Its good news in that they are putting another string in their...

Its good news in that they are putting another string in their bow, but they haven't yet fired a shot, so we won't know how effective this initiative is until they go to the euro bond market next year. Hopefully the capital markets will be in better shape and they get a good result. I expect one interesting element of all this will be the currency risk. The AUD could be weaker next year when the bond is issued and probably stronger when it is repayed (provided it rises with future commodity demand from China) In any case Wesfarmers treasury will be crunching the numbers based on their imports of retail stock and their exports of minerals to use the Euro bond offering as part of their natural hedging strategy.