Kipp the great and powerful

Kipp the great and powerful

News breaks that the Arabtec boss may have misbehaved, and stock drops. Imaginary news that telecoms network sharing is round the corner, and telco stocks climb. Enough already.

January 5, 2011 5:22 by Sam Potter

It’s a phenomenon that was on fine display on another occasion this week. Remember when Kipp wrote about the National’s non-news story about Etisalat and Du? The article proclaimed that Etisalat and Du were engaged in tests to check the viability of a shared network. It was would have been newsworthy, except we’d already been told about the tests back in summer. Apparently thanks to that story, Etisalat and Du’s shares rose in value. Okay so the rises were small, but the fact is the companies got more valuable, but nothing had changed.
Kipp is suddenly very conscious of the immense power at its command. We’re not saying we consider ourselves an all powerful super-being or anything like that, but heed our proclamation: Read Kipp, or we shall strike down upon thee!
Well okay, Kipp doesn’t have the clout to send the world plunging back into recession, or to destroy a business with a single word. And we’re pretty glad about that. And at the same time we’re a bit unnerved by the fact that a story in the National telling readers nothing new could push up the shares in two major companies.
If our financial markets are that easily influenced, then never mind the poor performance (the Dubai borse reached a six year low in 2010), we should have concerns about the whole flipping system.

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