Hi DB...
Thanks for the reply ...
Because of the way Samsung - a big international- simply refused to pay its debt to NRW despite NRW having properly and legally completed major works as a Samsung sub contractor a few years back, and because also of reading of several other local companies caught the same way by big internationals - many forced into administration or sale, I have no experience of international competition working in any way other than taking profits out of the country and turning local companies into ‘vassals’ or sending them broke.
CIMIC is a classic example [some history here]. Even the newly announced takeover of Devine there has come about as a result of it intentionally ‘breaking’ that company first [see here].
Some more examples beyond those mentioned in the CIMIC link;
-I recall Downer was badly impacted after it entered an important contract with international Adani and then was dumped.
-In the questions after his conference presentation accompanying the half year results, Jules specifically spoke to Virgin Islands-based international Laing O’Rourke[ref] when he was asked about the squeeze on civil margins; “Laing O’Rourke has won $2B public infrastructure work with no people!” (Presumably NRW had also tendered for that project?) [ref].
-Lendlease was obliged to sell it’s civil engineering division to Acciona after trying to compete with international consortiums.
There are plenty of other examples.
As far as the JV with Salini making NRW ‘attractive to new entrants’, I am sure that contract does make us attractive seeing as NRW has performed brilliantly there despite effectively taking nil profits from that exercise and it sending the share price on at least one major crash.
In my opinion NRW is not run by the kind of people who look for ‘government favours’.
Instead I feel having a major all-Australian company keeping Australians in work, keeping profits in Australia, and with a reputation for not sending its’ subcontractors broke, is doing government ‘a favour’.
I am open to changing my mind about bringing more international competition in so if you have some sector examples of how this has worked in the past towards Australian profit and Australian companies’ advantage I would love to see them.
(20min delay)