Deals: Stockland Continues Its Reweighting
Property developer Stockland is continuing with its reweighting of its assets, selling some non-housing investments and moving deeper into residential and retail.
Read MoreCorporates; MAP, Argo
MAP Group says it has received an offer from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (OAPP) to take over the Canadian fund’s stake in Sydney Airport in exchange for stakes in Brussels and Copenhagen Airports.
Read MoreUpdates: Qantas’ Profit Update Fails To Impress
Investors were left a bit surprised, and not that impressed, with Qantas’s announcements yesterday.
Read MoreBids: Fosters Shares Up On More Turnover
The arguing, or rather debating, over the value of Foster’s is now underway in the wake of the $4.90 a share offer from SABMiller.
Read MoreUS: Fed Sits, More Gloomy About Outlook
The Federal Reserve has grown more pessimistic about the health of the American economy, cutting its growth forecast and lifting its estimates for inflation and unemployment for the second time this year.
Read MoreThe Economy: Why Savings Are Rising
The reticence of Australian households to spend has been well-documented, but yesterday we got news that was mixed, to say the least about why they are saving.
Read MoreJapan: More Good News, More Political Idiocy
No wonder Japan’s recovery is in danger from the country’s slack politicians.
Read MoreBid: Foster’s Rejects Lite Bid
SABMiller and its local mate, Coca Cola Amatil are dreaming if they think they can get Foster’s for the current cheap 8.2% premium in the $4.90 a share offer, which bobbed up yesterday.
Read MoreThe Economy: RBA Reluctant To Move Rates Higher
The Reserve Bank is trying to convince us that it is serious about another rate rise, but it is just as reluctant not to pull the trigger because of the weak state of large parts of the domestic economy.
Read MoreThe Economy: Export Boom Still Happening
Australia’s commodity export earnings are forecast to top a quarter of a trillion dollars, a record in the 2011-12 financial year that starts in nine days time.
Read MoreMergers: More Gold In The Market
The urge to merge in the medium to small end of the Australian gold sector continues with Focus Minerals making a friendly bid for Crescent Gold to create a company with a value of around $350 million.
Read MoreUpdates: Caltex Sees Lower-Higher Profit
Once again we saw a hard to understand profit forecast from Caltex Australia.
Read MoreResources: Woodside Sold Off Again On Pluto Woes Worries
Another rough day for Woodside Petroleum with the company’s shares hitting a new 52 week low of $39.87 as investors continued to sell after Friday’s shock cost blow out and delay to its Pluto LNG project in WA.
Read MoreGreece: More Pressure To Cut Before Loans Handed Over
Suddenly help for Greece is getting tougher, despite the widespread expectation that the 12 billion euros of loans from the IMF and EU would be paid so as to avert a financial crunch.
Read MoreJapan: Tax Reform Emerges As Trade Accounts Stays In The Red
Japan is pushing towards a radical reworking of its consumption tax as a way of boosting revenues as the country grapples with the cost of rebuilding after the March 11 quake and tsunami, a crippling deficits and rising debt which are being made worse by the costs of the country’s rapid ageing.
Read MoreThe World: IMF Positive For China, Asian Growth
Despite all the gloom and doom from Greece, Europe and the US, as well as the glum tone on sharemarkets here and offshore, there was one unchallenged bit of good news for Australia over the weekend.
Read MoreMarkets: US Up, Asia, Europe, Commodities Weak To Mixed
A small sigh of relief on Friday night as US sharemarkets posted their first weekly gain since April, with the S&P 500 and Dow ending moderately higher in the face of worries about Europe’s debt crisis and a slowing US economy.
Read MoreUS: Economy To Be Downgraded This Week
A big week for the US economy, or rather a week when the current gloomy sentiment about the outlook for the US economy will be further tested.
Read MoreGreece: Second Rescue Deal Near?
So now for the hard part of ‘saving’ Greece a second time in 13 months and hopefully making sure it will be the last.
Read MoreDIARY: Japanese Trade, US Growth, Greece, Aust Exports
It might sound a bit melancholy, but Greece and the US economy will again dominate markets here and overseas in the coming week.
