Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
The Senate has called on the market regulator to investigate whether the Future Fund was tipped off about impending regulatory changes in the communications sector just weeks before offloading huge numbers of Telstra shares.
Family First Senator Steve Fielding successfully moved the motion
calling for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC)
to provide the Senate with a report on the Future Fund share sale.
The Future Fund sold 34 per cent of its multi-billion dollar Telstra
holding on August 20 at $3.47, just weeks before Communications
Minister Stephen Conroy announced plans for sweeping changes to market
regulation on September 15, including the planned functional separation
of Telstra.
The Conroy announcement sent Telstra shares plunging from a September
opening of $3.25 to $3.11, prompting the Australian Shareholders
Association to wonder out loud about the timing of the Future Funds
sell-down
"Why did the Future Fund decide to sell a huge chunk of its stake in
Telstra only three and a half weeks before the Rudd Government made its
announcement to break up Telstra?" Senator Fielding said.
"Now I don’t know if the Future Fund had any unfair advance notice or
not, but there are certainly quite a few people out there who are
sceptical."
Senator Fielding said an inquiry into the sell-down was fair to ensure that there was "no funny business involved."
At the time, Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner had rejected any
suggestion that the Future Fund could in any way have had advance
notice of the planned changed to regulation, pointing out that it had
flagged long ago its plans to sell down its disproportionately large
Telstra holding.
The Senate motion is passed, but it is up to the Government now whether it directs ASIC to act on the motion.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
