Kevin Gallagher awaits Santos pay day on his private toilet

Nothing like a non-financial perk to improve job satisfaction. When it comes to maximising these, Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher is among the elite.
The Scotsman has attracted a conditional $36 billion offer for the ASX-listed oil and gas company from Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and private equity firm Carlyle. It's yet to get past Jim Chalmers and the Foreign Investment Review Board.

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News.com.au

41 minutes ago

• News.com.au

Stock Tips: Mirvac and Aussie Broadband are in the good books this week

It's no easy gig analysing share prices and company performance but somebody's got to do it. Every week two experts from our Share Tips columnist pool give us their recommendations. Toby Grimm – Baker Young BUY Mirvac (ASX:MGR) The diversified property developer screens as attractive value, offering exposure to strong residential, recovering office and resilient retail market conditions. NextDC (ASX:NXT) The data centre developer's share price remains below last year's equity raising, despite having secured funding for accelerated growth as evidenced by recent contract wins. HOLD Santos (ASX:STO) While XRG's indicative takeover approach at $8.89 per share likely faces stiff challenges, we believe it provides an industry validation that Santos' fair value is well above current levels. ALS (ASX:ALQ) The sample testing firm's surprise capital raising has paused the recent rally but does reduce debt and provide funding for acquisitions to further enhance already accelerating growth. SELL Treasury Wine Estates (ASX:TWE) Amidst persistent challenging industry conditions, the unexpected departure of its long-standing chief executive signals increased near term financial and strategic risk. Insurance Australia (ASX:IAG) IAG has enjoyed unsustainably favorable conditions in recent years with low claims and substantial premium hikes elevating earnings and we would recommend taking profits. Tony Paterno – Ord Minnett BUY Aussie Broadband (ASX:ABB) ABB is well positioned to grow residential market share as the NBN upgrades customer speeds, given the existing skew to higher speed tiers and products in market. Whitehaven Coal (ASX:WHC) WHC's fundamental outlook is continuing to improve (production up / unit costs down) with healthy underlying cash flows and robust long-term growth option. HOLD Technology One (ASX:TNE) TNE's 1H25 result was solid with beats. It has stepped up its guidance range for profit before tax growth. The company has a track record of delivering margins to the higher end of guidance. Sigma Healthcare (ASX:SIG) Chemist Warehouse's trading update highlighted continued robust operating momentum (store roll-out +19, +10.3% sales growth), as well as a step-change in margins. We move to a Hold on valuation grounds. SELL Hub24 (ASX:HUB) We remain very strong supporters of the HUB business. That said, given recent share price appreciation, we believe our positive investment thesis is factored into the current valuation. Netwealth Group (ASX:NWL) The price-to-earnings multiple of circa 50x or more is unsustainably high given its linkage to market sentiment.

The Age

an hour ago

• The Age

The Libs have been handed a golden opportunity. Now, watch them stuff it up

One of the great entertainments of political commentary in Australia over the past decade-and-a-bit has been speculating on what new and inventive way the Liberal Party will find to comprehensively bugger itself up. I can't help thinking this must have crossed Treasurer Jim Chalmers' mind as he fronted the National Press Club this week to announce that he will undertake a process to develop a new productivity agenda. Chalmers' speech was solid, but then so it should be after so many have said the same things so often to so little avail. His words and aspirations have been written for him many times over, sometimes with hope, other times with emotions ranging from dull rage to despair. Sometimes even by the Coalition. We need productivity reform, politicians all know we need it, the media all know they know we need it, yet no-one ever does it. There's a simple reason for that: it's hard. The treasurer dwelt in his speech on why it's hard. Reforming an economic system requires trade-offs. Some choices will cost some people. They may or may not be recompensed in the rejig. Chalmers doesn't want the media to simplify economic reform by explaining it in terms of 'winners and losers', as they do after each budget, but there will be winners and losers in the short, medium, or long term as a result of any new tax system. And, naturally, the opposition will do what the name says on the tin. It will oppose. Given the last years of Liberal shenanigans, the real question is how it chooses to do that. In one scenario, Sussan Ley leads a team which analyses and criticises the government's productivity proposals to ensure the best outcome for Australia and Australians. Should they choose this version of their own adventure, there will be plenty of material to tackle. The prime minister has already shown that he has no instinct for making business more efficient or even any understanding that a healthy economy relies on the private sector, creating new wealth instead of just shifting existing money around. In the first term of the Albanese government, the size of the public sector grew relative to the size of the private sector, so now each private employee is supporting more public sector salaries. Loading Then-employment minister Tony Burke passed through an industrial relations bill which makes it harder for businesses to scale up without locking themselves into costly arrangements. Meanwhile, the 'Future Made in Australia' slush fund has been 'picking winners' (code for government making decisions on industries it poorly understands) by investing in bringing in an overseas quantum technology firm rather than backing existing quantum technology firms – ahem – made in Australia. Labor is even trashing its own legacy by changing the rules on the superannuation system it forced people to contribute to, undermining trust that the money you lock away for retirement is really yours for later. It's hard to see how a government which made policies of this sort a priority and prefers the public to the private sector will back a productivity agenda which turns Australia around. But one of the great paradoxes of politics is that sometimes you need the party which is seen to be the touchy-feely side to deliver hard-nosed decisions. Think Labour prime minister Tony Blair in the UK, Democrat president Bill Clinton in the USA, or chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Germany, all of whom delivered welfare reform in the face of their countries' badly designed benefits systems, which were creating disincentives to work.

Sydney Morning Herald

an hour ago

• Sydney Morning Herald

Good ideas strangled by red tape: Treasurer to crack down on bureaucracy

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has admitted left-leaning governments are strangling their own good intentions with bureaucracy, arguing it is time to deliver supply side solutions to problems ranging from housing to renewable energy. In his first extended sit-down newspaper interview since May's federal election, Chalmers has demanded regulators overseeing everything from the banking sector to consumer law identify regulations that can be axed or simplified to reduce costs and increase the pace at which the economy can grow. Chalmers revealed the recently released book Abundance, which argues progressives need to re-think their overly rules-based approach to making the change they want, had been a wake-up call for the left of politics. The book, by American journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, was 'doing the rounds' of the ministry and senior MPs keen take on board the authors' insights which include trying to strip red tape from scientific research and housing construction. Chalmers said the upcoming productivity roundtable would tap into the ideas outlined in Abundance. Loading 'I mean the fascinating thing I found about Abundance was basically, even if you have quite a progressive outlook, we've got to stop getting in our own way,' he said. 'We want good things to happen, we've got to stop strangling good things from happening. I think that's very, very compelling for us. 'It's confronting for us because it's a kind of a – the term 'wake-up call' gets used a bit too easily – but there's a sense of at what point do we start getting in our own way, preventing good things from happening because of an abundance of good intentions.'