Malcolm Surry

WA is maintaining its beach mat in the economic sunshine with a stellar export performance, which rose 17 per cent to $25.4 billion in the year to June 30.

IT IS no accident Singapore will be the fastest growing economy in Asia this year, with GDP expansion on track to exceed nine per cent.The island republic managed the regional recession more deftly than any of its neighbours. Instead of waiting to be kn

The share prices of companies selling goods and services to the US energy industry are about the only ones left partying on a wounded Wall Street. The Philadelphia Oil Services index has jumped 150 per cent since the price of oil began to rise and individ

Taiwan, one of WA’s most important export markets, is beginning to run into trouble.Confidence in the president Chen Shui-bian has been severely dented. Share prices on the Taipei stock exchange have skidded by 35 per cent since he was inaugurated on Ma

Howzat! The WACA has signed up the Subiaco-based, publicly-listed company Willhart Ltd to put some technology runs on the board at its slightly down at heel Nelson Crescent headquarters.

Watching all those medals being handed out at the Olympics set Briefcase pondering whether gold mining shares might be about to line up for a sprint.

China has literally got WA’s goat. Perth genetic technology company Australia-China Development and Trading is exporting frozen Boer goat embryos to the PRC as part of a joint venture to raise the quality of Chinese livestock.Surrogate nannies have don

THE most moving image of the Sydney Olympics for me came when the athletes from North and South Korea marched into the stadium together behind a blue and white flag representing the Korean Peninsular.

It has been said that we tend to use statistics as a drunken man uses a lamp-post — for support rather than illumination. But one set of figures just out throws some light on how WA is very much on the map for foreign investors.

The Nasdaq market has been murdered on at least three occasions this year. Each time, the corpse has clambered out of the coffin. The latest Dracula act came after giant chip maker Intel spooked investors with news that the Euro was eroding its earnings.

While the global oil price has been tap dancing to new peaks, the share prices of leading Australian oil companies could only perform a soft shoe shuffle.

The recently listed NRMA insurance group has already had to make a grovelling apology to the Australian Stock Exchange.Someone in the company handed over a draft copy of its profit figure to the BRW magazine – two days before the results were announced

HONG Kong has just conducted what passes for elections in the Special Administrative Region of China.The results did not entirely go as analysts predicted.

EVANS & Tate chairman Frank Tate, visiting London to lift a cup for best red of the year at a big international wine show, decided to play up his luck by calling on institutional investors in the city.

WINE aficionados will have to wait until December for Evans & Tate’s award-winning 1999 Margaret River shiraz to be released.

BreifcaseAll dollar roads lead to ManhattanTHE Australian dollar has been arrested as a vagrant for being unable to show any visible means of support. But it is not alone in the paddy wagon.The pound has slumped to a seven-year low

TWO cheers for OPEC. Oil prices fell for about five minutes following news of the production increases, and then shot through US$35 a barrel again when it sank in that they meant little or nothing.

The share price of Mermaid Marine has performed like a stunned mullet for much of the past year.

The AlintaGas float looks like popping nearly everybody’s pilot light. No less than 220,000 Western Australian’s have pre-registered for the prospectuses that will be going out on September 11.

THE regional economic recovery is turning into a tale of two Asias.

Okay, so none of us like paying over a dollar a litre for petrol, but at least we have got some.

WHILE nobody was looking, the share price of Orbital Engine Corp. has scooted past $2 to hit its highest price in almost a decade.

God displayed a sense of humour by arranging that mineral riches can usually only be found in the most remote and inhospitable places on earth. Diamond digger Clayton Dodd, managing director of Striker Resources, is about to take delivery of a new sep...

THE bush has been doing it tough for so long that we tend to forget how good it can look – if you have the right produce in the paddocks.Futuris, the rural services group headed up by Alan Newman, has turned in net profits for the year to June 30 ...

READING one financial newspaper report over his breakfast eggs the other morning Wesfarmers chief Michael Chaney might have been bemused to see that his share price had dropped 35c in reaction to the $201 million record profits.This was an error. T...

GOVERNOR of the Reserve Bank Ian Macfarlane says: “It would be hard to make the case that we have already pushed up interest to a point where it is actually hurting.” No doubt he does not have a mortgage, or has ever had to meet a payroll.Economists...

THE WA mining sector looks increasingly like a garage sale.This state of affairs is largely due to the timidity of Australian institutions that have refused to pay up for world class assets.

CHINA’S accession to the World Trade Organization, hopefully by the end of this year, will be good news for WA.

IT WAS in 1626 that Peter Minuit, the director general of New Netherland province, bought the island of Manhattan from the local Indians for trinkets and cloth valued at 60 guilders.

SOME commentators have told us that the halving of capital gains tax to a maximum of 24.5 per cent will change the dynamics of the marketplace.