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Senator Deborah O'Neill goes through the Parliament's latest report on financial abuse and what business can do to help victims. Plus, Morningstar's warns against a hot upcoming IPO and Bitcoin passes the $100K barrier for the first time.
This is Business Now with Ross Greenwood.
Welcome to Business Now, thanks for your company on this Thursday.
I'm Ross Greenwood. Coming up on the program today.
Bitcoin this afternoon cracked one hundred thousand US dollars for the first time in its history.
It's up one hundred and sixty percent in the past year.
Show that latest price very very shortly, and there are forecasts our dollar could soon be in the fifty cent range against the US greenback. Calm Well Banks says it will soon be under sixty cents. We'll have more on that, plus a warning from morning Star not to buy Australia's biggest stock market float this year. The analyst who made the call on Digitico, Roy Van Culm, will explain why later on the program. So all that and plentymore coming up on today's program now. Other stories we think you should know about today include Simon Birmingham, the leader for the Opposition in the Senate, surprised many when he announced his resignation last week.
Today we found out why the ANZ Bank.
He'll be the bank's head of Asia Pacific Engagement and also the chairman of its South Australian operation.
The aan ZED statement said today.
He'll work closely with Chief Executive Shane Elliott, the former Trade minister who holds an NBA from Madelaide. UNI will start in February next year, perhaps around the same time as the federal election.
And only in France could this happen.
The three month old French government collapsed overnight for first time in sixty years, as Prime Minister Michelle Bonnehare lost no confidence votes in its General Assembly.
But what did its stock exchange do? Well, of course it went up.
The French course is due to open around two and a half hours time that its future market has already Your futures market's already pointing up. And that's after the Cat Curran rose. Yesterday, Sky News London explains just what's happening.
He was the great negotiator from the Brexit negotiations who drove a hard bargain through those and nice suspect bresenteersho are experiencing some chadenfreud tonight looking at his his misfortunes, But so much for all that he is, as you said, ended up facing ignominy of the first photo no confidence since the early sixties. He's the shortest serving prime minister in French history ever, so two months longer than Liz trust and a Lettice, but it's still a pretty dishonorable end to a long, illustrious career. And the problem for Macharn is finally someone to replace him that won't think this is a poison chalice, and whoever does take up that arguably quite a challenging hospital pass will deal with the same arithmetic that Michelle Barnier did. He's faced opposition from the left wing block that won the majority in the parliamentary elections over the summer of the snap elections that Macarn called, and also from the far right, and that leaves Macharn with a massive problem. He needs to push through budgetary reforms because France is spending far more than it's bringing in in terms of revenue. The EU has warned that that is unsustainable and the prescription that he and Barnier have come up with that they thought could be finagled through parliament has now been some really rejected.
We'll see that stock market a little later on.
Well, little history was made around two thirty Eastern Australian time today as bitcoin went through one hundred thousand US dollars for the very first time. Not only have that it kept going after having bought that key mark several times in the past week or so, but Donald Trump's and Elon Musk's advocacy of crypto assets, including deregulation, has seen even more money pouring into this relatively new asset class.
And for the record, a year.
Ago, you could have bought bitcoin for a give or take forty thousand US dollars and your mates would have told you you were wrong then too. Anyway, let's check out the live bitcoin price now with Ed Boyd and searched in the past few hours.
Ross it really took off after breaking out one hundred thousand US dollar barrier at two thirty the stars, and it just kept rising.
You can see one bitcoin right.
Now is worth about one hundred and three thousand US dollars per coin. The other major cryptocurrency Ethereum that's been surging today too. Today's risen to its highest level since June. And when crypto value increased, there's always a direct correlation with ETFs, And you can see the Innovator's ETF listed on the AX today. Will that jumped ten and a half percent the overall stock market. It lifted in early trade thanks to tech companies and retailers, energy stocks and property rets dropped. The ASEX two hundred finished the day up.
Just twelve points.
Gold sector was higher thanks to rising gold and that relationship with crypto prices. Online retailer Cogin lifted. It's in the middle of a share buyback litigation. Funder Omnibridgeway jumped again with no company announcement from them.
The fund manager Magel.
