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ASB Securities Morning Brief for Saturday, 13 March 2010
New Zealand Headlines Strategic Finance is in the hands of receivers PricewaterhouseCoopers, ending moratorium arrangements that have been in place since December 200... Read more The boss of Strategic Finance has slammed its trustee for placing the company into receivership and says investors will be worse off... Read more Vodafone has given the millionaire backers behind a plan to build a second international submarine communications cable a nod of approval.... Read more Warehouse Group posted a 17% gain in first-half profit, reflecting year-earlier costs to close stores while operating earnings weakened... Read more Today six start-up companies will go head to head in the Launch Pad - a Dragons' Den-like competition being held at the Planet 2010 conference in Auckland... Read more New Zealand retail sales rose more than expected in January, though the headline figure was driven by an increase in vehicle-related industries and core retail grew less than forecast... Read more Total residential house sales rose sharply in February, compared with a 10 year low-point in January, but seasonally adjusted prices fell and it is taking longer to sell homes as tax-shy investors stay out of the market... Read more More Kiwis holidaying at home and more tourists staying longer has boosted January’s short-term commercial accommodation total guest nights by 4% compared to the previous January... Read more Critics say our obsession with property is draining money away from real businesses, which create jobs and make New Zealand richer... Read more Crossbred wool auction prices have stabilised after making a strong recovery from the lows of last year's world recession... Read more Nufarm, the Australian-headquartered worldwide manufacturer of farm chemicals, has received a formal shareholders’ offer from Japan’s Sumitomo to acquire up to 20% of its shares at A$14 each... Read more Small and medium-sized food and beverage companies will have access to state of the art research and development facilities with a new government initiative, Food Innovation Network New Zealand... Read more Hell Pizza is being sued for holding up the sale of a franchised store because it thinks the new manager does not speak English well enough... Read more Wool farmers' failure to support research and development has contributed to 43 planned job cuts at AgResearch, departing chief executive Andrew West says... Read more Kiwifruit marketer Zespri is predicting another good year as the harvesting of gold fruit begins... Read more Liam Dann. It is sometimes said that there are two kinds of entrepreneur - the kind that creates wealth by building something new and the kind that shuffles other people's wealth in their direction... Read more Don Brash. Over the past few weeks, repeated attacks have been made on the Huljich KiwiSaver Scheme and on the integrity of the directors of Huljich Wealth Management... Read more Brian Gaynor. One of the issues raised by the Huljich Wealth Management controversy is the role of well known or celebrity directors,... Read more Daily Sharechat. Despite Contact Energy's first-half results being lower than expected, "we now feel the value proposition is too strong to ignore," says Macquarie Equities analyst Stephen Hudson... Read more NZ Market Report. New Zealand shares fell, as Warehouse Group posted weaker first-half operating earnings and forecast a flat full year. Pyne Gould Corp. advanced after its Marac unit gained admissions to the extended guarantee scheme... Read more
Australian Headlines Australian Market Report. Shares close marginally higher, making broad-based gains following an ultimately positive lead from Wall Street overnight... Read more A Reserve Bank report estimates the major banks have enjoyed a 20 to 25 basis point increase in interest margins during the financial crisis.... Read more Australia's housing shortage has intensified, with bank lending to investors to build new housing in 2009 shrinking to the lowest share of new finance on record... Read more Queensland's 14 biggest coal companies are set to raise the stakes in the battle for the state's integrated rail business by offering a substantial premium to the $3 billion the state government expects to earn from the sale... Read more The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has slammed Sydney Airport for raising prices despite ranking as the worst-performing airport in the country... Read more Months before the Lehman Brothers collapse brought the world's financial markets to a halt, the bank's minions were facing Reserve Bank of Australia questions about suspect transactions Lehman's was using to mask billions of dollars in debt... Read more Local councils battling to recover millions of dollars they lost through investing in Lehman Australia are hoping their case will be strengthened by a US report revealing the collapsed bank has more assets up for grabs than expected... Read more Federal Court judge delays a shareholder vote on Seven Network's $3 billion merger with WesTrac while he considers recruiting an independent barrister... Read more When Kerry Stokes hit the headlines with a proposal to merge his private tractor leasing business with the listed Seven Network, it put a rocket under the media group's share price. The news of such an odd marriage was enough to distract attention from a ballooning deferred tax liability ticking away on Seven's balance sheet... Read more When Australia's richest woman, Gina Rinehart, discovered she had been stripped of her prized 25 per cent stake in the Pilbara's biggest unmined pile of iron ore, she exploded with rage in a manner reminiscent of her late father, Lang Hancock... Read more When departing executive director Graeme Rowley hosted iron ore miner Fortescue Metals Group's February result conference call, there was a familiar, if muffled, whisper helping him to answer some of the analysts' more difficult questions... Read more As middle and inner-Melbourne property prices soar and interest rates climb, first home buyer areas are feeling the brunt.... Read more Plaintiffs in the long-running class action against those involved in the clean-up of the World Trade Centre in New York following the September 11 terrorist attack have been offered a collective $US657.5 million, ($718 million). The