Deloitte boss who turns on, tunes in . . . and drops out. Giam Swiegers says technology keeps him feeling sane and in touch when he is away from Australia.
Photo: Michele Mossop David Ramli Far from the ringing streets of Sydney, skirted by lonely stretches of sandy beach and baked in tropical heat, sits a piece of Australia’s Cape York peninsula that remains undisturbed by mobile phone signals and internet connections. Online ad spend set to beat TV in 2013. Big data creeps out online customers. EMC marketing head Chuck Hollis ...
Clean desks kill creativity. International management expert Rosabeth Moss Kanter says if people cannot express their individuality at work, employers don’t get their best ideas and their motivation. Mathew Dunckley Harvard management adviser Rosabeth Moss Kanter has no time for clean-desk warriors in modern companies. Professor Kanter, a world leader in business administration from Harvard Business School and an author of books on corporate culture, said BHP Billiton’s infamous edict to staff about fastidious workstations was “ridiculous” .
Crack down on high frequency trading: fund managers. Michael Smith, Bianca Hartge-Hazelman and Stephen Shore Leading fund managers are calling for greater regulation of high frequency trading which they warn is resulting in market manipulation and insider trading at the expense of retail shareholders.
Perpetual Investments said yesterday it would join Schroders Australia and Antares Capital in questioning major stockbrokers about the way high-speed trades were conducted and the risk systems in place. Matt Williams, head of Australian equities at Perpetual, welcomed an investigation by the corporate regulator this week of the impact on the market of HFT but said it did not go far enough. “Whilst the impact on volatility and avoiding a flash crash/Knight Capital scenario is important, to us the bigger issues are around market integrity,” Mr Williams told The Australian Financial Review. Robo trading v old school.
Stephen Shore Twelve seconds after 10 o’clock yesterday morning a computer program ordered a single Brickworks share, pushing the stock up 3.5 per cent.
Then nothing happened for 80 minutes. Algorithms often order single shares to set new price points. In an infrequently traded stock like Brickworks, it can sometime have a big impact on price. It is this kind of irregular activity that has fund managers and mum and dad investors throwing up their hands in frustration. “This market is farcical, it’s a joke,” Clime Investment Management managing director John Abernethy says. Trading in the Australian market is becoming increasingly driven by automated algorithms. The trouble with robo trading. AMP Capital’s Keith Dickie says there is certainly logic in computer-driven strategies.
Photo: Tamara Voninski John Wasiliev Over the past few years active investors have been offered computer software packages that purport to make trading easy. ASIC confronts a trading monster. Would-be PM Turnbull steals the show. PM caves in on asylum seekers. Julia Gillard and Immigration Minister Chris Bowen ... the Prime Minister wants Labor to adopt all 22 recommendations in the expert panel’s report on asylum seekers.
Photo: Andrew Meares John Kerin and James Massola The opposition is expected to accept Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s backdown on asylum seeker policy, breaking a damaging legislative roadblock and paving the way for offshore processing on the Pacific Island of Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island to start within months. Robert Hughes and the Australian Institute of Thought - The Drum. Wake up now, says Vanguard founder. Jessica Kourkounis Vanguard, the penny-pinching mutual fund company founded by John Bogle, has become a colossus.
Its index funds, once derided for not even trying to beat the market, are now the industry standard. Defibrillator needed for Europe’s ETS, but does the will exist? A competitive country picks winners. David Gonski Beyond the daily debate about what drives our economy, there are, to my mind, five issues fundamental to Australia’s ability to compete globally.
Global CEOs challenge Labor. Jacob Greber and Fleur Anderson International companies have warned the Gillard government that they may scale back investment plans in Australia due to carbon pricing, surging labour costs, the high dollar and political uncertainty.
Leading executives of multinational corporations claim that Australia’s business-friendly reputation is at risk and parent companies could shift resources to Asian nations. The concerns are revealed in an influential annual survey of 111 firms conducted by the CEO Forum Group and obtained by The Australian Financial Review. Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Treasurer Wayne Swan, Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and shadow treasurer Joe Hockey will field questions about the survey from forum members at the group’s secretive conference in Canberra today.
But Mr Swan will tell the group that Australia remains an attractive destination, having lured $919 billion in private investment since 2007. No guarantees for mining investment. Future Fund cost shift eyed to protect budget surplus. Finance Minister Penny Wong’s office said government had not made any decision about the findings of the Department of Finance report.
$1.5bn hit to wealth industry and insurers. Treasury in spending wake-up call. “The take-out message is that the days of the large surpluses being delivered by buoyant tax receipts are behind us,” Martin Parkinson told a Committee for the Economic Development of Australia lunch in Brisbane on Thursday. Photo: Glenn Hunt Mark Ludlow and Jacob Greber Treasury has warned that the surge in tax revenue before the global financial crisis was an unsustainable “bubble” and that Labor’s mounting list of big-ticket spending promises will have to be funded by deep cuts elsewhere. Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson also gave a sombre assessment of the global economy that could have implications for the Gillard government’s plan to return the budget to surplus this financial year.
Dr Parkinson said he expected global volatility not seen since the mid-1970s to continue for the next decade, a trend that would make it harder to fund expensive government policies. The NDIS is expected to cost $6.5 billion a year by 2018, or about 2 per cent of the federal budget. Growth contrarian bjorn lomborg. Don’t get tripped up chasing dividends. David Potts. Separate ways to find own path. The loyalty program battle ground. Schemes give the purchaser the impression they are getting something for free. Illustration: Karl Hilzinger. How to juice a funding squeeze. Shadows dog regulators’ steps. Harper’s mistaken call for another banking inquiry.
Credit and equities: banks ponder a double-whammy. Gold medal performance for Australia’s banks. NAB risk man warns of shadow sector. Sharemarket gains tempered by mixed results. AXA merger lifts AMP profit 10pc. QBE lifts interim profit 13pc to $760m. ANZ lifts nine-month profit to $4.5bn. ANZ chief executive Mike Smith said the bank continued to execute against its super regional strategy with a “solid” business performance consistent with the outlook provided at the time of the half-year results.
Photo: Tamara Voninski John Kehoe Australia and New Zealand Banking Group chief executive Mike Smith has frozen the base pay of his top 900 executives for the second year running, as the bank clamps down on costs to offset subdued demand for loans. As the Finance Sector Union began its push for an annual pay rise of up to 5 per cent for more than 12,000 ANZ staff, Mr Smith said on Friday that senior executives’ base salaries would not rise next year. CBA warns on global uncertainty after record $7.11bn profit. Being at the top is a hard place to stay for CBA.
Narev’s CBA is winning the tech war. CBA ASX CBA_01322969.pdf. Wesfarmers winning market share with its Coles business - Corporate - Insurance News - insuranceNEWS.com.au. Email Print 7 May 2012. Wesfarmers has a capital problem. Wesfarmers flags further capex to drive profits. Wesfarmers Report. Wesfarmers PPT. Coles makes its play in toughest market - Analysis - Insurance News - insuranceNEWS.com.au.
Email Print 21 March 2011. Wesfarmers surges after Coles buoys results. Wesfarmers shares rallied to a 15-month high after the conglomerate posted another strong earnings performance from its Coles supermarket divsion. Wesfarmers said full-year net profit rose 11 per cent to $2.126 billion. Woolworths launches car, travel insurance. Www.woolworthslimited.com.au/icms_docs/132055_Woolworths_launches_Car_and_Travel_Insurance.pdf. Woolworths insures to ensure growth.