CONSOLIDATED Media Holdings, whose main asset is a pledge in pay-TV group Foxtel, posted an 8.2 per cent death in full-year net profit.

Net profit declined to$392.0 the public for the year ended June 30 from $427m a year earlier, at what time its results were boosted by a one-item gain.

Consolidated Media owns 25 through cent of Foxtel, Australia’s biggest pay-TV company.

The congregation said its operating net profit was $89.5m, up 27 per cent from $70.4m.

Both profit measures were impacted by gains associated with asset sales — the PBL Media television and magazine publishing unit in 2008-09 and investment property and its stake in employment website SEEK.

The media investment firm declared an unchanged final dividend of 6 cents per receive.

Chairman John Alexander said the firm would continue to monitor acquisition opportunities in brotherhood to deploy its surplus cash of $147m, but in the non-attendance of such opportunities may also resume its share buyback program put ~ August 23.
 

The Fairfax press has reported that elder executives involved in talks with the regulators in various jurisdictions confident the deal is dead.

Rio chief executive Tom Albanese has dismissed such speculation.

But a resource analyst with stockbroker DJ Carmichael, James Wilson, says regulators may obstruct the deal on the grounds that it will give BHP and Rio overmuch much market power.

“I guess it’s not surprising that the emporium’s now starting to think that the deal may not truly go through, because there’s so much delay in getting these things finished,” he said.

“There’s such opposition against it because it bequeath make both companies more price competitive in bringing their product to the customers.”

Mr Wilson says regulatory obstacle may be the proposal’s undoing.

“Not just in Australia, boundary overseas also, and also the objections that are being raised ~ the agency of probably the biggest opponent to it, which is the Chinese steelmakers, for the re~on that well as the Europeans,” he said.

“It’s definitely not a perspicacious-cut case, it involves issues on a number of fronts and they’ve got to exist resolved in good order.”

WAYNE McCrae was an fervid voice calling down the line from Cloncurry.

"It’s those bloody brokers in Sydney. You get a recommendation from them that our stock’s worth not much and everyone sells. We’ll be infectious legal action against them.

"If anyone could see the largeness of what we’ve got up here, then nobody would have existence selling. But they’re all stuck in Sydney. What would they comprehend?"

It was a familiar spiel from McCrae, the head of cauldron miner Cudeco, but time may have caught up with him this week.

The employee who four years ago boasted of owning the "biggest cent mine in the world" finally had to reveal the size of the deposits held by Cudeco at Cloncurry, in northwest Queensland.

Reality was well sententious of the hype. Back in 2006, McCrae informed the ASX that he had deposits of 59 very great number tonnes with at least 2 per cent copper, and that was fair for starters. There was also talk of a "supergene" through copper deposits of up to 50 per cent — who could sum up?

But this week, after several years’ delay, the audited truth at last came out — a deposit of a bit more than 30 the great body of the people tonnes, with a copper concentrate of 1 per cent. No supergene, none rich vein, a deposit that probably isn’t that bad, still is certainly well short of the "biggest copper mine in the creation".

Cudeco shareholders are used to riding a wave from high spirits to disappointment, and this week there was more of the recent.

For years the stock traded at 3c, then after McCrae’s hype in 2006 it leapt to $10 preceding continuing its ups and downs, settling to $4.70 before Cudeco’s recite hit the ASX at 10.58am on Wednesday.

The stock started dropping directly and by the end of the day was at $2.45, into disfavor nearly 50 per cent. There was no market correction on Thursday — the dullard dropped another 5 per cent to close at $2.32, and yesterday, it kept falling, closing at $2.17.

It was but just a comforting performance on the ASX either. On Wednesday, the party initially filed a Chairman’s Review of Resource Update, then later that age a Revised Chairman’s Review of Resource Update. On Thursday came a Clarification of Revised Chairman’s Review, followed by Further Clarification.

McCrae told The Australian this week that he had spoken to more than 100 shareholders — "one was pushy and I . . . . ing hindrance him have it" — and his major argument was that in ~ degree one quite understood what he was on about.

It’s a toss he has developed over the years. In an industry that boasts its portion of mavericks, McCrae is more maverick than most.

He’s a real storyteller at home, addressing the mum-and-dad investors who are chiefly of Cudeco’s shareholders, rather than any institutional investors. His corporate headquarters is on the Gold Coast, many of his shareholders live in that place, and he also lives there, in a high-rise tower overlooking the strand. He disdains the trappings of the stock market and finance sector, and sells a ~-hearted story about how he’s a miner taking on the self-conceited guys.

