Latest news with #Chidgey
Business Insider
21-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
UBS Sticks to Their Buy Rating for QBE Insurance Group Limited (QBEIF)
UBS analyst Kieren Chidgey maintained a Buy rating on QBE Insurance Group Limited today and set a price target of A$26.00. The company's shares closed last Wednesday at $14.83. Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. Make smarter investment decisions with TipRanks' Smart Investor Picks, delivered to your inbox every week. Chidgey covers the Financial sector, focusing on stocks such as ASX , Insurance Australia Group Limited, and QBE Insurance Group Limited. According to TipRanks, Chidgey has an average return of 9.9% and a 58.33% success rate on recommended stocks. In addition to UBS, QBE Insurance Group Limited also received a Buy from TR | OpenAI – 4o's Wesley Roofguard in a report issued on July 16. However, on July 2, Macquarie downgraded QBE Insurance Group Limited (Other OTC: QBEIF) to a Hold.
Business Insider
21-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Analysts Have Conflicting Sentiments on These Financial Companies: Insurance Australia Group Limited (OtherIAUGF) and Charles Schwab (SCHW)
Companies in the Financial sector have received a lot of coverage today as analysts weigh in on Insurance Australia Group Limited (IAUGF – Research Report) and Charles Schwab (SCHW – Research Report). Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. Make smarter investment decisions with TipRanks' Smart Investor Picks, delivered to your inbox every week. Insurance Australia Group Limited (IAUGF) UBS analyst Kieren Chidgey maintained a Hold rating on Insurance Australia Group Limited today and set a price target of A$9.30. The company's shares closed last Wednesday at $5.52, close to its 52-week high of $5.60. According to Chidgey is a 3-star analyst with an average return of 9.9% and a 58.3% success rate. Chidgey covers the Financial sector, focusing on stocks such as QBE Insurance Group Limited, Computershare Limited, and Medibank Private. Insurance Australia Group Limited has an analyst consensus of Hold, with a price target consensus of $5.84, which is a 5.8% upside from current levels. In a report issued on July 19, TR | OpenAI – 4o also reiterated a Hold rating on the stock with a A$9.50 price target. Charles Schwab (SCHW) Barclays analyst Benjamin Budish maintained a Buy rating on Charles Schwab on July 18 and set a price target of $113.00. The company's shares closed last Friday at $95.80. According to Budish is a top 100 analyst with an average return of 21.1% and a 75.8% success rate. Budish covers the Financial sector, focusing on stocks such as Virtus Investment Partners, Intercontinental Exchange, and Apollo Global Management. The word on The Street in general, suggests a Strong Buy analyst consensus rating for Charles Schwab with a $100.69 average price target, representing a 5.2% upside. In a report issued on July 3, Citi also maintained a Buy rating on the stock with a $105.00 price target.
Newsroom
06-07-2025
- Business
- Newsroom
University bookshop closes
Shocked academic staff at the University of Auckland say they are 'horrified' that Ubik, the privately owned campus bookshop, is set to close its doors. It has been placed in liquidation and will remain open until August 31. A sheet of A4 is roughly taped to the doors of the long-established glass-walled shop, down the road from the Shadows bar and opposite the university library on Alfred St. It is headlined, 'University Bookshop Limited (in Liquidation).' It states that Meltzer Mason were appointed liquidators on July 2, and the abruptness of the liquidation is signalled in the line, 'Returns will no longer be accepted, and gift certificates and store credits will not be redeemable.' Meltzer Mason also declare, 'The bookshop will remain open while a buyer for the business is sought.' ReadingRoom learned of the closure on Saturday. Calls were made the following day. 'Horrifying and depressing,' responded associate professor Paula Morris. 'That's my main reaction. Horrifying and depressing.' It came as news to Grant Duncan, teaching fellow in politics and international relations. 'My first reaction is that's really sad.' His next reactions were to coolly assess it in the wider context of online learning. 'It raises a lot of questions. I've been teaching a university course this semester, and really, do we need textbooks anymore in the physical sense? I've increasingly found that teaching at a university means that books are becoming expensive and unnecessary for a student.' It was a damning assessment but only partially accurate. Pene Whitty is uniquely placed to comment, as manager of University Bookshop (UBS) at Canterbury University and as chair of the Booksellers Association. 'There's always going to be a market for physical textbooks,' she said. 'But it's going to be a smaller market. The model for university bookstores has changed. Textbook sales are definitely declining. After the earthquakes in Christchurch, a lot of textbooks went online when the university gave students free online access. So we looked at our business model and knew that we had to be prepared for physical textbooks to disappear.' UBS reduced its footprint by 50 per cent, laid off staff, and increased its general book stocks. 