Business News

Treasurer Wayne Swan delivered one of the biggest budgets ever for the nation today for the Australian Budget 2008. Economists and business groups hailed the budget and expressed their confidence in the budget. The Australian financial market also expressed their confidence and expected that the proposed budget shall help to reduce interest rates and benefit the financial markets as well. It is wise to understand that the budget surplus is heavily contributed by the boom in resource prices which is being fuelled by demand in China.

Merger of two big financial institutions of Australia – Westpac Banking Corporation and St George is likely to be announced today. Westpac revealed yesterday that it is in talks with St George for a possible merger between the two.

Investors and share traders at the Australian stock exchange are cautious before the introduction of new budget to be introduced on Tuesday. Traders also fear yet another surge in crude oil prices and problems in the financial markets. Thus, they would be more focussed towards the domestic events in coming few days.

National Bank of Australia has reported an increase of 25.8% increase in its profits to 2.7 billion in the first half. The net income for the bank rose to AUD 2.69bn in 6 months ended March 31. The stocks were also traded at three months high in Sydney trading. NAB’s shares rose $12.4 or 4 percent to $32.24. The strong results were attributed to strong lending and deposit growth. It also included one time gain from Visa Inc.’s initial public offering.

A 57-year-old former senior executive at Woolworths (WOW) has been charged for taking $3.7 million worth of kickbacks from awarding $37 million contracts a decade ago. A spokesperson from Woolworths said that the fraud charges were related to the retailer's MIS division (management information systems) before 1999. The former executive spent 9 years at WOW. The investigations, code-named Strike Force Whittlesford, have been following the worldwide money trait since 1999.

Here's an update on Australian real estate. The "Australian Mortgage Industry Report", a joint research whitepaper by JPMorgan and Fujitsu Consulting, due to be published next month, makes the prediction that some 750,000 Australian homeowners will be subjected to "mortgage stress" in the coming months - which means more than 35 per cent of their income will be allocated to home-loan repayments alone.

Jérôme Kerviel , the 31 year old French rogue trader employed by France's second largest bank, Société Générale (SocGen) has been charged for "breach of trust'', "falsifying and using falsified documents'' and "breaching IT controls access codes''. News of the biggest ever financial fraud in history broke last Thursday on the 24th of January 2008. The rogue trader defrauded the bank of €4.82 billion (AUD$8.2 billion, US$7.09 billion) - the largest trading fraud by a single person. Kerviel took an US$83 billion losing bet on European share prices.

The world’s second richest man, Warren Buffett, is pledging 84 per cent of his fortune to charity - that’s about $54 billion. In an interview with Fortune magazine 75 year old Buffet planned to give away more than $54 billion in stock in his Berkshire Hathaway investment firm, starting in July. Warren Buffet is the chief executive and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, owning 474,998 Class A shares in the company, a stake of nearly 31 percent that was worth nearly $US44 billion in late June, Fortune said.

With the recent oil price highs comes consequences... Higher Prices for Airline Tickets

BSX Services, a member of the NSX Group (NSX), has setup a Victorian taxi licence trading market. (BSX incorporates the stock exchange of Newcastle and the Bendigo Stock Exchange.) Trading rules have been written by BSX in conjunction with the Victorian government. But is there a need for another market exchange in Australia? Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE) and Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) are both merging, so is there room for the NSX for growth? Or will they become a NASDAQ - a specialist exchange? We shall see...