And It rose despite reporting four hundred million dollars in net outflows during the month of November, and the kitchen appliance maker Brevel, well, it's just kept rising higher and higher due to those rising coffee prices. Medicine maker Mesa Blast was sold off to clearing another regulatory approval barrier with the US Food and Drug Administration of one of its cellular medicines. A machine learning and data scrubber appen that's slumped the text mes burrito retailer Goodsman and go Home has dropped back due to profit taking. Remember it reached forty five dollars yesterday, and the Raretz.
Minor Linus that was down as well.
And len Lease was the worst performing property rep falling about two point two percent and Ross, that's.
Markets in partnership with COMSEK.
Well I told you earlier the comwell thanks down grad did's forecast for the Australian dollar. Let's bring it here Laura Bazarati from Comsek for more, Laura, your currency forecast than saying the Aussie dollar could challenge sixty US since sometime early next year.
What are the drivers of all this?
Good afternoon, Ross, Well, Look, the overarching theme here has been at Trump's reelection. So those previous forecasts assumed there would be no big policy changes over in the US, so that's certainly not been the case. So essentially the downgrade reflects the potential for a renewed trade war next year with Trump's proposed at tariffs. So we have already seen the US dollar rallying on the back of Trump's wins since early November, and that's push the Aussie dollar lower. So during Trump's first presidency, we saw big moves in the US dollar, particularly when it surged around eight percent as he introduced tariffs in twenty eighteen. So CBA economists believe the US dollar does have potential to lift further as those fresh tariffs do come into play next year and that could push the Aussie dollar lower, potentially testing sixty US sets.
That's going to be interesting.
So just tail's the alsie steck up against the other major currencies, because you know it's not just the US dollar we.
Look at absolutely well. Look currently, according to CBA economists, the Aussie dollar is undervalued. We're down five and a half percent against the US dollars since the start of this year, down around one percent against the Euro, slightly higher against the Japanese yen, down five and a half percent against the British pounds. So we've only really strengthened against the New Zealand kiwi, which is up by around one point seven percent in twenty twenty four. But look, just since Trump's re election, it's the yen which has suffered the most on the back of the uncertainty that this brings, in particular regards to national security, tariffs and also other economic concerns that this could bring us.
Laura Bezarati, many thanks for your time. The US might be off limits for travel at the moment. Japan, though and certainly Turkey are very much on limits for US anyway. While much attention in our community is correctly focused on the physical abuse of women. Less is said about another form of abuse, and that is financial abuse, especially against women.
And the elderly in our community.
Now, just a few minutes ago, the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Corporations and Financial Services tabled its final report, called financial abuse an insidious form of domestic violence. It urges banks and financial institutions to do more to identify and support people subject the coercive financial control. Now, the chair of this committee is Separate Senator Deborah O'Neil, who's previously done great work on covering the Price Waterhouse Cooper scandal, and she joins me now from Canberra.
Always got the chat to you, Dev. This is such an important issue in our community.
But the issue is that much of the coercion, much of this financial abuse has gone unknown, unseen in our community over so many decades.
Absolutely, it's good to be with you, Ross. Thank you so much for your attention on this report fresh off the press. I've got a hot copy here beside me. Sixty one recommendations. As you've indicated, you know, if we had a minute for everyone, that'd be a whole show. The reality is this report is worth a read for anybody who knows somebody who is experiencing financial abuse, anybody who has experienced it, and for people who are working in the industries in which financial abuse is being perpetrated. You know, once upon a time we used to turn our heads away from physical domestic abuse, and I think we are at a moment where we have to tell the truth to ourselves as a nation that we have been looking away for far too long from this insidious form of domestic violence, financial abuse where an intimate partner, predominantly a male who has to clared love and often had a family with a woman, finds themselves using the tools that are actually embedded in financial banking products, in insurance, in superannuation, they go for advice to financial advisors, to lawyers, and to accountants to enable this form of violence that they are perpetrating on their wife and their children. It is an appalling reality and it has to stop.
Okay.
So generally where the controls need to come in is where the money is. So that goes to banks, that goes to superannuation funds, that goes to even employers who are paying those incomes. The question is trying to identify it without actually breaching significant privacy concerns that will be.
There as well.