'We've managed to maintain it that way. You have to be aware in our business that the textbook market may be shrinking a little bit and then it will sort of stabilise and you need to pick it up with offerings like stationery and general books.' But Ubiq already features such 'offerings'. It's a big space. A peep through the windows on Sunday revealed entertaining trash such as Stephen King and manga comics at the back, stationery in the middle, and the new Ardern and the new Chidgey out front next to titles on Gaza. 'It's not just a place you go to buy textbooks,' as Paula Morris said. 'It's a proper bookshop and it's really been a great supporter of contemporary New Zealand literature.' The problem, according to Grant Duncan, is that technology has moved too fast. 'The closure of Ubiq is simply a symptom of the greater crisis of universities in the AI revolution,' he said. 'It's a symptom of yesterday's technology catching up with us. We haven't even thought about tomorrow's. Haven't even thought about it. I mean one sort of dystopian view of the future of the university is that AI writes students essays and then AI grades them. And so the student becomes kind of just a fee-paying cipher in the middle between two AI systems. As long as they keep paying the fees, then they get their degree. Okay so this is a dystopian exaggerated future, but getting back to the closure of Ubiq, it's just a sad indictment–no, not an indictment; it's just a sad reality of where education and learning and reading are going, and what's happening to our universities actually.' Paula Morris was in no mood to entertain dystopian visions of a university campus without a university bookstore. 'We're the biggest university in New Zealand obviously by far,' she said. 'It's essential to have a bookshop…I'm hopeful that something can be worked out. Surely a bookshop can be sustained by the tens of thousands of people who are on campus every day.' Pene Whitty said, 'We're really upset to lose a bookstore like that of long standing. But I think there will still be a place for it. I think someone will come in and there will be a university bookshop there. It just may have to pivot, and have different offerings. But there is always going to be a market for university bookstores.'
The Spinoff
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending July 4
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books' stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (4th Estate, $35) Butter has bumped Ardern's memoir from the top spot. The sales graph for this book must look like the Himalayan mountain range: what an extraordinary ride this brilliant novel has been on. 2 The Safe Keep by Yael van der Wouden (Penguin, $26) A stunning debut novel by a writer of rare talent. That sounds like a giant cliché but in this case it's absolutely true. You will not regret reading this lovely, powerful, perfectly formed novel set in the Netherlands of the 1960s. This debut novel also features on The Spinoff's list of books that write sex exceptionally well. 3 A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random House, $60) Rachel Morris wrote a superb feature on Ardern for The New Yorker, in which she contextualised the memoir for American readers, and said of the book: 'The tale of what it was like for Ardern to go from being adored to being reviled so quickly would have made for an unmissable book. That's not the story she wanted to tell. A Different Kind of Power is her manifesto for a kinder, less cynical form of political leadership, with her own life story as evidence that such a thing is possible.' Highly recommend clicking on the link above and reading the rest of what Morris has to say. 4 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) 'Chidgey's latest novel is uncannily similar to Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (which she has not read),' writes The Spinoff's Claire Mabey. 'It takes similar aim at British identity by puncturing its society with the normalisation of skewed medical ethics. What both novels have in common are questions of nature versus nurture and the eternal thought exercise of what does it mean to possess a soul? The two writers share an interest in the dehumanising potential of such questions. Both Ishiguro (one of the greatest novelists of all time) and Chidgey (fast becoming one of the greats herself) investigate how whole societies, entire countries, can enter a path of gross moral corruption one person, one concession, at a time.' 5 Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall (John Murray, $38) Reese Witherspoon loves this novel. The actress/book club host says: 'Trust me—you are going to LOSE YOUR CHICKEN over it. Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall is an unforgettable story of love, loss, and the choices that shape our lives… but it's also a masterfully crafted mystery that will keep you guessing until the very last page. Seriously, that ending?! I did not see it coming.' 