defendants include Lend Lease's Bovis arm.... Read more IAG cut its full-year earnings guidance because of the claim costs from the recent severe storms in Victoria.... Read more Mitre 10 shareholders have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a majority buy-in from grocery wholesaler Metcash.... Read more Eddy Groves's former brother-in-law yesterday admitted billing ABC Learning in a way that did not reflect the true cost of services but insisted he had ''nothing to hide'' over the exclusive business deal... Read more The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has delayed until late next month the release of the findings of its inquiry into National Australia Bank's friendly $13.3 billion all-cash acquisition of AXA Asia Pacific. The ACCC is seeking further information... Read more So strong is Australia's emerging recovery, analysts believe the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, may be on track to bring down a budget surplus next year instead of in 2015 as officially forecast... Read more Cudeco has got itself out of a potentially tight disclosure shortcoming with the Australian Securities Exchange by blaming translators and the Chinese media for getting it wrong when quoting its chairman, Wayne McCrae, this week... Read more Control of the base-metals group CBH Resources is back to a two-way shootout between the Belgian company Nyrstar and Toho Zinc of Japan.... Read more The founder of Aussie Home Loans says the mortgage broker plans to resurrect the Aussie-branded home loan, which has the potential to constitute up to 30 per cent of the group's business... Read more Platts has launched the world's first daily coking coal index as it looks to exploit a push by BHP Billiton to abandon annually set pricing... Read more The European steel industry has warned that an iron ore price rise of up to 90 per cent will have a "huge impact" on economic recovery.... Read more The $1 billion unlisted Investa Commercial Property Fund has thrown down the gauntlet to its rivals by reopening redemptions to its shareholders, after the funds were frozen a year ago due to the global financial crisis... Read more Capitaland, which has Chinese properties valued at more than $14 billion, said demand in China was ''strong'' and the real estate boom couldn't be called a bubble.... Read more White Energy has expanded its "cleaner coal" technology into China, a market it hopes its US projects can export to in the future... Read more Ross Gittins. It has become deeply unfashionable to talk about Australia's foreign debt. Neither the government nor the opposition wants to mention it and the same goes for most economists... Read more Ian Verrender. We Australians appear to be turning into a nation of contrarians when it comes to economics and business... Read more Stephen Bartholomeusz. The big four banks will take John Symond's attempt to re-engineer Aussie very seriously, but can he get access to funding on competitive terms?... Read more Terry McCrann. China One boom was an old-fashioned roller-coaster, but China Two is a much scarier ride... Read more John Durie. NAB could well get the green light on AXA, but the ACCC is as unpredictable as the politics that surrounds such a proposal... Read more Bryan Frith. Whatever happened to the "preliminary proposal" by Meijin Energy of a $220 million cash offer for Rocklands Richfield?... Read more
International Headlines U.S. Market Report. An updated report of the latest action on Wall Street... Read more World Market Report. An updated report of the worlds' latest market movements... Read more A report into the collapse of US bank Lehman Brothers criticises senior executives and auditor Ernst & Young for serious lapses.... Read more Unraveling the biggest-ever U.S. bankruptcy case isn't cheap. The report into the Lehman Bros. collapse, by Anton Valukis of Chicago law firm Jenner & Block, was 15 months in the making and cost at least $US38 million... Read more US retail sales showed a surprise rise in February as consumers braved extreme bad weather to get to the shops... Read more BA cabin crew will go on strike for three days from 20 March and for four days from 27 March in a dispute over pay and staff levels... Read more China's top internet official has warned that Google will "pay the consequences" if it continues to go against Chinese law... Read more China's demand for oil jumped by an "astonishing" 28% in January compared with the same month a year earlier, the International Energy Agency says... Read more Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown joined forces to attack the US for "protectionism" over an aerospace deal after talks in Downing Street... Read more U.K. Business Secretary Lord Mandelson has announced a 300m-euro ($US412m) loan guarantee to the European arm of General Motors... Read more A former Toyota in-house defense attorney ays he quit because of what he alleges were "criminal acts" by Toyota -- specifically, withholding information the company was legally required to turn over to plaintiffs' lawyers during litigation... Read more Toyota Motor Corp. set a 2010 goal of regaining most of the U.S. market share lost in the past two months after global recalls of 8 million vehicles damped demand, the No. 2 U.S. sales executive said... Read more Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit said the U.S. Treasury Department will be free to sell its 27 percent stake in the bank starting next week and that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if the government were considering a sale... Read more The most ambitious attempt to overhaul U.S. financial rules since the 1930s suffered a setback as the third bipartisan push collapsed, setting the stage for wrangling that could delay a final bill for months... Read more Eike Batista’s plan to raise $US5.6 billion in the biggest initial public offering this year moves him one step closer to fulfilling his ambition of being the world’s richest man... Read more BHP Billiton Plc, Anglo American Plc and Xstrata Plc are shipping coal 10,000 miles to China from their Cerrejon mine in Colombia for the first time this year because of surging demand and rising prices in Asia... Read more Paul La Monica. The dollar has gotten stronger this year. Is that because the U.S. economy appears to be improving -- or in spite of it?... Read more
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