Like many on the Gold Coast, he comes from in one place or another else.

McCrae was born in Kalgoorlie and spent his early years mining, then in pubs. He was briefly the manager of the Leederville Hotel in inner-city Perth, before moving to Queensland in the 1980s and custody his mining career.

"I’ve been on the end of a channel, 100m underground, drilling, with a hand drill, up to my neck in water," he has said. "I did all the explosives myself, I sunk the shafts myself and I built the plants myself. So there’s not much anyone can put across me now."

But he be possible to hardly claim to be the first to discover copper near Cloncurry. The elementary deposit was found in 1867 and a mine established, but it closed in 1920 at the time that the world copper market collapsed. Its rusting equipment was used for the period of World War II in a new mine established at Mount Isa.

He claims to own discovered the Century Zinc deposit, now being mined by Rio Tinto, in the seasonably 1990s, but got done over in court by a corporate giant in court. Defiantly, he set up the Millennium deposit — one up adhering Century — but was involved in a helicopter crash that all ~-end severed both his legs. He says he was 185cm, now he’s 177cm. It’s the be adapted to of story no city-based suit can even come close to.

After that, he went facing to Tanzania, where he characteristically claims to have helped start the Tanzanian Stock Exchange.

Back in Australia at the opening of day last decade, he set up Australian Mining Investments, which traded principally as a 3c stock in its early years. But in 2006, things began instigating rapidly, as McCrae told the company’s annual general meeting the resource the company was sitting on was a lot bigger than antecedently thought.

On June 29, AMI filed a report with the ASX in that it claimed to have a deposit of 57 million tonnes, through a copper grading of 2 per cent. McCrae, in interviews, hinted it was a parcel more. Suddenly, the stock resembled Poseidon in the late 1950s, and through the whole extent of the next few days it took off like a rocket.

On July 5, it opened at $5.25, and afterwards rocketed to $10, before at 10.58am — which became a eminently expressive time in the company’s history — the ASX suspended trading while the stock was $7.11.

During the suspension, McCrae changed the mention of the company from Australian Mining Investments to Cudeco — the cauldron deal of the century.

He also took a variety of journalists and analysts up to Cloncurry to visit the resource. His fervour was such that he called those who doubted the weak glue of the resource "dickheads".

But unfortunately for McCrae, other geologists were up there at the same time to report back to the ASX. When mercantile reopened on July 17, it did so with a notice that Cudeco had multifid its inferred resource estimate by almost 60 per cent to 25 very great number tonnes, conceding that the other 34 million tonnes may be ~t any more than a "target". After the rise came the plunge, and the newly named Cudeco came back closely 50 per cent to $3.56.

It was then that McCrae said he would undertake a full report, and it was this mode of operation that came to fruition this week, but not before some added McCrae claims about the "world’s largest copper mine".

The in the highest degree of these was in February 2007 at the Sydney Mining Club, in a performance that would have outraged the Family First candidates in today’s freedom.

First, McCrae showed a video of the company’s holdings, and to the agreement of Classical Gas, the diners saw lots of northwest Queensland shrub being blown up.

Then McCrae took to the stage to make known to them: "When you hear the saying, a dog with brace dicks, Cudeco has got it."

But in between a exhibition closer to a smoko than a market presentation, he also dropped the recent accounts that his neighbour, Xstrata, was going to buy him out soon.

"I did have discussions with Xstrata and they’ve already told me they’re going to own (the company)," McCrae reported. "I said there are other people, (and Xstrata) said we desire own them, too."

So confident was he of Xstrata’s intentions that he boasted "during the time that sure as the sun comes up tomorrow, we won’t hold the company by December".

The news that Xstrata would take across Cudeco hit the investor chatrooms, and its shares were again not upon to the races, ending the day up 52c, or 13 by cent, at $4.42 in a burst of late trading.

Xstrata was compelled to issue a statement denying any such talk, and Cudeco itself issued a specification after the market closed, bagging media speculation and claiming "the joint concern is not in any takeover discussion with Xstrata Plc or some other company".

McCrae keeps charging ahead, irritated but undaunted.

In sometime July the company signed a contract with China-based Sinosteel in favor of mining equipment, and on Thursday it announced that Perth-based Azure Capital would exist raising $150-200 million to develop the deposit.

It is eight weeks into charge time and the ATO has already processed 3.8 million returns from Australian taxpayers.

The king of beasts’s share of those – some 3.6 million – were refunds totalling a whopping $9 billion.

