Buyers' desire for cheaper tipple gives Foster's wine boss a few hiccups

There are clear signs that consumers continue to trade down when it comes to alcohol, with the result that suppliers such as Foster's are suffering sharp declines in revenue per litre.

That is the main message Royal Bank of Scotland's analysts took from the flat exports figures in May. Revenue in Australian dollar terms was down 11.6 per cent from a year ago and down 1.5 per cent on April this year, despite currency gains in favour of our exporters.

While bulk shipments to the US were up overall, indicating falling stocks at distributors are starting to benefit suppliers, the shift of consumers to cheaper brands will largely negate that factor. And shipments dropped heading to other key markets such as Britain, Europe, Scandinavia and even New Zealand.

This means Foster's is likely to struggle to see any reasonable improvement in returns from wine for at least six months, RBS warns. Investors may have to give Dearie plenty of time after his arrival this month before they can expect any real gains.

Cheaper airports

New Zealand authorities may be buckling to pressure on airport charges, but it is unlikely any of their counterparts on this side of the Tasman will follow suit quickly.

The ASX-listed Auckland International Airport will cut international landing fees by about 5 per cent and leave unchanged charges for domestic services "for the time being".

New Zealand's largest airport, which had planned to increase landing fees by 2.5 per cent from this month, said it had decided to defer the price rises because of "challenging economic conditions for the aviation industry". A scheduled increase in a passenger service charge will still take place.

The Qantas boss Alan Joyce has recently called on Australia's big airports to lower charges to help airlines maintain passenger numbers in the midst of the downturn. He has accused the large airports of operating on some of the highest margins in the world. The Macquarie-controlled Sydney Airport signalled it had no intention of lowering its charges, saying yesterday that its "fees are modest" and only a "very small proportion of an air fare".

Macquarie rally

Meanwhile, the two Macquarie Group satellites, Macquarie Airports and Macquarie Infrastructure Group, defied

the wider slump in the sharemarket yesterday, jumping 4.3 per cent and 3.1 per cent, respectively. Speculation persists the banking group

will continue its shift most recently seen with Macquarie Leisure Trust, and privatise the funds or internalise their management.

CityPac fights on

City Pacific's fight to keep the management of the $630 million First Mortgage Fund will be heard in the Federal Court in Brisbane next week.

A directions hearing yesterday scheduled three to four days of hearings that will begin next Monday.

The rival fund manager Balmain Trilogy said last night that Justice John Dowsett told City Pacific to give it access to the fund's books. The Australian securities regulator has moved to register City Pacific as responsible entity, with a caveat pointing to the court proceedings.

City Pacific disputes that a meeting of unitholders last month succeeded in removing it as manager of the frozen fund, which provides its main source of income.

No jobs joy

The latest ANZ jobs advertisement data couldn't impress investors of the James Packer-backed job-search site Seek. The number of job ads in newspapers and on the internet fell 6.7 per cent last month, having more than halved over the past year.

And while Seek expects to continue to benefit from the shift of dollars from print to online, the latest declines came mostly from the internet. Newspaper ads rose less than 1 per cent, but internet ads fell 7.2 per cent to reach a "new low point in the cycle" after a 51.5 per cent slump over the past year, ANZ said.

Deutsche Bank warned last night that the online job market had "further to fall". Seek shares closed 4.95 per cent lower at $3.65, down 12.5 per cent since the start of the financial year but still up nicely on a recent $2.60-a-share capital raising.

Virgin wooed

Dexus Property is understood to be on the verge of finalising the sale of its 343 George Street site, home of the Virgin mega store, possibly to Abacus Property.

The sale of the 11-storey property coincides with the end of the lease on Sir Richard Branson's store and will be the first deal of more than $50 million in the CBD for the new financial year.

Virgin is being wooed to take a lease in the newly revamped Pitt Street Mall, although the rent will be significantly more than the average $600 per square metre charged on the current premises.

A sale of the George Street building would be welcomed by Dexus, having warned of large write-downs in its asset values last week. Brokers at JP Morgan said the $880 million, or 10 per cent, devaluation came after an 8.1 per cent fall as at December last, and meant asset values had slumped by a fifth in this downturn. Property analysts reckon the fall in asset values is likely to continue across the sector in the coming reporting season.

Life in life

The timing of National Australia Bank's $825 million purchase of Aviva is looking more interesting by the week with the fluctuating performance of equity markets providing a pointer that, in the longer term, it may well be a smart move.

Meanwhile, the jury is out as investors digest a new key indicator on the health of the life insuance market, with the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority publishing quarterly data on the assets held by life insurers.

As Macquarie Research points out, the industry is being directly affected by the state of equity markets, which at March 31

had pushed down the value

of total assets by 4 per cent to $205 billion on the previous quarter.