The Australian share market is expected to open the week with a flat start following a mixed performance on Wall Street on Friday and also some in the Australian finance sector in NSW and ACT have a bank holiday today.
On Friday, our local market finished stronger. The S&P/ASX 200 Index rose 54 points to 4,244 and on the futures market the SPI200’s is down 2 points.
Checking currencies at 8:30AM the Aussie Dollar is at its highest level since September and is buying 83.49 US cents, 79.12 Yen, 58.59 Euro cents and 49.99 Pence Stirling.
In economic news today, the Australian Industry Group and PricewaterhouseCoopers release their Australian Performance of Manufacturing Index for July, while the ANZ bank releases its job advertisements survey for July. Plus the Reserve Bank of Australia releases its index of commodity prices for June.
In company news: Shares in the Ten Network (ASX:TEN) finished stronger on Friday, adding 1.59% to $1.28. The Ten Network’s major shareholder, CanWest Global Communications has won an extension to a deadline to come up with a recapitalisation plan. CanWest, which owns 56.6% Ten has managed to convince its lenders to allow the extension until the 14th of August. It follows a string of other extensions that were granted after CanWest missed a debt repayment earlier in the year. Meanwhile, speculation is continuing to mount in the markets that Ten might move on a rights issues to take advantage of an improved Aussie share market and help shore up its balance sheet. Looking at the Ten Network’s net profits over the past five years, 2008 was the best year by a long shot.
ANZ (ASX:ANZ) shares gained on Friday, up 4.45% to $18.53. The ANZ says talks on buying several Asian assets of Royal Bank of Scotland are progressing well. The Australian bank has been in discussions with RBS for several months. The asset sale is vital for RBS to shore up its balance sheet after the bank was bailed out by the British government, which owns 70% of the banking group. Over the weekend, the Australian Financial Review reported that ANZ would pay $1.1 billion for assets in six Asian regions. And looking at the past five years of profits result for ANZ, 2007 was the highlight.
Checking ex-dividends and Djerriwarrh Investments is going tomorrow with a 16 cent fully franked dividend. And on Thursday AMCIL is going with a 2 cent fully franked dividend.
To the international scoreboard. US markets closed mixed on Friday. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 17 points. The S&P500 Index was steady at 987 and the NASDAQ lost 6 points.
European markets were lower: London’s FTSE lost 23 points, Paris fell by 9 points and Frankfurt dropped 29 points.
Asian markets were finished higher: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 339 points. Tokyo’s Nikkei added 192 points and the Shanghai Composite lifted 91 points.
Looking at Metals: Gold has jumped to April highs, up US$18.50 to US$955.80 an ounce for the December contract on Comex. For the September contract Silver rose 46 cents to US$13.94 and copper added 6 cents at US$2.63.
And finally, better than expected GDP figures out of the US, helped to lift the price of oil, which added US$2.51 to US$69.45 a barrel for September light crude in New York.
