Business

“In this world,” Benjamin Franklin famously declared, “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” A few hundred years on, corporate Australia seems hell-bent on making a liar out of him.

Death is still holding out -so no need to fear a business-suited army of the undead just yet—but the taxman has well and truly been given the slip, with billions of dollars from the public purse funneled through loopholes, lurks and perks.

Treasury figures have revealed that over the last decade more than half of all companies paid less than five per cent of their total income in tax: a far cry from the hefty amount individual taxpayers are slugged.

Continue reading "Debunking the myths of corporate tax" »

When Virgin Blue finally announced that John Borghetti would take the reins of the airline in May, the only question was why they took so long to arrive at this no-brainer.

Virgin Blue’s search for a new chief executive has, for the past five or so months, been the same story written one hundred different ways. Borghetti, initially seen by pundits as the Cinderella for the discount carrier’s slipper, fell quickly out of contention in late 2009 after the Board seemed to keep the search rolling despite his availability. They kept us all off the scent with remarkable ease.

And why should anyone care? Well the company has never had a change of CEO since co-founder Brett Godfrey took the helm from the get-go in 2000. Despite ten years of very impressive growth, Virgin Blue has up to fairly recently been somewhat of a poor cousin to the far larger Qantas and lacking the ultra-cheap cost structure of Jetstar.

Continue reading "Virgin’s gain damages the Flying Kangaroo" »

Like a teenage son with busted car or a call centre operator who rings at dinner time, you only hear from Kerry Stokes when he wants something.

Billionaires - real ones, not the fly-by-nighters who appear suddenly on the BRW rich list and disappear just as quickly one year later - are notoriously private people. But years can pass without a significant public performance from Stokes.

Sure, he pops up every six months to deliver another set of opaque accounts from the Seven Network. But you know he only does that much because he has to. (Seven, being a listed company, has a few shareholders other than Stokes himself.)

Continue reading "A rare sighting of the lesser-spotted Kerry Stokes" »

THE German or Japanese languages may have one, but there is no word in English which accurately conveys the crushing, overwhelming sense of misery felt at the end of a good holiday.

It doesn’t seem to matter if you’ve had one week off or four, whether you love or hate your job. The first day back at work always feels like a special kind of hell when you wistfully recall where you were and what you were doing a week or so prior.

Talking to a mate yesterday, who like me was on his first day back after a three-week break, it struck us how so much of this dislike of modern work doesn’t stem from some irrational hatred of having a job. Instead, it’s to do with a justifiable sense of frustration at the way we are often compelled to do our jobs.

Continue reading "Too busy holding meetings to do any actual work" »

Following the success of my colleague Paul Colgan’s call for entries to the Punch Political Dictionary, today we’re launching a parallel appeal for entries to the Punch Business Dictionary – those words and phrases that tripped off the tongue during the corporate gyrations of the past year.

The good folk at Macquarie Dictionary have offered six suggestions. Here are ours. Over to you - and please give generously.

Float-model: A beautiful woman used to attract investors to your listing on the stock market. Pioneered, and possibly perfected, by Myer with Jennifer Hawkins during its $2.4bn float. Investors, some no doubt encouraged to open their wallets by the presence of the former Miss Universe, are still waiting for the shares to reach their issue price.

Continue reading "Call for entries: updating the Punch business dictionary" »

On a rainy Autumn afternoon in April 2006, while sitting in the front room of my home, I launched Digital Photography School - a blog about photography to record and share the lessons I was learning in photography.

The first post was on shooting action shots in low light conditions - it wasn’t that great and I’m not sure that anyone ever read it - but it was a start.

Today, 3 and a half years later, that blog is read by over 3 million readers a month and is quickly paying my mortgage - in fact in November it generated more than $100,000, most of that in a week after launching a Portrait Photography Tips E-book.

Continue reading "Seven rules of blogging from a legend of the craft" »

At first blush today’s employment figures are an early Christmas present for the federal government. Some 30,000 jobs were created in November and the unemployment rate, against expectations, crept downwards by the tiniest of notches.

