Asciano's sharp rise traced back to Garnaut

The rise, from $2.79 on July 15 to a two-month high of $4.25 yesterday, marks a 52.3% lift for the Toll Holdings spin-off in a fortnight.

It was up 15.8% yesterday alone, which some attributed to speculation that a planned $1 billion share sale will be scrapped in favour of asset sales.

Mark Rowsthorn, the port and rail company's managing director, has kept silent about such plans, which is quite in character. The ASX received a familiar "we know nothing" letter from Asciano in response to its share price inquiries.

Maybe it's coincidence, but a few Asciano staffers point out that the sharp rise can be traced back to one event, which followed the release of the 548-page draft report into climate change by Ross Garnaut early last month.

It took Rowsthorn plenty of time to digest that tome, but he did realise what an opportunity the report offered.

Rowsthorn issued a press release on July 14, the day before Asciano shares began an upward climb, that stated: "While freight transport was not specifically addressed in Professor Garnaut's draft report, we expect that his supplementary report will make specific comment on policies necessary to correct market failures in the transport sector and recommend an increase in the use of rail."

Rowsthorn himself was bullish about the opportunities for Asciano.

"Right now transport is responsible for 14% of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions," he said. "Rail uses two-thirds less fuel than road per tonne of goods carried and is three times more environmentally efficient. These statistics alone make it impossible for Professor Garnaut to ignore a rail solution in his review. With Australia's freight task expected to double over the next 20 years, we need to have the capacity to handle this growth and also be prepared for an increase in rail mode share."

Plenty of industries have complained about the potential impact of the Garnaut review on their bottom lines. Maybe Asciano investors are enjoying a happy repricing.

Pratts on a roll

THE Pratt family has endured a tough year in home town Melbourne, with those pernickety authorities causing all sorts of grief over such issues as the right to hold poker machine licences on behalf of Carlton Football Club and swindling consumers and companies through price-fixing.

But the US side of the business rolls on under Anthony Pratt, and Wednesday night marked the latest expansion of the Pratt Industries recycled paper plant on Staten Island.

Phase two of the $US330 million ($A349 million) project has been completed - the biggest manufacturing investment in New York City since World War II.

Pratt was joined by New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor David Paterson for the event.

The US arm of the Pratt empire is growing quickly.

Last week Pratt Paper, a Louisiana-based subsidiary of Pratt Industries, secured $112million of finance from GE Commercial Finance to fund the development, construction, and operation of another recycled-cardboard plant.

Zero worship

TAKE pity on those poor Zimbabwean bank customers just trying to write a cheque.

If there are too many zeroes for your brain or calculator to compute, this pictured cheque is for "one quadrillion, seventy two trillion, four hundred and eighteen billion and three million dollars only".

That converted to $120,000 on July 23, the day the cheque was written. To give you an idea of Zimbabwe's inflation rate, the same amount was worth just $60,700 a week later.

Little wonder the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe yesterday lopped 10 zeroes off the value of the Zimbabwean dollar.

No hazard for Lazard

BERMUDA-based Lazard Ltd, the holding company of New York's Lazard LLC and Australia's Lazard Carnegie Wylie, has reported its

first-half results to the Securities Exchange.

Lazard provides merger and asset management advice worldwide and performed well in a tough market - operating revenue actually rose by 1%. "This firm is fortunately in very good shape," said chairman and chief executive Bruce Wasserstein, who is known as the "granddaddy of M&A" on Wall Street.

But there's quite a bit riding on the performance of messrs Mark Carnegie and John Wylie in coming months.

Listed as key deals for the rest of the year are quite a few that are being managed by the Australian outpost.

Topping the list of pending M&A transactions is BHP Billiton's $147.4 billion offer for Rio Tinto. Also making that list is GrainCorp's $592 million scrip offer for Ridley Corporation. Lazard Carnegie Wylie is advising both predators.

Topping a list of Lazard's "restructuring advisory assignments" is a certain basket case called Centro Properties. That ought to keep the fees rolling in.

Coming in at No.3 on the worldwide list of completed transactions was Zinifex's $6.2billion merger with Oxiana to create OZ Minerals.