additional info on Telstra while Telecom New Zeala The little...

additional info on Telstra while Telecom New Zeala The little Telstra that could
The Australian sharemarket came within a whisker of finishing in the black today thanks to a reversal in form of market heavy weights News Corp and Telstra. Between them, the two stock accounted for a 10 point push up of the benchmark index, being countered by falls in banks and cyclical industrials.

The All Ordinaries inched 0.6 lower to 3277.2 (3268.7-3285.5).

Around the regional markets, the Nikkei was down 119.71 to 11329.73, the Hang Seng lost 74.59 to 11140.43 and the NZSE was 20.67 lower at 2112.94.

Asian Spot Gold was trading at US$319.5 per ounce while the
A$ was fetching US$0.5703.

National forms HK JV

Commonwealth picked up 5c to $34.76 ($34.65-$34.94) and National fell 26c to $36.16 ($36.02-$36.45). The company has joined forces in Hong Kong to form a new wealth management group that will try to free up some of the vast amount of money tied up in low-earning fixed term deposits.

ANZ saw 19c disappear to $20.19 ($20.15-$20.60) and Westpac surrendered 14c to $16.59 ($16.58-$16.82).

Meanwhile, St George shares were down 42c to $20.03 ($19.89-$20.13) after going ‘ex’ a 38c dividend but Macquarie recovered from morning lows, moving up 7c to $29.95 ($29.10-$29.95) amid late optimism that its bid for Sydney Airport will get up. Final bids have now been lodged for the sale which is expected to be worth somewhere north of $4 billion.

AMP enters Italian market

AMP shed 12c to $16.85 ($16.79-$16.99). AMP today announced the proposed acquisition of Italian wealth management business Commerzbank Asset Management Italia (CAMI) for $33 million. Aftermarket, the company also announced the acquisition of 23 Financial Planners from PriceWaterhouseCoopers for an undisclosed sum.

Meanwhile, QBE slumped 7c to $6.95 ($6.90-$7.01), dropping through the $7 barrier as investors worried about the insurer's potential exposure to more terrorist attacks.

Analysts said investors were wary of QBE- which had large exposures to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center- as many of its policies still included terrorism cover. QBE is planning to exclude terrorism cover from most of its policies when the next renewals season starts on July 1.





Telstra reverses downward trend

Telstra climbed 16c to $4.64 ($4.47-$4.66). Market watchers said today that the telco is attracting institutional interest after falling to four-year lows yesterday. Some market participants were also heartened by reports of a Telstra internal memo outlining how the telecom heavyweight plans to make cost savings and achieve greater efficiencies in the wake of intense competitive pressure experienced across fiscal 2001-02.

Elsewhere, Telecom NZ shares were 2c lower to $4.50 ($4.46-$4.51) and SingTel left 1c behind to $1.49 ($1.48-$1.52).