But there won’t be any champagne popping in the Cabinet room. There’s a worrying trend beneath the figures: the mining states, which you’d assume are leading Australia’s unexpected economic performance, are actually shedding jobs. It’s the states in the southeast - previously the laggards - where the jobs are being created.

So [the run-up] to Christmas Eve will be a nervous one for Kevin Rudd. Santa could be preparing a big sack of trouble to chuck down his chimney in the form of the national accounts which come out on December 24 16 and should give a clearer indication of any weak spots in the economy.

Continue reading "The one Christmas present Kevin Rudd doesn’t need" »

This is a sad week for Australia.

For more than 30 years the not-for-profit organisation Young Achievement Australia brought business skills to some 190,000 students. It was a beacon of inspiration, a source of knowledge, and a cultivator of leadership for thousands of young Aussies.

This week YAA will shut down, because its funding has dried up. It is a tragedy for all of those who have experienced its excellence, and for all of those who never will.

Continue reading "Light flickering out for a beacon of our prosperity" »

The journey started a few years back when a tomato and pumpkin self seeded in the mulch in our backyard.

And it’s culminated now with me doing my best to avoid the supermarket for fruit, vegetables and meat by producing my own.

And in between - while I profess no inside knowledge about trends in food shopping - I have concluded that when blokes like me start talking about self sufficiency, the retail supermarket giants have to lift their game.

Continue reading "My goats say a lot about supermarkets" »

Gold Coast United owner Clive Palmer has decided to save his club $100,000 every home game by capping the crowds at Skilled Park at 5000.

For mining billionaire Palmer, this makes perfect business sense. For anyone interested in furthering the football cause in Australia, it doesn’t even reach common sense.

Personally, I have two reactions to this story: first is the emotional fan who says this is an outrageous move that disregards the whole point of what Football Federation Australia were trying to achieve when they granted Palmer’s bid an A-League licence.

Continue reading "Gold Coast crowd cap means bad business for everyone" »

It is a running joke in my office that we should just pack up and relocate to Norway.

Norway has an enviable track record when it comes to gender equality initiatives.

And looking specifically at the issue of women in corporate leadership, Norway’s experience with the introduction of quotas for corporate boards has shown that such measures can radically alter gender equality outcomes for the better.

Continue reading "Why gender quotas would help Australian business" »

It’s a little-known fact, but not long ago the Commonwealth Government hired some corporate management consultants to update our national anthem. The first verse became:

Australians all let us rejoice: National stakeholders going forward should be committed to visionary communications

For we are young and free: For we incubate next-generation scenarios that leverage dynamic functionalities

With golden soil and wealth for toil: With mission critical infrastructure to maximise world-class deliverables

Our home is girt by sea: Our brickware harnesses frictionless supply chain scenarios.

Continue reading "Global Frankness Crisis contributed to the GFC" »

Last week I was fortunate to be invited to be part of the launch of a new business on Kangaroo Island, which is in my electorate.

Kangaroo Island is one of the most beautiful parts of Australia, it is frontier country. 

But the very thing that makes it so beautiful for the hundreds of thousands of tourists is the same thing that makes it so challenging for its residents and its economy.

Continue reading "Entrepreneurial spirit beats government every time" »

Nowhere is the disconnect between the business fraternity and the wider community greater than on the issue of executive salaries.

Forget trying to explain a $10m-plus pay packet with references to “international benchmarks” and “long-term incentives”. The public simply doesn’t accept that anyone, no matter how brilliant, is worth $190,000 a week - or 150 times the average salary.

Given this depth of anger among voters towards the occasionally obscene salaries received by our corporate leaders, the Rudd government has shown remarkable restraint on the issue.

Continue reading "On the pay divide, opinion counts as much as coin" »

“It is the government’s clear desire for Telstra to structurally separate, on a voluntary and cooperative basis.” - Communications Minister Stephen Conroy.

