We blew it, concedes Ardent CEO
Ardent Leisure Group chief executive Deborah Thomas concedes the company botched the public response to four deaths at Dreamworld last week in multiple ways and is vowing to turn the theme park into one of the safest in the world. The Fin
Woolies scheme to raise $50 million wasn’t ‘special’
Woolworths plied buyers with coffee and offered a temporary parking spot to the buyer who extracted most cash from suppliers on a special day designed to fill a $50 million gap in Woolworths’ profit, a court has heard. The Fin
‘China slowdown will hit in two years’
Credit stimulus in China will help buoy commodity prices for the next two years, according to a former World Bank economist in Beijing, before a debt shake-out triggers a sharp slowdown in growth. The Fin
Revolt over Harvey Norman accounts
Retail giant Harvey Norman is facing a shareholder revolt over $943 million in loans to franchisees, with a proxy adviser recommending fund managers vote against accepting the group’s financial accounts at its November 14 annual meeting. The Fin
Aldi sees plenty of growth to come
The local boss of discount supermarket Aldi has mixed news for Australia’s leading supermarkets Woolworths and Coles, as well as the independent grocery stores, which are collectively losing about $6 billion a year in sales to the fast-growing German chain. The Aus
Perth helps Uber double its takings
Perth Uber customers spent about $20 million on journeys in the 12 months to July as the Australian arm of the ridesharing operation more than doubled its revenue. The West
WA chases defence dollars
The Department of Defence will today brief hundreds of WA business owners about how they can maximise their chances of landing lucrative maintenance contracts linked to the $89 billion rearmament of the Royal Australian Navy. The West
The Australian Financial Review
Page 1: Governments in Canberra and Melbourne are preparing aid to soften the blow in Victoria’s La Trobe Valley when the Hazelwood brown coal power station closes in March, and counting on surplus NSW black coal power to fill the gap it leaves in the energy supply market.
Ardent Leisure Group chief executive Deborah Thomas concedes the company botched the public response to four deaths at Dreamworld last week in multiple ways and is vowing to turn the theme park into one of the safest in the world.
Page 3: It was all about Lloyd Williams at Flemington yesterday. That the BRW Rich Lister owned the winning horse in the Melbourne Cup, Almandin, was not a surprise. It was his fifth winner, a record for an owner, in Australia’s biggest and most lucrative horse race.
The four Australians detained in China in connection with Crown Resorts can expect to know what, if any, charges they are facing within three weeks, after the federal government received assurances from Beijing on Tuesday.
Page 4: A galloping property market in Sydney and Melbourne has forced the Reserve Bank of Australia to shelve any nascent concern about the labour market by keeping the official cash rate on hold for a second month.
Page 5: The make-up of the Senate has been plunged into uncertainty after the process to replace former senator Bob Day was referred by the government to the High Court of Australia.
Tony Abbott has mounted a new push for a cabinet job, by issuing an appeal for the Aboriginal affairs portfolio via his friend Cate McGregor.
Page 7: Cranes from collapsed transport group McAleese could be shipped as far afield as Europe after trucks, trailers and lifting equipment were put up for sale by GraysOnline.
Page 10: Woolworths plied buyers with coffee and offered a temporary parking spot to the buyer who extracted most cash from suppliers on a special day designed to fill a $50 million gap in Woolworths’ profit, a court has heard.
A landmark ruling in the United Kingdom that determined Uber drivers are not ‘self employed’ and are entitled to the minimum wage could apply in Australia, says a leading employment law expert.
Page 11: At a time when Donald Trump’s casinos were bleeding money and he was badly in debt, the Republican presidential nominee used a ‘‘legally dubious’’ accounting manoeuvre to avoid reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in income, according to a New York Times report.
Page 12: Credit stimulus in China will help buoy commodity prices for the next two years, according to a former World Bank economist in Beijing, before a debt shake-out triggers a sharp slowdown in growth.
Page 13: Retail giant Harvey Norman is facing a shareholder revolt over $943 million in loans to franchisees, with a proxy adviser recommending fund managers vote against accepting the group’s financial accounts at its November 14 annual meeting.
ANZ is closer to selling ‘‘one or two’’ of its four minority stakes in banks across Asia, according to the head of institutional banking, Mark Whelan, who said the move was part of a ‘‘reshaping’’ of the business rather than a ‘‘retreat’’ from the region.
Page 15: Energy industry leaders have called for the Finkel Review on energy security to expose the costs to consumers of the options available to improve supply security while still reducing emissions.
