The market is down 14. The SFE Futures were down 35 this morning.

The Dow Jones closed down 61 on Friday. Dow down 194 at worst. The fall came on doubts about Greece’s bailout package ahead of the Greek confidence vote on Friday night. The Dow was down 2% for the week, while the S&P 500 was down 2.5% to record the worst weekly performance in over a month. After talks with the President on Friday night, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and opposition leader Antonis Samaras agreed on a new coalition government to approve a euro zone bailout deal before elections. A meeting of leaders of the Group of 20 leading economies reached no agreement. The US unemployment rate hit a 6 month low in October falling to 9% from 9.1%. Metals were mixed on the LME, the oil price fell 19c to $94.26 and the Gold price fell $9 to $1756.10. The Aussie dollar also dropped to 103.87c from 104.10c.

Main points:

  • Orica (ORI) has reported a 4% rise in underlying annual profit which excluded earnings from DuluxGroup. They posted a net profit of $642.3 million for the year to September 30, which is down 51% from its $1.3 billion net profit from a year ago. They expect profit growth in the year ahead. The market liked the result — ORI up 3.7% to 2521c.
  • Computershare (CPU) up 13% to 831c after announcing their US$550m takeover of Bank of New York Mellon’s investor-services business has been approved by U.S. regulators. Some investors had feared that it may not receive anti-trust clearance as they are now the world’s largest provider of share-registry services and by far the dominant U.S. provider. CPU had been facing the prospect of paying BNY Mellon a break fee of $US30m if approval hadn’t been reached by April 2012.
  • Beach Energy (BPT) has launched a $94 million take-over offer for Adelaide Energy. Beach Energy already holds 19.95% of Adelaide Energy shares. It’s now offered 20 cents for each remaining share, 43% higher than their last trading value of 14¢. BPT down 0.5c to 119.5c.
  • Goodman Fielder (GFF) has refinanced their $500m multi-currency revolving syndicated loan facility. GFF up 1c to 54.5c.
  • Insurance Australian Group (IAG) is going ahead with their offer for up to $115.68m of unsecured subordinated bonds to the NZ public. IAG down 0.5c to 312.5c.
  • Austal (ASB) has acquired a shipyard in the Philippines as part of their strategy to regionalize its manufacturing base for commercial vessels. ASX down 2c to 228c.
  • The Construction Index increased 4.7 points to 34.7 points, but still well short of the 50 point level that indicates expansion rather than contraction.
  • Westpac Bank (WBC) goes ex-dividend 80c (ff) today, as does Macquarie Group (MQG) – 65c (unfranked).

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