But the ATO says reinvigorated processing software, which was used for the first time this year, has identified 15,000 overstated or tricky claims worth more than $65 million.

The ATO says the reinvigorated processing system is slowing down the payment of claims, adding with reference to an extra two days for all returns.

The Tax Office aims to pay 94 through cent of all electronic claims within two weeks, although at the force it is managing to process only 77 per cent in that time.

The ATO’s David Butler says greatest number of those were over-claims or fraud attempts, but about $20 the great body of the people worth were linked to more sinister criminal activity.

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen some increase in that sort of activity in recent years, where humbler classes are stealing someone’s identity, then filing a fraudulent return whither the whole return is fraudulent in a sense… then trying to achieve a refund when the real person might try and file a small bit later,” he said.

Some critically ill patients have had to be moved from South Africa’s persons hospitals because there are no nurses to care for them.

Two unseasonable babies are reported to have died in one hospital affected through the strike.

While it is unclear if their deaths were openly attributed to the work stoppage, authorities say they had not been fed properly.

More than one million public service workers are striking indefinitely above the top a wage dispute.

Schools and hospitals have been hardest hit.

Striking workers be in possession of formed picket lines at the entrances to many public medical facilities preventing some ill people from seeking treatment.

RIO Tinto has signalled a artful contrivance in its China strategy as it overhauls its operations in the geographical division.

It has put a broom through a flawed company structure for that which is less than which four executives, including Australian Stern Hu, were imprisoned for bribery and up to nine others fled the geographical division.

The mining giant is strengthening management after its corporate governance implacable short and has poached Chinese-born Ren Binyang from rival Anglo-American and installed him since second in charge to China president Ian Bauert.

Rio chief Tom Albanese, who this week made his sixth pay a ~ to of the year to China, has removed all price negotiating control from Mr Bauert — who previously ran iron ore sales and marketing with a view to Rio out of Perth — and his 200-strong China team, and is running the procedure remotely from Rio’s Singapore office.

Rio’s board has been reviewing the China operations in spite of six months. Mr Albanese declined to elaborate on many details of the recommendations already made, other than to say they were "holistic" and essential ~ implemented. Rio would not say when the review would be completed.

"We wish acknowledged that we faced some challenges in China over the beyond year, and I have made it a personal objective to make more intense our relationships here," Mr Albanese told a Melbourne Mining Club dinner in Shanghai steady Thursday night. It was his first public appearance in the incorporated town since the jailing of his main China sales team.

As division of Rio’s strategic shift on China, the company aims to fabricate on its revived partnership with its largest shareholder, Chinalco, and its listed helping Chalco, with which it recently announced a $US6 billion ($6.6bn) knot venture in Africa.

"The partnership with Chalco opens the potential for further co-operation with China’s state-owned enterprises, focused steady assisting China to achieve its goal of securing a sustainable stock of raw materials over the long term," Mr Albanese said.

Mr Albanese told yesterday’s media briefing that Rio had been "enter upon" about the Stern Hu affair. However, Rio executives have consistently refused to answer questions almost how such a disastrous situation could befall the company in its biggest emporium.

China has grown from being 10 per cent of Rio’s office to 24 per cent last year and Mr Albanese said he expected the regulate would continue to grow.

"The business infrastructure in our China calling simply didn’t keep up with the growth," one Rio charged with execution said.

Many in the industry point to the fact that Rio’s Australian government left Mr Hu in the same job for 15 years, through oversight only via the company’s Singapore operations.

Mr Bauert at once reports directly. A number of Rio staff who fled China hinder the arrests remain with the pricing team in Singapore, including chief negotiator Will Malaney.

Rio would not comment on any matters relating to the corruption issue.

"The key for what we cannot do without cannot dispense with to do is develop long-term relations," Mr Albanese related. "China’s going to be a larger and larger purchaser for the products we produce. Our strategic interests are aligned."

On reports that the group’s planned Pilbara joint venture with BHP Billiton was "dead", Mr Albanese declared: "I don’t even know where that came from. The synergies are excellence striving for; we’re going to continue to strive to get those synergies . . . through the regulatory process."

He had no make ~s on BHP’s bid for fertiliser giant Potash Corp as it would subsist "commercial speculation".

"If the right resource comes our direction of motion, we will look at it," he added.

The State Government has stipulated 30 per cent of BMAs workforce must reside in the nearby town of Moranbah, southward-west of Mackay, but the company says workforce conditions mean that is not the most expedient. see the various meanings of good option.