Aldi Australia will spend more than $1 billion over three years expanding and revamping its east coast stores and increasing its fresh food range to address a major gap in its offer as sales surge through the $7 billion mark.
Andrew Forrest has teamed up with a group of high-profile oil and gas executives to stake a claim to a large petroleum tenement package in Western Australia’s Canning Basin.
Page 16: Swiss miner Glencore is leading the supply response to soaring coal prices, announcing it will reopen a second shuttered coal mine in Australia.
The proposed $308 million takeover bid for New Zealand’s Hellaby Holdings by Australia’s largest car parts supplier, Bapcor, will need to substantially increase to succeed after an independent expert said the current offer was too low and directors urged shareholders to reject it.
SpeedCast will acquire Harris CapRock for $US425 million ($554.3 million) in a deal chief executive Pierre-Jean Beylier says will allow the global network and satellite communications services provider to take a ‘‘leadership position’’ supplying the energy sector.
Page 17: Three giant investors – BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – hold the ‘‘balance of power’’ in corporate governance disputes.
Almost two-thirds of Australian consumers believe transactional banking data belongs to them and not their bank, while 88 per cent say they should have the right to control access to their account data, according to a survey commissioned by the nation’s credit unions.
Page 18: Rio Tinto’s autonomous train provider has hinted again that the technology troubles plaguing the miner’s iron ore heartland are close to being resolved.
Page 27: One of Australia’s best-known contrarian fund managers has become the latest investor to warn yield stocks may not be as safe as they are perceived to be.
Listed investment company Templeton Global Growth Fund faces a possible second strike at its annual meeting on Friday, with two big shareholders preparing to vote against the remuneration report.
BHP Billiton will stump up $US12 million ($15.7 million) to back a world-first ‘‘forests bond’’ that has attracted investors including Australian insurance giant QBE, JPMorgan and US pension giant CalSTRS and TIAA-CREF.
Page 29: The sell-off in yield investments, especially listed property, has gone far enough, according to Deutsche analysts who have warned against being underweight in such stocks.
Global commercial real estate volumes surprised on the upside in the third quarter, despite turbulent financial markets.
Page 31: A controversial deal for the $100 million-plus sale of a 407-hectare parcel of land to a consortium whose shareholders include former Santos chairman Stephen Gerlach has collapsed after its would-be buyers missed a payment deadline.
Page 32: Las Vegas-based MGM Resorts International could plough almost $US10 billion ($13 billion) into a Japanese casino via a publicly traded real estate investment trust, its chief executive said on Monday, as Tokyo inches closer to legalising the industry.
Page 33: Property investor and fund manager GPT Group has doubled the size of a debt issue, taking it to $200 million, as local investors flocked to the offer.
Page 34: Colliers International has reported a 10 per cent rise in revenue for the third quarter to $US462 ($603 million) relative to the same quarter last year, with good growth in the Asia Pacific region.
The Australian
Page 1: The Senate has been thrown into turmoil by a furious dispute over the July election that puts a crucial vote in play, as the government seeks a High Court ruling on whether former Family First senator Bob Day breached the Constitution when running for re-election.
Page 2: The Reserve Bank expects the economy to slow from the rapid pace of 2015-16 but governor Philip Lowe says there will still be sufficient demand to keep employment growing.
An independent authority would be given “unfettered power” to recommend how much universities and vocational colleges could charge for their courses under a sweeping plan for overhauling tertiary education financing delivered to the government.
Page 8: An expansion plan for BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam mine in South Australia is being threatened by the state’s unreliable power supply and high price volatility, with electricity costs for the miner some days topping $2.5 million.
Page 19: The local boss of discount supermarket Aldi has mixed news for Australia’s leading supermarkets Woolworths and Coles, as well as the independent grocery stores, which are collectively losing about $6 billion a year in sales to the fast-growing German chain.
Bank lending to property investors surpassed owner-occupier growth for the first time in more than a year, frustrating regulators’ efforts to ease risks in the housing market as the Reserve Bank tries to avoid lowering official interest rates any further.
Page 21: Woolworths has admitted it had no legal or contractual basis for asking suppliers for millions of dollars in cash payments at the end of 2014, but denied the money was a “gift” to the retail giant.
The voracious appetite for Australian produce in China and the booming food tourism market is expected to lead an innovative abalone company to the ASX boards next year.
The world’s largest travel review company, the $US10 billion ($13bn) TripAdvisor, plans to aggressively sign up more independent hotels to its instant booking platform after securing the support of eight of the world’s top 10 hotel brands.
