THE DISTILLERY: ASX wranglers

Herding cats, rats and mice to the June 30 reporting deadline ain't easy. It requires a team of specialist drovers, luckily, this morning we have found just the gang for readers.

Getting your company accounts ready for reporting should be simple – get out the abacus, a few flicks of the wrist, and hey presto, the numbers are in. Only kidding, but for public companies of any size it shouldn't take two months to get the accounts done and lodged with the ASX. Some smaller companies have smaller sets of accounts and fewer numbers of crunch. If simple companies like listed investment groups can report inside a month (by the end of July) and giants like BHP Billiton within seven weeks, why can't all the rats a mice who waited until yesterday do a better and faster job? There's one easy answer, they don't want to and want their losses or poor figures to be buried in the avalanche of numbers. And they generally get their wish.

So it's thanks this morning to Fairfax's Ian McIlwraith who has done the time consuming hunt on the last day for June 30 reporters: "Even in a year of recovery, the last day of 2010 financial results reporting to the stock exchange produced more than $3 billion of red ink among the 10 largest losers. According to the Australian Securities Exchange, some 334 companies out of 1100 were still to lodge their results as yesterday dawned – and by sunset almost half of them were still unsighted. As usual on the final day, more than half the reports came after 4pm." His report was in the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald this morning.

Over at The Australian, Tim Boreham was also doing his share of herding the rats and mice towards the light of exposure: "Yesterday marked the deadline for June 30-balancing companies to file their results and, as of close of business last night, 144 (13 per cent of the total) were yet to oblige. In its munificence, the Australian Securities Exchange will accept accounts filed this morning, so long as they're done so "reasonably" before the 10am opening. Stocks that don't will be suspended until they conform, but there's no other sanction than the naughty corner." Yes, the ASX naughty corner, a fearsome place where Big Ted from Playschool will show them the error of their reporting ways, again.

And the AFR said: "Listed companies ended the reporting season with a bang, delivering more than $2.8 billion of losses as companies including Rivercity Motorways and Centro cleared their balance sheet of overvalued assets." Ah, Rivercity in Brisbane, like Sydney's Cross City and Lane Cove Tunnel's an over-priced, under-used example of private sector incompetence to match anything from the public sector. 

The Australian's John Durie looked at the second attempt by Primary Health Care to issue a prospectus for the issue of $125 million in retail bonds:"It issued a revised prospectus this week with more clarity but still short on total transparency. Primary Health Care comes to the retail debt market with its own baggage from the stockmarket but faces a different audience given credit analysts know they get no upside so try to minimise the downside." Elsewhere in the paper's business section, Bryan Frith, who criticised the first prospectus from Primary, chewed over the second document this morning: "Overall, the replacement prospectus is a considerable improvement on the original and it's tempting to see the hand of ASIC in the changes. But ASIC could perhaps revisit its class order to see whether it could be revised to ensure the inclusion of additional information that would be relevant for retail investors. That would include the requirement for the inclusion of any bank debt covenant ratios." That's the trouble with these blokes from the media, they don't make happy easily. 

News Ltd's Terry McCrann was a rare examiner of yesterday's flow of economic data in a broader, economy-wide sense. The June quarter balance of payments and July retail sales were solid examples of an economy doing well: "The data "surpassed expectations" in the sense that retail sales and housing approvals bettered the predictions of the 'economentariat' consensus. They pointed to a relatively buoyant economy, as a precede to today's GDP numbers which will tell us how the overall economy performed in the June quarter." But business lending fell, private home building approvals again fell, so its not a boom and calls of "Rate rise looms" as we got yesterday, are wide of the mark at the moment. In fact McCrann made that point in a second commentary: "The Reserve Bank will NOT increase its official interest rate at its board meeting next Tuesday. Not even if today's GDP numbers show a booming economy. And that probably holds for the October meeting as well. On the assumption that the GDP numbers won't show a boom, or if they do it'll be unreliable."

Fairfax's Insider, David Symons looks at the battle for control of retirement group, Aveum and says the target company has won the battle so far: "There is no doubt that early points have gone to the Aevum team in its corporate boxing match with Stockland. Significantly, the market has outbid the Stockland offer of $1.50 a share since the hostile bid was announced, with Aevum shares closing at $1.68 yesterday. Naturally, there has been barely a trickle of acceptances into the offer."

Fairfax's Elizabeth Knight, clearly on an information drip says the controversial case involving harassment claims by former David Jones CEO, Mark McInnes, were almost settled before Monday's court appearance: "The case now looks certain to be decided by the Federal Court, with all the unsavoury claims and counter claims being aired before the public....For David Jones the pressure to make this case go away will be intense. The board's knowledge of McInnes's behaviour will be explored and scrutinised. From a shareholder's perspective there would be concern that David Jones should not pay more than precedent suggests a court would normally award the victim." And since when did companies paying more than they should to failed CEO's and board members ever trouble them? Why one rule for someone who is a found to be a victim of harassment and another for incompetent executives or board members who do greater damage to a company?

A day after The Australian's Michael Stutchbury pointed out that Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan had not ruled out raising tariffs to accommodate the independents, Julia Gillard has done the honorable thing and ruled out such a move, according to a report in the same paper this morning: "Julia Gillard has drawn her first line in the sand on policy concessions to remain in office, flatly rejecting raising tariff barriers to curry favour with protectionist independent MP Bob Katter. Declaring Labor had been "to hell and back" to dismantle tariffs in the 1980s and 90s, the Prime Minister has also assured voters that she has learned from Labor's electoral drubbing on August 21. And Alan Mitchell in the AFR says "Now is not the time to retreat from the reform challenge, regardless of independents' demands." While an editorial today says: "Caretaker Treasurer Wayne Swan is flirting with a dangerous return to populism in refusing to rule out any increase in tariffs." "Caretaker Treasurer, Wayne Swan" has a nice, temporary feel to it, don't you think?

And finally the Sydney Morning Herald's Economics editor, Ross Gittins says don't listen to an excitable media who tell you that young people have different priorities. for example, take home buying: "The surprising thing is many years of strongly rising house prices seem to have done so little to dull the home-owning ardour of the next generation. They repeat their parents' conviction that rent is ''dead money'' and mortgage payments are no higher than rent (not really true)....it seems to remain the case that most young people marry – eventually. What's changed is the variability in when in the process of acquiring a house and children marriage occurs."