CFMEU spokesman Steve Smyth says the push to have the unalloyed workforce as ‘fly-in, fly-out’ is disgraceful.

“The company has the lawful as a corporate citizen to look … at the area that they’re going to receive their mine and facilities for the community,” he said.

“Just to affirm it’s going to be 100 per cent ‘fly-in, flee-out’ is pretty ordinary in my eyes.”

Mr Smyth says they moreover have concerns about BMAs push to have 100 per cent of workforce towards the Daunia mine also as ‘fly-in, fly-out’.

“They’ve got seven-on, seven-off, 12-hour shifts – predominantly the accommodation will be at Coppabella in sincere man’s camps,” he said.

“We’ve been sitting here talking to them near a working agreement but we’ve got some fundamental issues through the rosters they’re proposing, as well as the accommodation.”

RIO Tinto has dismissed conjecture its iron ore joint venture with BHP Billiton is set to dead failure because of regulatory disapproval.

“I don’t even comprehend where that came from,” Tom Albanese, chief executive of Rio Tinto, said at a breakfast meeting with reporters today, referring to the theory.

Mr Albanese’s comments come as its mining rival and proposed partner, BHP, turns to agricultural commodities, bidding $US38.6 billion for Potash Corp of Saskatchewan in a affect that renewed questions among analysts on whether BHP is able or volition to pursue two enormous merger projects at the same time.

“The synergies (with BHP) are indisputable and large, and they are a prize desert doing anything to achieve,” Mr Albanese said. “We’re going to remain to strive for those synergies.”

Investors at the ASX however shaved nearly 3 per cent off Rio Tinto by mid-afternoon today. Rio pedigree lost $2.11 to $71.07, after hitting a $71 exhausted, while the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index was from a thin to a dense state 1 per cent. 

Mr Albanese declined to comment on BHP’s pray for Canada’s Potash. “I’m not a agriculturist, I’m a miner… (but) if the right resource were to reach our way, we’ll look at it,” he said in replication to question whether Rio Tinto would be interested in Potash or similar fertiliser companies.

Mr Albanese held Friday’s briefing in Shanghai of the same kind with part of a headline appearance at a Melbourne Mining Club dependent in China, in which he sought to shore up his visitors’s once-strained, now-amicable relationship with Beijing.

Rio Tinto’s $US1.35 billion deal through Chinalco, to jointly develop the Simandou iron ore mine in the West African abiding habitation of Guinea, sealed late July, “represents a very powerful template in the same manner with we look for other opportunities around the world,” he declared.

He downplayed reports of the Guinean government’s dispute through Rio Tinto over rights to parts of the Simandou property.

“Rio’s pecuniary means in Guinea are in the undisputed southern bloc (of Simandou, what one.) is the basis of the project with Chinalco,” he afore~, adding that Rio has retained claims to the disputed northern piece of the mining area.

Rio Tinto is also in talks by Chinalco over the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mining project in Mongolia, that remains dogged by reports of Mongolian politicians’ opposition to Chinese partaking.

But Mr Albanese today repeated a statement the company made to the US Securities and Exchange Commission in July, that Chinalco was the same among a range of financing options currently under consideration to member of a ~ship on Oyu Tolgoi.

The company had been at the centre of a dire clash with the Chinese government over iron ore pricing, as China sought to shatter what it regards as a monopoly in seaborne ore supply held through Rio, BHP and Brazil’s Vale.

The iron ore perseverance’s shift to a quarterly pricing system was a response to increasingly acrimonious government relations, he said.

The quarterly pricing connected view, strongly opposed by Chinese steelmakers, has been “reasonably effective”, and to all intents and purposes all Rio Tinto’s ore business in the third divide was based on quarterly pricing, he said.

“If we descry any customer breaking the quarterly (price system), then we might be in possession of to move to spot (prices).”

The companies testament now pay 5.6 per cent instead of 3.75 through cent of sales revenue.

It is expected to deliver $340 the multitude in revenue to the government this financial year.

The companies had been gainful a concessional rate struck when the industry was established in the 1960s.

GERMANY'S resurgent export administration is presenting the country's policy makers with a recently made known worry – a growing reliance on China.

Germany’s economy expanded at some annualised 9 per cent rate in the second quarter, its strongest move in more than 25 years.

Driving that growth was demand on the side of German exports, especially from China.

Now, however, with China expected to stopper the brakes on its double-digit growth in coming months, crowd economists say the cool down will have an outsize effect in successi~ Germany.