The agriculture sector needs more options and different models for raising capital than reliance on the traditional bank loan, overdraft or farm mortgage debt, if it is to meet growing food production demands.
Virtual and augmented reality will explode into a half-trillion-dollar industry within nine years and AR eventually will eat into the smartphone market, says Citi Research in a report on investment potential.
Page 22: Despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars to offload its retail and wealth operations across Asia, ANZ won market support for the deal amid hopes of better returns from further asset sales and restructuring.
Page 25: Listed gambling company Star has confirmed plans to buy the beachfront Sheraton Mirage resort on the Gold Coast, pressing ahead with its domination of the southeast Queensland market.
Neighbourhood shopping centres and large format centres are changing hands at tight yields with more than $100 million of assets selling.
Page 30: Burgeoning research prowess and an influx of foreign investment capital are boosting commercialisation prospects for university-spawned biotechs, the sector’s peak body says.
The West Australian
Page 3: One in 10 WA households is being charged double-digit interest rates on overdue water bills, prompting Labor to claim two-monthly billing is failing to help people pay on time.
Page 7: South Australian senator Nick Xenophon says WA’s bevy of senior Liberals in the Federal Government are not using their combined weight to leverage a better deal for the State.
Page 9: Long-suffering Perth homeowners may have finally reached the bottom of the market, with house prices enjoying their biggest lift in value this year.
Page 13: Roe 8 contracts signed by the Government have few termination penalties, with those that do exist limited mainly to covering what little construction is due to take place before the March State election, according to a legal opinion obtained by the Greens.
Page 14: Perth Uber customers spent about $20 million on journeys in the 12 months to July as the Australian arm of the ridesharing operation more than doubled its revenue.
Page 17: New research has found thousands of workers in WA’s tourism sector live in marginal seats that could decide the outcome of next year’s State election.
Page 27: The Department of Defence will today brief hundreds of WA business owners about how they can maximise their chances of landing lucrative maintenance contracts linked to the $89 billion rearmament of the Royal Australian Navy.
WA’s TAB clocked about $8 million of the $140 million bet on yesterday’s Melbourne Cup, but it pales in comparison to market leader Tabcorp which punched $70 million through its register.
Plans by mining heavyweight Andrew Forrest to stake a claim in WA’s emerging onshore oil and gas industry by pegging vast swaths of the Canning Basin will have local oil and gas executives scratching their heads.
Page 28: Perth-headquartered miner South32 has flagged a further hit to coking coal production after safety concerns forced a temporary shutdown at part of its troubled Illawarra Metallurgical Coal operations.
Two of the world’s biggest oil companies unveiled vastly different third-quarter fortunes yesterday, with BP reporting earnings had halved as Royal Dutch Shell spruiked an 18 per cent jump in revenue.
Shares in Tassal have fallen as the salmon producer again defended its farming practices in the wake of an ABC report questioning the sustainability of the industry.
Page 29: Millions of dollars in profits raked in from Australian motorists by parking and security empire Wilson have been sent across the Tasman to fund expansion in New Zealand.
Mineral Resources has taken advantage of the steadying iron ore prices in the September quarter, lifting volumes from its Pilbara and Yilgarn operations as commodity prices recovered.
Deloitte has beefed up its corporate finance team ahead of an anticipated pick-up in deal-making by buying high-end advisory firm Torridon Partners.
Page 30: Most of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s workforce again pocketed bonuses last financial year, even as the corporate regulator’s deficit doubled to $54.6 million.
Intermin Resources has expanded its footprint in the Goldfields, picking up a series of tenements covering 164sqkm.
Page 31: The State Government has released the first lots of a health and knowledge hub alongside Fiona Stanley Hospital in Murdoch.
Page 32: The transformation of Perth’s luxury hotel market is in full swing, as the industry positions itself to cater for a boost in the State’s economy.
Page 34: A Perth security company installing tracking devices on residential building sites to combat theft has started to apply the technology in commercial spaces.
Page 71: Colin Barnett says the newly redeveloped Holiday Inn Perth City Centre reflects the confidence in the future of the State’s tourism.
Page 73: WA’s property industry has challenged the Liberal and Labor parties to meet its list of demands at the next State election, saying the industry is worth billions of dollars to the economy.
Page 76: Shares in Maximus Resources jumped after the Adelaide-based explorer announced a maiden resource for its Eagles Nest gold deposit north-west of Widgiemooltha.