Let’s cut to the chase. There is nothing “cooperative” about what the government wants to do to Telstra. This morning’s announcement from Stephen Conroy, fulfilling his veiled threats to the giant company pretty much since winning government, is the end of Telstra as we know it. The 600-pound gorilla of the telecommunications industry will never be the same again.

The government’s new laws, flagged late last year when it spectacularly locked Telstra out of the national broadband network project, are designed to break up the company and prevent it from undermining the NBN. In short, Telstra can’t continue to be the dominant force in all corners of the market.

Continue reading "Cooperation with Telstra? Give us a break" »

For those of us concerned about competition and consumer law issues there comes a time when the case for action is so overwhelming that we need to the ACCC to stop “watching” and to act decisively in the consumer interest.

In the petrol industry that time has come.

On this occasion it’s the urgent need for the ACCC to block Caltex’s proposed acquisition of Mobil service stations.

Continue reading "Copping a servo: stop Caltex buying Mobil’s stations" »

There is nothing like an Equal Pay Day to make a man see red.

Writing on Tuesday about research that claims women earn 17.5 per cent less than men in Australia, I drew the wrath of blokes from around the country.

That figure came from the Australian Bureau of Statistics but was used by the newly formed Equal Pay Alliance of 135 organisations to make their point.

Continue reading "Men can’t keep it level when it comes to equal pay" »

In the run up to Father’s Day the electrical stores are spruiking like it’s Christmas. You can be sure that along with any of the hot deals from digital cameras to TVs will come one innocent –sounding question.

At the very point of sale when you’re about to hand over the cash for dad’s gift you’ll be asked “Would you like an extended warranty with that?”

It sounds simple enough. An few extra years’ “protection” for a hundred bucks or so, depending on the price of the item.

Continue reading "Are we being served? The rort of extended warranties" »

Of all the silly moments in his career, Sylvester Stallone’s turn in Demolition Man as a good-cop-turned-bad who is incarcerated, cryogenically frozen and then thawed out to fight his nemesis, serial killer Wesley Snipes, must rank as the high point of Sly’s cinematic stupidity.

There is however one accidentally prescient moment in the movie - in the futuristic dystopia of Los Angeles, a war within capitalism has left Taco Bell as the last corporation standing.

Substitute the word Woolworths for Taco Bell and you could film Demolition Man II in Australia. On current projections, by 2015 Woolies will have bought the NRL and AFL, the excellent Lebanese food chain Brothers Kebabs and the popular rock bands Powderfinger and The Veronicas.

Continue reading "Our dirty secret: we actually love massive supermarkets" »

IT seems incredible but barely two years into the greatest depression/recession/downturn/hiccup (take your pick) the world has suffered since the 1930s, we’re already talking about bubbles again.

Experts fear the 30 per cent surge in the local stock market since March – mirroring a similar spike on Wall Street – is building into a premature and unsustainable bubble crying out to be pricked.

Reserve Bank boss Glenn Stevens reckons the housing market, fuelled by record low interest rates and the government’s first-home owners giveaway, is looking dangerously like a bubble that could need a dose of higher interest rates to deflate.

Continue reading "Human nature is to be forever blowing bubbles" »

CHINA is a huge country. Its landmass is 25 per cent bigger than Australia, its economy is 10 times larger, it has 60 times as many people and, I am led to be believe, significantly more BBQ duck restaurants.

Thankfully, Australia is still ahead in a few areas. We have more stars on our flag, we have won more cricket World Cups and, as developments in the past few weeks prove, we trounce the Chinese in corporate haggling.

Increasingly, Australian business is going to rub up against China. The People’s Republic is our No2 trading partner but is likely to regain the No1 slot from Japan this year or next. And Beijing’s “go global’’ directive, or zou chu qu, means China’s state-owned firms will continue to eye opportunities to join with, or buy outright, Australian companies.