That's exactly right, and privacy is critical and people want to make sure that important information about their finances is protected by the bank that they that they are, what they use to do, their product, their financial banking structures. The problem though, is that if you Ross or I were a bank using the bank of the National Australia Bank, for example, we get caught up in a dispute and there is financial hardship clauses enacted. The whole matter is dealt with people in that NAB banker or aware of financial abuse. Once we get through that system, the next thing is you walk up the road to Westpac or Commonwealth, or go to a small bank like the Defense Bank or.
And you start again.
There is no sharing of information where there is clear and absolutely incontrovertible evidence that financial abuse is being perpetrated, that there are victims who can victim survivors who can be identified and supported, who need a particular banking product to get back on their feet, and there are victim abuses who were just going to pack up the package that they've been using, take it to another bank along the road and go ahead. Now, nobody would think that it's possible for that to occur, but that is actually what's happening.
Okay.
You mentioned also in this report highlights that it is largely the abuse is perpetrated by males against females in our society.
Just explain is that because.
Largely still even today, that most of the wealth or the income generation is inside is inside males as such as to think from being inside females, So many females are ultimately held always captive or victim because they don't control the purse strings.
Well.
Sadly, we've seen and taken evidence of a woman in Western Australia who was the big breadwetner and sometimes that's the honeypot to which these deliberate perpetrators are drawn and then they get access to that person's credit when they're already had financial problems themselves. And in this circumstance, there were financial abuse, there was coercion, there was the signing of documentation in the woman's name, and she just kept trying to keep the relationship alive.
In the end, she.
Ended up in a coma and was out of action for many many months, by which time the debt that she had incurred for the partner in her name had increased by tens of thousands of dollars and she was still paying that office. She gave evidence to us. So I don't think there's any simple way to describe a complex financial relationships that people establish within their relationships, but we do know that if relationships break down, and sadly we're very aware of this.
What are the products that.
Are on offer at a bank today that deal with modern day relationships in twenty twenty four, what's the safety by design demension of what's happening in the products at the banks are making available, particularly in terms of housing loans that would make a separation so much more easy to be done. Sadly, we have seen also men doing businesses setting up their own business, but not putting themselves as the director, rather putting their partner or their wife as the director, just asking them to sign a little piece of information, never declaring what it is. And the reality is the debt. Then sexually transmitted debt is acquired by a non director who is officially the director of a company, and when it all falls apart, the person who's left with a big debt which could be to the ATO or to a bank or any other commercial entity that they're engaging with is held by an unknowing, unwitting director. So there's got to be some friction in that system, and there's got to be some understanding across the system, across the whole ecosystem of what's going on. And that's why our very first recommendation is to set up an ongoing task force to bring together the financial institutions in all their budaries.
They just need to do it. There is no doubt there. They need to do it. I've got to leave it.
There is such an important subject. And again that report, people can pick that up throughout parliamentary websites or your website.
Need many thanks for your time today.
Wonderful and merry Christmas to your us.
Thank you so much, appreciate it. Well.
Coming up after the break, a serious warning about buying securities in the biggest stock market float this year, and the CEO of America's biggest health insurance fund shot fed on the street on the way to an invest today.
It's great to have your company. You're on business now.
Well.
Despite a booming stock market this year, it's going to be said, has been pretty lean.
For new share floats or IPOs.
The fast food text mech chain, Goodsman and Gomez. Well that's been the most heavily publicized and the result well for those Sheha elders, it's been good. The shares are up forty four percent since it was listed back in June. But the biggest float is happening right now. It's a data center business called Digico, which is backed by day the Pillar, the former managing director at UBS Australia. Now this float is worth one point sixty five billion dollars and the Pillar's HMC capital is investing seven hundred and fifty million. But a new pre IPO report from morning Star starts with this warning data centers red hot, securities overvalued. Do not subscribe. As warnings go, it's about as stark as they get. The author of this report is Roy van Culin from morning Star, who joins me out many thanks for your time. I mean it's pretty so you could not be more clear in your attitude about this float.
It's basically saying it's a red zone. Why have you taken this view?