6 Eurotrash by Christian Kracht (Serpents Tail, $30) This novel was longlisted for the International Booker Prize and we can see why: there's a lot more under the surface of this novel about a mother and son road-tripping across Europe. It's a reckoning with the past, with the self, and with family. 7 James by Percival Everett (Picador, $38) 'James offers page-turning excitement but also off-kilter philosophical picaresque,' writes Anthony Cummins in The Guardian 'Jim enters into dream dialogue with Enlightenment thinkers Voltaire and John Locke to coolly skewer their narrow view of human rights – before finally shifting gear into gun-toting revenge narrative when Jim's view of white people as his 'enemy' (not 'oppressor', which 'supposes a victim') sharpens with every atrocity witnessed en route. It's American history as real-life dystopia, voiced by its casualties, but as you might guess from The Trees – a novel about lynching that won a prize for comic fiction – solemn it is not: 'White people try to tell us that everything will be just fine when we go to heaven. My question is, Will they be there? If so, I might make other arrangements.'' 8 Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert (John Murray, $40) The subtitle of this book is: 'How pop culture turned a generation of women against themselves.' (Which sounds like a possible tagline for the The Substance – anyone else seen that little movie with Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley?) And here's the blurb: 'Sophie Gilbert identifies an inflection point in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the energy of third-wave and 'riot grrrl' feminism collapsed into a regressive period of hyper-objectification, sexualization, and infantilization. Mining the darker side of nostalgia, Gilbert trains her keen analytic eye on the most revealing cultural objects of the era, across music, film, television, fashion, tabloid journalism, and more. What she recounts is harrowing, from the leering gaze of the paparazzi to the gleeful cruelty of early reality TV and a burgeoning internet culture vicious toward women in the spotlight and damaging for those who weren't. Gilbert tracks many of the period's dominant themes back to the rise of internet porn, which gained widespread influence as it began to pervade our collective consciousness.' 9 Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (Vintage, $26) This novel was originally published in 1995 in French. It's now being rediscovered as the dystopia of the premise catches up with the dystopia of the present. 10 T he Let Them Theory by Mel Robins (Hay House, $32) She's baaaaaack! WELLINGTON 1 A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random House, $60) 2 Ghost Kiwi by Ruth Paul (Scholastic NZ, $20) Ruth Paul has a double-whammy this week as she launches two books! Ghost Kiwi is a middle grade novel about Ruby, who runs away with her dog to the one place she feels safe … her treehouse in the forest. 'Joined by her friend, Te Ariki (aka 'Spider'), the pair soon make a surprising discovery – there's a kiwi living in a burrow nearby, caring for a newborn chick. A white kiwi chick. Accompanied by a strange talking doll, and aided by the ancient wairua of the bush, Ruby and Spider step up to become true forest guardians, risking their lives to stop unscrupulous wildlife smugglers from stealing this rare native treasure.' 3 Anahera: The Mighty Kiwi Māmā by Ruth Paul (Puffin, $21) Paul also launched this lovely picture book – the true story of Anahera, a rescue kiwi who now roams the hills of Wellington. 4 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) 5 Caledonian Road by Andrew O'Hagan (Faber & Faber, $35) The new format release of this novel by O'Hagan is giving the best-selling novel another best-selling life. 6 Mātauranga Māori by Hirini Moko Mead (Huia, $45) A major publication by Hirini Moko Mead who explores and explains what mātauranga Māori is. 'He looks at how the knowledge system operates, the branches of knowledge, and the way knowledge is recorded and given expression in te reo Māori and through daily activities and formal ceremonies. Mātuaranga Māori is a companion publication to Hirini Moko Mead's best-selling book Tikanga Māori.' 8 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (4th Estate, $35) 9 Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) The glorious award-winner from Wilkins. 10 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Vintage, $26) Last year's galactic Booker Prize winner returns to this list like a comet in the night.
Business Insider
13-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
UBS Sticks to Its Sell Rating for ASX (ASXFF)
UBS analyst Kieren Chidgey maintained a Sell rating on ASX (ASXFF – Research Report) today and set a price target of A$69.10. The company's shares closed last Tuesday at $45.35. Confident Investing Starts Here: Chidgey covers the Financial sector, focusing on stocks such as ASX , Insurance Australia Group Limited, and QBE Insurance Group Limited. According to TipRanks, Chidgey has an average return of -0.4% and a 52.38% success rate on recommended stocks. In addition to UBS, ASX also received a Sell from Morgan Stanley's Andrei Stadnik in a report issued yesterday. However, on the same day, Citi maintained a Hold rating on ASX (Other OTC: ASXFF).