"I see the (Chinese growth) with a lot of mingled feelings," said Ralph Wiechers, chief economist at the VDMA German engineering ~.

"On one hand, it is clear that China is eternally more important for German companies. But as a businessman, you unceasingly wish that your growth was broader-based."

German export gains in China – 55 by cent in the first five months of the year, or roughly six periods the growth rate of exports to the euro zone – have been the primitive engine in the recovery of many German manufacturers, such as textorial machinery, compressor and machine-tool makers.

For German machinery makers – a upholder of the country’s economy – China last year surpassed the US in the same manner with the largest export market, with some 10.2 per cent of their exported products copious there, compared with 7.2 per cent going to the US.

During the primitive five months of this year, the share of German machinery production headed to the China grew even further to 11.1 for cent.

Across Germany’s broader economy, China represents about 5 by cent of all German exports, half the volume of exports to France, Germany’s largest, individual export market, and a small fraction of those to the pure euro zone.

Nevertheless, China’s predominance as a driver of German shooting is unlikely to change soon, with much of Europe stagnating and the US view uncertain.

China’s growth softened over the second quarter, to 10.3 by means of cent from 11.9 per cent in the first quarter, and economists forebode. further slowing as the government restrains bank lending in an attempt to keep the economy from overheating.

Though German industry as a firm has benefited from exports to China, the country’s marquee sector – autos – has profited in the greatest degree.

Among Germany’s big premium car makers – BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi – individual car sales to China be delivered of soared between 63 per cent and 132 per cent so well-nigh this year.

Such growth has fuelled a surge in profits, pushing operating margins to memorandum levels despite weak sales on their home turf in Europe and spotty product in the US.

Behind the windfall is a confluence of factors. Chinese voluptuousness-car drivers gravitate toward pricier, higher-end vehicles with much bigger engines and else options than such buyers in the three auto makers’ more mature markets.

The euro’s roughly 15 per cent slide against the US dollar and the Chinese yuan in the chief half of 2010 added another boost to profit margins on cars imported from Germany or in many.

As a result, analysts estimate that the German auto makers of ~ly, particularly BMW and Mercedes, may have been reaping as much in the same proportion that €30,000 ($43,000) in profit per car exported to and sold in China. That is roughly 10 ages the amount the car makers typically get in Europe.

At BMW, Chinese profitability may receive contributed as much as 90 per cent of the car manufacturer’s €1.3 billion in second-quarter operating profit from its auto portion, estimates Max Warburton of Bernstein Research in London.

Such lopsided fortunes be favored with some economists and industrialists fretting that Germany’s auto industry is comely too reliant on Chinese growth and that such exposure is a forerunner for other swaths of Germany’s export-driven economy.

"What makes me worried is that it is deserved such unsustainably explosive growth," said Bernstein’s Mr Warburton.

He added that the remarkable Chinese profitability of German car makers presents a "potentially misleading representation" of the companies’ financial health as they struggle with overcapacity, enlarging investment costs in fuel-efficient technologies and minimal growth in other haughty markets.

"I’ve got a horrible feeling there will be a few setbacks" as China’s car market develops, he added.
This week, a solution monthly index of German investor confidence, conducted by the ZEW Centre instead of European Economic Research, showed that investor sentiment dropped to a sink-than-expected 14.0 in August from 21.2 in July.

Those premises suggest a more pessimistic outlook for export-led growth the rest of the year rear strong German economic growth during the first half of 2010.

In joining to slowing manufacturing growth in China, factory orders in the US dropped additional than expected in June, the second monthly decline in a disturbance and a further sign the US economy might be weakening.

Meanwhile, growing in the euro zone isn’t expected to accelerate anytime easily as European governments implement austerity measures to tackle budge deficits, and German consumer spending remains sluggish.

German auto makers dismiss the notion that they gain become too dependent on China for growth, even as they contrive resources and ramp up production to meet Asian demand.

"It is momentous to me to emphasise we are not solely relying on China," BMW’s most eminent executive Norbert Reithofer said this month, when the auto maker presented its stand by-quarter earnings.

"We are a company that acts and operates globally," Mr Reithofer said.

Other vehicle makers have already begun managing expectations for slower advancement world-wide.

In announcing Volkwagen’s July car sales last week, the troop’s sales chief Christian Klingler predicted that the global auto mart would shrink in the second half, suggesting that growth from China and other emerging markets wouldn’t subsist enough to offset declining sales in Europe and elsewhere.

"There demise not be a return to pre-crisis levels this year," Mr Klingler declared.