Yum Brands (YUM), the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, is on the offensive: Its Taco Bell chain will be adding 2,000 new domestic locations in the next 10 years. To put that in perspective, there are currently about 6,000 Taco Bell restaurants scattered across America. This means that the chain will...Read More

British telecom giant Vodafone (VOD) agreed to sell its stake in Verizon Wireless to Verizon Communications (VZ) in one of the biggest deals in history.  That’s the headline.  But the question no one seems to be asking is Why was Verizon that eager to spend $130 billion on a capital-intensive business in a saturated market...Read More

Constellation Brands (NYSE:$STZ) shot up 37% yesterday and Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE:$BUD) rose a not-too-shabby 5% on speculation that the U.S. Department of Justice might let AB Inbev acquire  Grupo Modelo (Pink:GPMCF) after a few small revisions to the deal were made. The Department of Justice torpedoed the original deal last month on fears that it...Read More

China’s slowdown looks to have bottomed out, at least for now. Third-quarter GDP grew by 7.4% , the lowest rate in three years, but in line with what economists were expecting. But most encouraging was the news that Chinese retail sales saw growth that was nearly double that figure at 14.4%. I’m not the biggest fan of China’s “managed...Read More

Back in April, I wrote favorably about Molson Coors ($TAP) (see “Beer Stocks: Crack One Open”), noting that the brewer was significantly cheaper than Anheuser Busch InBev ($BUD) and SABMiller (SBMRY) and that it paid the best dividend of any major brewer.  At 3.1%, its dividend yield at the time was nearly double that of...Read More