Continue reading "China will have learned from failed mega-deal" »

WHO’D be a business owner in Australia?

With the way the Federal Government up-ends the apple cart every few months you’d have to have a thick skin, and a thick wallet, to want to have a crack at increasing the nation’s prosperity.

One of my mates runs a solar energy company - an occupation unrivalled in its capacity to guarantee you endless sleepless nights, wondering when the Federal Government will deliver its next windfall, followed by a swift kick in the guts.

Continue reading "Why Australian business needs to think on its feet" »

LEWIE Ranieri was one of the stars of Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis’s fantastic expose of excess on Wall Street and in London in the 1980s.

At his best, the Salomon Bros trader, who pioneered the kind of mortgage-backed bonds that brought the financial system to its knees last year, was taking home somewhere between $US2m and $US5m a year. He famously owned more powerboats (five) than suits (four). He was, in the vernacular of the times, a big swinging dick. A master of the universe. A Gordon Gekko before Oliver Stone and Michael Douglas brought the fabulous rogue to life.

You didn’t get much more colourful or successful than Ranieri (who, incidentally, is still mooching around Wall Street as a fund manager). But, for anyone with more than a passing interest in matters financial, his salary, so celebrated at the time, now looks absurdly small. Telstra’s David Thodey, who’s running a regulated utility at the bottom of the planet and drives a Toyota Corolla, will earn more most years.

Continue reading "How did we end up with all these zeroes?" »

LIKE darning socks, car-pooling and drinking instant coffee, bank bashing went out of favour when we were all getting rich during “the great neo-liberal experiment”. Now, from the top office in the land down, this wholesome pursuit is making a comeback.

It’s not that the banks ever lost their talent for bastardry. It’s just that for a decade or so it has been suppressed by competition – from the likes of Aussie and Wizard – and by the buoyant economy. That $140 annual account-keeping fee didn’t look so bad when your credit card was in the black and the value of your house had doubled in the past two years. But with competition to the Big Four now all but wiped out, leaving the Westpac, Commonwealth, NAB and ANZ as the last saviours of our financial system (just ask them), the bastards inside can once again be unleashed. 

The Commonwealth took one for the team this week when it raised variable home loan rates 0.1 percentage points to 5.74 per cent. It was the first mortgage rate increase by the banks since last year but won’t, unfortunately, be the last.

Continue reading "Bastard banks making a comeback after the boom" »

Having just moved back to Melbourne on a characteristically wet and cold June weekend I thought the fact the streets were empty had something to do with the Queen’s birthday and the weather.

Not so. I had arrived in a city on the brink of collapse; a post-apocalyptic nightmare in which the survivors were obviously hauled up in bunkers somewhere. I was in mortal danger of being eaten by the now cannibalistic mobs roaming the streets. 

When I arrived in my apartment the heat worked, as did the television but the bad news came during the broadcast that had somehow gone to air. 

The news said that following the bushfires, the bashings of Indian students and now the rampant outbreak of swine flu in the state, the world could soon be under the impression that Victoria is too dangerous a place to do business.

Continue reading "Vicpocalypse is here but Melbourne the most livable" »

We always knew Sol Trujillo was a smooth talker. Now we know just how smooth. His replacement at Telstra, David Thodey, will be paid at least $1m, and possibly as much as $4m, less a year.

Details of Thodey’s contract, released to the ASX this morning, actually say more about Trujillo than his successor. Trujillo may not have been able to bend the government to his will but he could sure strike a good deal with a pliant Telstra board.

Thodey, who colleagues say is a good negotiator, will be paid $2m a year. Trujillo got $3m. Thodey could top up his pay with another $7.2m in bonuses if he hits certain targets. Trujillo’s bonuses could run to $10m. If Thodey, and Telstra, hit every target in the coming year, he could earn up to $9.2m. Trujillo took home $13.4m last financial year.

Continue reading "Deal for new Telstra boss shows how good Sol was" »