I wouldn't say you arrest zone specifically, but it's certainly a sector and that's very hot. You know, we say it's red hot, and you know, sectors that tend to be very hot fool down eventually, and we think that's likely to happen to the data center sector as well. So that's the broader sector and individually, for this company in particular, we think the main thing investors should be aware of is that it's probably got a bit more risk than your average data center company. And the reason is that, you know, on the headline, it has a certain amount of assets with a certain amount of customers, but really at the start, it's it's a lot more concentrated to a small number of assets with a small number of customers that make up most of the most of the business. We do think that will grow over time, but generally, uh, you know, the sector is very hot, and this company presents a little bit more risk than your average data center company because it starts with a relatively low set of operating assets that are actually generating revenue.
Okay, so this is actually a real estate investment trust. That being the case, it is quite clearly its success subject to future valuations of the assets within it. Now that's the big question mark here is what will the future valuations look like, not just whether it can continue to add more and more assets to its portfolio and potentially rise more capital from its investors.
Yeah sure, And you know, one thing to maybe know is that the biggest asset will be in Sydney. And despite Sydney arguably being the world leader in making existing asset owners rich by artificially restricting new supply, vacancies within data centers in Sydney are quite high above office vacancies. So you know, will will that fill up? Difficult to say, But if data centers are being built at a rapid clip, which they are, than you know, assuming as you said, valuations going up might be a risky proposition.
Okay, so the big operator in Australia is next to see that. You've also got capacity being added by the likes of Microsoft, by Amazon Web services. You even see, say for example, super Loup, a big deal being done there. Do you even get a sense that maybe this business is being created with the object of being bought out by one of those other larger organizations trying to achieve scale.
That will be a benefice unconventional way of going about it, because every time it changes hands, you know, you have to be a bit of a premium to you know, take over an asset. It's usually a bidding process.
So assuming you can.
Then pass it on like a like a hard potato, is probably a bit of a risky bet.
I would say, Okay, So then we see that the issue price is going to be about five dollars per secure share if you like, what's your own sense of what the fair value is?
And so I had to get to that valuation.
Yeah, we think it's about three point forty. And I think what's important to note is that in many ways a data center company. A data center company doesn't have any of the benefits of either a read or a technology company, but it does have the downside. So you know, most real estate companies can be attractive because you have scarcity of supply, so you're always operating within.
A fixed supply.
If you open an office building, you need a catchment zone of office workers. If you open a retail store, you need a catchment zone of retail shoppers. But data centers really are not as bound by a location, which negates the benefit of a real estate company. So Sydney takes most of the capacity for Australia, which you'll remember is the size of a content, so you can really put these things anywhere, and that just makes them not very attractive assets. Over the long running, currently regenerative aid, there's a boom in demand, but we think eventually supply we'll catch up with that.
I'll tell you what, Roy van Culem from morning Star. Great to have you on the program today, many thanks for your analysis. Thank you.
Now just to finish up the program. Being a chief executive clearly comes with an element of ruths, but that's typically either financial or reputational. There can be personal threats, but really do these come to anything. But in the US right now, a manhunt is underway for a person who fatally shot the CEO of America's largest health insurer outside of hotel in New York where the company was holding an investor day.
Scary moments in midtown Manhattan Wednesday morning, Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, shot and killed on his way to the company's annual investor conference. Investigators say that you were fired several hitting Thompson in the back and leg.
Many people passed the suspect, but he appeared to wait for his intended target.
The shooter ran from the scene, then grabbed an electric bike heading into Central Park. Doctors pronounced Thompson dead at Mount Sinai West Hospital.
We've been in touch with his family, his friends, and his colleagues, and they are very much in our thoughts and prayers.
At this hour, detectives are reviewing area video and digging into a cell phone recovered near the scene as they search for a motive.
Every indication is that this was a premeditated, pre planned, targeted attack.
This all happened just blocks away from Rockefeller Center, where the Christmas tree lighting is set to take place tonight.
We really don't know what it was about, but what shocked that somebody would be killed in the in broad daylight in New York.
That's really quite shocking.
Please say, the city is still safe and the lighting will go on as planned.
But this is a terrible event, but we're going to go on and people going to enjoy the tree lading tonight.
Pretty servering stuff anyway. That is it for today's program.
Many thanks for your company. We'll see you tomorrow.
