Australasian Investment Review (AIR) is a free daily news service with a weekly online magazine covering global financial markets with a focus on Australia, New Zealand and Asia.
All in all, Australian's banks finished a rough year in pretty good shape: earnings were solid in most cases, even for the two wounded members, the NAB and the ANZ.
The US Fed and the People's Bank of China cut rates this week and we will follow next week, along with the European Central Bank.
The Federal Reserve has cut US interest rates by half a per cent early this morning, Australian time.
As a company board you realise there must be a great deal of scepticism abroad about the performance of the company you administer when a major broker publishes a chart in a note to clients detailing 7 earnings downgrades from May 2007 till yesterday.
Grog company Foster's Group has delayed the completion of the much talked about review of its struggling wine assets by two-and-a-half months, but says first quarter performance is in line with expectations, and that its Australia beer arm continues to do well.
Minara's Resources' major shareholder, Swiss trading giant Glencore International, could very well tighten its grip on the Western Australian lateritic nickel producer if other shareholders fail to support a 3 for two rights issue announced yesterday that is aimed at raising a much needed $210 million.
There's nothing like a friendly takeover with a bigger, better rated rival to boost the bottom line in the last ever profit.
The market has had another weak response to the second-ever-biggest-point rise on Wall St overnight – only up 161 or 4.2% at 11:30am. Much less than the 242 point rise predicted by the SFE Futures this morning. On the 13th of October, after the biggest-point-rally-ever in the US, the Aussie market similarly rose only 3.7% - much like today so far. Some are suggesting we might have hit the bottom; others are calling it a 'great selling day'. Every sector is up, resources and financials outperforming – just like the last time.
