.

The biggest issue for investors in bank shares it the risk to the equity of any movement in the asset base.

It doesn't take much of a movement in the value of mortgages and loans written all over the world to cause serious headaches for those holding shares.

Questor believes that in such a world it is prudent to sit on the sidelines and wait to see what lurks on all the different balances sheets before buying into a turnaround.

THE SUNDAY TIMES

Barclays' boardroom has been a turbulent place in recent years. In 2012, there was the rapid one-two departure of Bob Diamond and Marcus Agius, chief executive and chairman respectively, and last year we saw the abrupt exit of Antony Jenkins.

Investors are now turning their minds to how long current chairman, John McFarlane, will stay. The cerebral Scottish-born banker has been in the £800,000-a-year post for just under a year.

It's unlikely he's going anytime soon. He must be determined to revive Barclays' share price, which has fallen sharply in the past year. 

 

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