Read MoreFeature: Dominos Poised
Lot’s of talk about dominos in European banks and economies if Greece defaults, while from across the Atlantic, a growing realisation the US economy is approaching stall speed, as the Fed’s punchbowl is being closed off.
Read MoreMinerals: Behind The March Quarter’s Export Slump
Figures out this week flesh out the dramatic impact of the floods and cyclones on Australia’s minerals sector in the three months to March.
Read MoreJapan: Recovery Gathers More Pace
Slowly but surely Japan’s recovery from the terrible impact of the March 11 quake, tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear crisis is growing stronger.
Read MoreAustralia: Should We Be Lumped In Again With Them?
Our market has lurched downwards in sympathy for the rest of the world on Thursday as local investors large and small (and the hedge funds and other short term players) reckoned the bad news from Greece and the US economy was bad news for us.
Read MoreFeature: Big Investors Pull Back
Understandably, global investors continued trimming their positions in the past month, remaining defensive, as they tried to work out whether the current Wall of Worry was a repeat of 2010’s or more serious.
Read MoreUpdates: Qantas Cuts Capacity, Again
Qantas Airways has hacked into its overly ambitious expansion plans for the second time in three months as weak growth and high fuel cost carve a hole through the company’s operations.
Read MoreRural: Grain Boom Continues
Australia’s winter grain crops are in very good shape, according to the quarterly update from the country’s premier forecaster, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences.
Read MoreThe Economy: Consumer Confidence Also Softening
Consumer sentiment is at its lowest level in two years, as cautious households worry about interest rates, taxes and the economy.
Read MoreDeals: Newcrest Grabs New Gold Outriders In Merger
Newcrest Mining, the country’s biggest gold miner (and Number 4 in the world) has flexed its muscles and expanded its domination of the local industry.
Read MoreThe Economy: August Now The Next Date For Interest Rates
Focus will now centre on the August meeting of the Reserve Bank board for the next possible rate rise after comments yesterday by Governor Glenn Stevens in a speech in Brisbane.
Read MoreCollapses: Colorado Stores To Close
Private equity has a lot of questions to answer (if the various groups can ever be bothered) about why their business model is supposed to be so good, especially for retail.
Read MoreUpdates: QBE Moves To Cut Profit Expectations, Sees Div. Steady, Steady Dividend
Eight hours or so after IAG issued its investor day update, QBE, the country’s biggest insurer, revealed that while its expecting as 50% to 60% rise in first half earnings, the spate of natural disasters would play havoc with its insurance returns.
Read MoreThe Economy: Business Conditions, Confidence Down In May
We had further confirmation yesterday that the Australian economy is struggling to recover from the flood-related slowdown in the first quarter of the year and cautious consumers who are saving, not spending worrying retailers, but pleasing banks with their higher savings.
Read MoreChina: Monetary Policy Tightened After Inflation Jumps
China’s central bank last night raised bank reserve ratios on Tuesday for the ninth time in nine months last October after consumer price inflation jumped to an annual rate of 5.5% in may, the highest for 34 months.
Read MoreUpdates: IAG Goes For Asia, Again
Not the best way to start an investor day briefing for Insurance Australia management with news of another round of earthquakes and damage from Christchurch headlining news broadcasts and at the forefront of investor’s thinking.
Read MoreChina 2: Imports Up, Positives Among The Negatives
According to one view, China’s import data in May was fairly benign; according to other views, it’s a signal of a gathering slowdown.
Read MoreChina 1: Exports Boom, Surplus Up
Once again markets have looked at China’s monthly trade figures and fretted and fussed about a slowdown or a bust in 2013 (why?) or suggested that the economy is heading into no man’s land.
Read MoreMarkets: The Gloom To Continue
Judging by the market outlook commentaries over the weekend and last night, it’s going to be a seventh negative week for global markets this week.
Read MoreDIARY: China, The US And An RBA Governor’s Speech
The most important announcement for the Australian and global markets will be the second round of Chinese data for May due out later today.
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