The country’s second-largest bank reported a 5.8 per cent increase in profit and announced a $1.5 billion share buyback but saw the quality of its loans fall.
Santos,one of Australia’s largest oil and gas producers,has doubled the size of its share buyback program to more than $1 billion amid surging commodity prices.
ECP Asset Management has sold its longstanding shares in Magellan after a new leadership team was abruptly brought in.
Australia’s mergers and acquisitions boom is set to roll on as major corporates deal with massive cash piles that have swollen further while they generated strong-than-expected profits in the first half of this year.
Ongoing COVID lockdowns are not expected to stop companies opening the purse strings to pursue acquisitions or return cash to investors via buybacks and dividends.
With returns diminishing across the fixed-income world,equities are increasingly seen as the only game in town.