PLATINUM Capital is one of the most successful fund management companies in the country. Under the stewardship of Kerr Neilson, its portfolio grew by 13.8 per cent in the year to June, compared with a 23 per cent slide on world stock markets.
AMERICANS, the most self-confident of all people, have sunk into a morass of despondency. The investing public, in the popular vernacular, has lost its ticker.
WHAT business is worth more than $60 billion a year, is guaranteed to expand at more than 5 per cent, and is substantially underwritten by government? The answer is the healthcare industry.
TREASURER Peter Costello’s 41 proposals to give the Australian Securities and Investments Commission bared teeth will get an armchair ride through parliament.Few in big business, the accountancy or financial services professions, or the financial s...
THE stock markets you should ideally have had your money in over the past 12 months were South Korea and Peru. It is doubtful your financial adviser mentioned those.
AUSTRALIA’S $5 billion worth of coal exports to Japan face being hit by an environmental tax that appears to have floated out of the rarefied air of the Johannesburg “earth summit”.
I HAVE always maintained that business breakfasts are strictly for the birds. But there are notable exceptions. One was the recent morning munch hosted by the Consulate General of Japan and the University of Western Australia.
THE price of oil briefly nudged $US30 a barrel last week, its highest level for 15 months. That looks peculiar, because OPEC is currently pumping out 1,000,000 barrels a day more than the droopy world economy can use.
FEW political spectacles are more entertaining than government ministers seeking to explain the inexplicable. The plea by Qantas to have the 45 per cent cap on the airline’s foreign ownership lifted has been rejected.
AUSTRALIAN share traders had virtually given up on the North-West Shelf partners winning the $25 billion jackpot to supply LNG to China, which goes to show they were not much good at reading Chinese tea leaves.
THE US economy, the engine that pulls the global growth train, is puffing to a halt in the sidings. In some ways, what is happening is a mirror image of the 1997 Asian crisis.
MIKE Fitzpatrick, one-time Subiaco ruck-man and captain-coach of Carlton, runs Hastings Fund Management, which has about $2 billion in assets under management.
WHEN Ian Macfarlane sits down with his Reserve Bank colleagues on August 5 to set interest rate policy it will be one of the bigger calls of his illustrious career.
WHEN Ian Macfarlane sits down with his Reserve Bank colleagues on August 5 to set interest rate policy it will be one of the bigger calls of his illustrious career.
THE bear market on Wall Street is now the most protracted since President Nixon was in the White House – when gold was hitting $US875 an ounce and the Middle East embargo sent oil to $41 a barrel.
AN accountant in Clinton, Mississippi, is caught fiddling the books and investors in Australia get hit directly in the wallet. That’s the global village for you.
IT would not have been surprising to see a fleet of Arab dhows sailing up to the Old Swan Brewery recently. Taking place inside was the biggest seminar ever staged in Perth on doing business amid the shifting sands of the Middle East.
TREVOR Coates, captain of the Foodland’s team, had one hand on the Bledisloe Cup for the trans-Tasman supermarket championship, when the linesman suddenly ran on the field waving his flag.
IT was the eminent John Kenneth Galbraith who said: “Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists”. Practitioners of the dismal science are hard to please.
GOLD is finally having its day in the sun. Some believers thought they might be carried into the cemetery before they saw it rise again. This columnist regularly harangued readers on the merits of the metal, before he too threw in the towel.
THE Australian dollar batted her eyelashes and flirted with the greenback at US56 cents last week. But the excitement was too much, and the little lady fainted.
IT can be hard yakka making money in the stock market these days. One way has been to buy the shares of a company that has recently installed a feisty chief executive.
ANYONE who didn’t see higher interest rates coming should not be allowed to drive a car. The Reserve Bank of Australia had cut the price of money to the bone as an insurance policy against global recession.
QANTAS boss Geoff Dixon boldly put into words what some business leaders are privately thinking when he launched a stinging attack on the modus operandi of Allan Fels.
THE Reserve Bank of Australian has chosen to leave interest rates as they are. Foreign exchange traders immediately sold the Australian dollar below US53 cents, demonstrating that they have the attention span of labrador puppies.
THE sickening hike in health fund charges will dim hopes of keeping a lid on inflation this year. Medibank Private was first ambulance off the rank with a 9 per cent hike in premiums.
A DIRECTOR of a public company recently asked me when China might become a member of the WTO. Try last November, chum. Taiwan was admitted in January. While few businessmen are as out of touch as our friend, some might be a tad slow.
DEVOTEES of William Shakespeare will recall this line from Hamlet: “Neither a borrower, nor a lender be, for a loan oft loses both itself and friend”. This raises the question … is it appropriate for small investors to buy shares with borrowed money?
