Woodside wants to be the Big Banana
The big news this week was the Woodside Petroleum/BHP Petroleum tie up which I’ll get onto later in the report. But the oil and gas space is already consolidating here; first Santos and Oil Search getting together, now Woodside is buying BHP’s Petroleum division. Is Beach Petroleum at risk of takeover?
The market slipped for the first time this week since early July, falling 2.2% to 7461. Australia’s unemployment rate fell from 4.9% to 4.6%, but the participation rate also fell marginally from 66.2% to 66% and underemployment rose from 7.9% to 8.3%.