We'll be green with envy if Price is right

A substantial shareholding notice filed yesterday for NSX, otherwise known as the National Stock Exchange, revealed that the custom-bottle designer Vitron Werkbund Sud Australasia owns 25 per cent of the alternative capital market.

Vitron is really just another arm of the irrepressible futures trader Brian Price's mini-empire, under the Iron Mountain Group banner. He has assembled a fascinating grab-bag of market platforms, green brokers and and acronyms while everyone else is watching the ASX-SGX, or even the rival Chi-X, games.

Some would remember Price and his Iron Mountain Entertainment were behind the local film The Bank almost a decade ago. Back in those days he even had some support from Rod Adler and FAI Insurances. These days it is Perth's Bennett family - descendants of Lang Hancock's former iron ore prospecting partner Peter Wright - who have thrown their hats and wallets into the trading pool.

Price also has Macquarie Group, the former NSW premier Bob Carr, and the US-listed IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) among his team in the "clean and green" markets being assembled.

What arises is the question of whether Vitron and its co-shareholder Financial and Energy Exchange (FEX) are behaving in the spirit of the takeovers code now that they own one in every four shares of NSX, without having made a bid, by using the "creep" provisions.

FEX is owned by Price and the Bennetts' AMB Holdings, and has a put/call option deal over NSX shares with Vitron. It is not clear whether Macquarie has a stake in FEX, although one of the investment bank's high-profile executives, the former Victorian treasurer Alan Stockdale, was a director at one point - as was the one-time Telstra wunderkind Ted Pretty.

While the jump in Vitron/FEX's stake in the latest notice looks like they exceeded the creeping takeover allowance of buying 3 per cent every six months, they in fact missed that by a bit over a week. The big jump came when the group bought Guinness Peat's 2.5 million shares for 22? in an off-market deal last week.

Price, some will recall, joined with other investors to roll the previous NSX board in 2009. NSX is itself the result of bringing together the Newcastle and Bendigo stock exchange licences, and offering a sort of junior ASX.

NSX and FEX turned the Bendigo exchange licence into a joint venture, SIM Venture Securities Exchange, which aims to offer "cleantech" companies a listed venue. There are no companies listed, although several are understood to be considering the concept.

FEX is focused on futures and derivatives in the energy and environmental products markets. In turn, FEX, Macquarie and ICE own Climate Change Products (Macquarie owns 52 per cent, according to Australian Securities and Investments Commission records).

Climate Change owns Envex, which has Bob Carr as its chairman, and aims to "foster Australian environmental markets that are deep, liquid, efficient and transparent", according to its website. Envex bought 51 per cent of the carbon markets broker Next Generation Energy Solutions late last year, and is in partnership with the listed Green Invest on that one.

Price clearly has a plan to be at the hub of whatever develops in environmentally friendly trading in the Asian sphere. It will be intriguing to see if that includes a backdoor-listing of his vehicles via NSX.

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Australia's stockbrokers appear to have come home with a wet sail, rather than the wet feet, which much of the rest of the eastern seaboard is experiencing.

Bell Financial Group, one of the few locally listed brokers, ruled off its books for the financial year on December 31 and has worked out that net profit for the year is going to be about $21.5 million.

While that will be well shy of the $27.3 million it earned in the 2009 calendar year, it is a strong run home after posting only $8.4 million of earnings in the June half-year.

The executive chairman, Colin Bell, was quoted on December 1 as saying the second half ought to be broadly in line with the first - a statement that now looks like Bell was hiding his light under a bushel.

As it turns out, the comments were lifted from his outlook statement way back in August when the half-year results were released, so by December he probably would have had a pretty good idea that the second six months had been a good one - and, more importantly, that the momentum is apparently carrying on into 2011.

Bell, the company, provides a small window into the fortunes of the local broking community, given that most stockbrokers trading in ASX stocks are owned by companies based in Switzerland, New York and other distant climes.

In the middle of last year, brokers were gloomy about the prospects for the second half - particularly those trying to make money from mergers, acquisitions and primary or secondary capital raisings.

Bell's numbers, which made particular reference to equity capital markets (what normal people call raising money by selling shares) being strong in that December half, might not necessarily be matched by competitors. Austock has made no announcement on its December figures, suggesting that nothing extraordinarily positive or negative occurred.

There is a feeling, though, that corporate activity - be it floats or takeovers - is rising.