ASX explains itself. Poorly.
Fund managers are now trying to price the unpriceable risks of berserk founder-CEOs and of being transacted out of high-performing companies with zero recourse.
The extraordinary tedium of the federal election campaign continues and, for the maintenance of sanity, is best ignored. In a moment of exasperation last week, I overrode my best instincts to lament the lack of scrutiny being applied to Anthony Albanese. Anecdotal evidence is hazardous to extrapolate, but it was interesting to me that this piece resonated especially with my Labor friends. It's not that people want Albo to lose, they just want him to be better; to be held to minimum standards, not left to plumb the depths of them.
Joe Aston
Then on Wednesday, Peter Dutton paraded the ephemera of his subconscious to The Australian's Paul Kelly, revealing his "aspiration" to some day index Australia's personal income tax brackets to inflation. There was so much wrong with this (and the AFR's John Kehoe wrote a great piece last week saying as much).
Firstly, this didn't even rise to the status of a "non-core promise". What was Dutton doing unleashing vibes in place of policies barely two weeks from polling day? Secondly, this aspiration is fatally undermined by virtually every piece of mindless expenditure in the Liberals' current spendathon.
Did Dutton seriously think this kite-flying on tax could establish his economic credentials at the 11th hour? Instead, he should've announced this as costed policy many months ago and fought, not matched, Labor's junk spending (it doesn't get much worse than student loan forgiveness). Bracket creep is the most insidious thief from low and middle income earners. What about explaining that to punters who don't comprehend it until they do? And if Dutton lost that political argument, at least he would've gone down advancing something consistent with his party's ethos. What a concept!
Anyway, for someone who swore to give politics a wide berth, I'm in no position to hold forth on broken promises…
On Wednesday, more than 20 of Australia's largest equities managers wrote a joint letter to Australian Securities Exchange chairman David Clarke and chief executive Helen Lofthouse, demanding they review the bourse's listing rules in light of the incredible heist exacted upon the Australian shareholders of James Hardie last month.
James Hardie is using its merger with US company AZEK to shift its primary share market listing from the ASX to New York. As first revealed by Rampart, the nation's biggest funds are livid that the ASX secretly granted James Hardie a waiver permitting the merger to proceed without a shareholder vote (although the New York Stock Exchange requires the transaction be approved by AZEK shareholders).
Joe Aston
Lofthouse responded to the investor deputation on Thursday, including by sharing the self-justifications of her chief compliance officer Daniel Moran that the "policy rationale for our approach" was "that the imposition on listed entities of a requirement for shareholder approval would impose additional transaction costs and timing and execution risk…"
What about the transaction costs to shareholders of having company boards dilute the f— out of them with zero recourse? That's a pretty big transaction cost right there!