Special Reports

Employment lawyer Maria Saraceni says she would have made her parents proud if she had become a hairdresser, married young and produced plenty of grandchildren.

Women remain significantly under-represented in the boardroom, with only marginal increases in the number of women directors and companies with at least one woman on their board during the past two years.

Family is such a high priority for the Perth partners of accounting and advisory firm, Pitcher Partners, that the partners included a room specially designed for their children, and the children of their employees, when they moved into their new St George

Establishing a flight training business in Perth 10 years ago was easy, according to pilot Min Stokes, but no-one could have prepared her for the bumpy ride that followed.

Winning Western Australian Inventor of the Year appears to be paying dividends for Live Technologies Ltd.

With the realisation that Western Australia’s current resources boom will eventually come to an end, the state government has placed considerable emphasis on developing WA as a hub for innovation and industrial development.

Despite the high wealth levels currently being generated across a range of industries in Western Australia, many technology start-up firms are shutting up shop and looking elsewhere to secure funding.

Business may not think investigating the eyesight of a parrot has much to offer them. But for Western Australia’s new chief scientist, Lyn Beazley, there are very real applications for industry.

Concerns over the depletion of fossil fuels, climate change and air pollution have led to a heightened interest in renewable energy projects in Western Australia.

A host of Western Australian companies received almost $32 million in federal government AusIndustry Commercial Ready grants last year, representing around 19 per cent of total approvals nationwide.

Major players making major deals was the dominant feature of Perth’s commercial office market in 2006, as yields and office vacancies tightened and rents skyrocketed.

About 20 stockbrokers turned their backs on their big-name employers last year to establish new firms in a bid to capitalise on WA’s booming resources sector.

Metropolitan and regional players shared the industry awards last year in the state’s arts, culture and hospitality sectors.

Western Australia’s medical research sector is again flying the flag for the state at a national level.

While the state’s residential and commercial markets were strong performers in 2006, positive sales results were also emerging in the industrial and retail sectors.

Euroz Securities has for the first time knocked Patersons Securities off its position as the top stockbroking firm in Perth for equity capital raisings.

The past year was a boom time for many businesses and investors, yet ironically it was characterised as much by failed deals and lost opportunities as it was by successful transactions.

A broad cross-section of Western Australian companies were recognised for their innovative work in the fields of medical research, technology design and environmental sustainability science, information technology and the environment last year.

Float activity in Western Australia may have hit all-time highs last year, but analysts remain wary that quantity doesn’t always mean quality.

There has been a considerable amount of activity in the state’s innovation sector during the past 12 months, with more WA companies investing in innovation than anywhere else in Australia, in per capita terms.

The state government spent most of 2005 trying to win over the public on deregulation.

Daniel Chick’s smother, followed by the shepherd that paved the way for Adam Hunter to kick a goal and seal the nail biting grand final for the West Coast Eagles was but one of many spectacular moments on the Western Australian sporting calendar in 2006.

It was a year of highs and lows in Western Australia’s property game, with a record 46 per cent surge in Perth’s housing prices in the year to September and stellar commercial gains.

Western Australia’s resources sector continued to grow during 2006, with record production and export figures. A declining share of national exploration spending, however, remains a key issue.

Premier Alan Carpenter has finished the year sounding upbeat, despite all of the ministerial and corruption crises gripping his government. Mark Beyer and Mark Pownall report.

Many Western Australians will remember 2006 as the year that two major commodities pinched their hip pocket nerve – petrol and bananas.

The shortage of skilled planners and the lack of long-term strategic planning have been identified as two of the major issues facing the local government sector.

The City of Cockburn’s first joint venture development is expected to deliver the city a new $6 million library at Cockburn Central and a share of the project’s profits.

With local government coming under close scrutiny, WA Business News invited some of the leading figures in the sector to discuss key challenges and propose solutions.

The amalgamation of local councils is a topic of debate that generates a lot of heat, but outside of Geraldton and Northam there is no immediate prospect of real change.

A review of the local government sector has called on the state government to provide $25 million in new funding to help the sector boost its services and capabilities.

As the New Year approaches, property pundits are hedging their bets on where the market will head in 2007 while reflecting on a year during which the price of an established house rose by 46 per cent in just nine months.