Following a negative lead from Wall St overnight the Australian share market is likely to open lower this morning. U.S. stocks tumbled on Monday after the World Bank cut its growth forecasts for 2009, saying it expected the global economy to shrink by 2.9 per cent. A fall in commodities may also pressure resource stocks today.
On Monday the local market ended higher with the S&P/ASX 200 Index up 19 points to 3,918 and on the futures market the SPI200’s down 89.
Checking currencies at 8:40am the Aussie dollar is buying 78.64 US cents. On the cross rates the dollar is trading at 75.41 Yen, 56.75 Euro cents and 48.14 British pence.
In company news: Shares in Energy Developments (ASX: ENE) rose 17.13 per cent to $1.88. The company says it has received a $280 million offer to acquire its U.K. and French landfill gas power generation interests. Energy Developments says the offer is from an international infrastructure specialist fund manager. The company says the offer if competed will involve the disposal of around 75 mega watts of power generation capacity which represents 13 per cent of the company’s total worldwide installed power generation capacity. The company also owns and operates a 200 tonne per day LNG Plant in the West Kimberley. Energy Developments says should the transaction proceed, the net proceeds of the sale after the repayment of debt and other costs will be about $150 million. Energy Developments posted a profit in 2008 after a loss the year before.
Shares in CSL (ASX: CSL) added 0.22 per cent to $31.62. The company says its net profits after tax will get a lift from a $150 million foreign exchange benefit resulting from the collapse of its proposed offer for U.S. Talecris Biotherapeutics. On June 9 the company announced that itself and Talecris had mutually agreed to terminate the proposed merger of the two companies after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission moved to block the merger. That same day the company announced a $1.59 billion share buyback. 2008 saw CSL’s best net profit in five years, posting profit of $701.8 million.
Turning to the ex-dividend scoreboard and going ex-dividend today we have Aberdeen Leaders with a 3.25 cent fully franked dividend. And among those going ex-dividend tomorrow we have APA Group Bunnings Warehouse Property Trust, Challenger Infrastructure Fund, Duet Group, ING Office Fund, Macquarie Airports, Macquarie Office Trust, Stockland and Transurban Group.
To international markets: US markets closed weaker: The Dow Jones industrial average fell 201 points. The S&P500 Index lost 28 points and the NASDAQ dropped 61 points.
European markets also closed lower: London’s FTSE down 112, Paris fell 98 and Frankfurt lost 146 points.
Asian markets were higher: Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 139. Tokyo’s Nikkei gained 40 and China’s SSE Composite rose 16 points.
Looking at Metals: Gold is US$15.20 lower at US$921 an ounce, for the August contract on Comex. For the July contract, Silver is down 50 cents to US$13.71 and copper lost 12 cents to US$2.14.
And finally oil is US$2.62 lower to US$66.93 a barrel for July light crude in New York.