Insights

Westfield Group moves to merge Aust, NZ businesses with Westfield Retail Trust to form a new venture known as Scentre Group.

Local market expected to begin lower following falls on Wall Street

Airline may sell stake in frequent flyer division or Jetstar's Asian arm.

The week in clean energy saw deals aplenty, including Mitsui in Australia, ahead of 2013's close while EU carbon softened ahead of December policy news.

Wall Street traders are on edge as they wait for the Federal Reserve to pull the taper trigger. Excess liquidity in the system means that once the shot goes off it'll be a sharp, swift correction.

While there are concerns that tensions between Australia and China could impact the free-trade agreement process, escalating regional disputes may compel Beijing to ratify the agreement sooner.

How sad that Australia's quest to be the 'clever country' is being scuppered by the re-politicisation of education, while competitor nations surge ahead.

European stocks tanked overnight as investors took profits, while Wall Street also slipped despite some decent data.

Concerns of faster-than-eConcerns of faster-than-expected taper force US, European markets down.xpected taper force US, European markets down.

iiNet is rumoured to be in the race for AAPT, while the big week of IPOs stumbles with Industria REIT.

A hunger for high returns is seeing Asia's ultra wealthy buy up Australia's finest residential real estate. They are also making a mark in commercial real estate, regularly outbidding institutional investors.

Ever since major mining investment projects, such as Olympic Dam, started to be cancelled over a year ago and it became clear the mining investment boom was coming to an end, much uncertainty has surrounded the outlook for the Australian economy. This was not helped by a mediocre initial response to interest rate cuts and sub-par growth of around 2.3% annualised since the June quarter last year.

The Queensland government has cut its stake in Aurizon to less than 5 per cent after selling $350 million worth of shares in the rail group to reduce its debt.

Shares in stockmarket debutant Dick Smith are expected to trade strongly on Wednesday as investors rush the chance to invest in a mid-cap retailer with a national footprint of stores, as chief executive Nick Abboud beats the drum over the electronic store's growth credentials.

Hilton plans to sell stock worth an estimated $US2.2 billion in its initial public offering, one of the year's biggest IPOs. The return to public markets will value the US hotels operator at about $US19.2 billion. Hilton was taken private by The Blackstone Group in October 2007 for $US20 billion and was quickly hit by the global financial crisis.

Apple has acquired social media analytics firm Topsy for more than $US200 million, according to reports. It was unclear how Apple planned to use the firm but it could be related to Apple's new streaming music service Ping. Earlier this year, Topsy said it had created a searchable index of all publicly available tweets, to be available for marketers and others.