Telstra’s nine most senior executives – paid up
to $1.86 million a year – will face an evaluation panel of Bain &
Co consultants as new chief executive Sol Trujillo’s company-wide
review gathers pace, reports The Australian. The executives have been told they should furnish the panel with
their employment resume as well as the five-year plan for their
division. And the Fin Review
reports that the telco is under pressure to adopt new governance measures
to ensure the fair treatment of its biggest rivals, as part of a
federal government demand for a split in its wholesale and retail
operations.

Trujillo has already begun
to tackle the biggest issue he will face during the next 18 months;
convincing the punters the company has a growth profile and that he
is not just about cutting costs, says Elizabeth Knight in the SMH. But costs are a very convenient way to start and when the Bunsen
burner is turned up on extracting some big gains before full
privatisation in 18 months, it’s understandable Trujillo would go
for the easy hits early.

The public listing of Tattersall’s wasn’t quite the instant jackpot some punters were wishing
for but extensive trading created nearly $400 million of extra value when
compared with the pre-float estimate, reports Christian Catalano in the Smage. Shares hit the stock exchange
at $3.50 at 11:30am yesterday, with more than 42 million shares
changing hands in the first five minutes. Nineteen minutes later Tatt’s hit a high of $3.62,
before closing at $3.46 –
still 19% ahead of the final retail offer price of
$2.90. It was a surprisingly smooth debut, says Stephen Bartholomeusz in the Smage. Despite one of the biggest imbalances in supply and
demand in market history, there was heavy turnover within a
reasonably orderly market.

The Seven Network suffered a stinging setback
in its $1 billion legal action against the bulk of Australia’s media
industry when the Federal Court yesterday delayed its case by up to
five months, reports The Australian.
Justice Ron Sackville said the trial couldn’t
proceed on 18 July as planned, because Seven’s expert witnesses had
failed to meet yesterday’s deadline to provide their evidence-in-reply.
And with the formal kick-off now delayed, the legal fee bonanza from the case just keeps getting better, says
the AFR’s Chanticleer. The total legal bill for the case is now in the order of $200 million.

On Wall Street, US stocks closed strongly overnight, after recovering
from a sharp sell-off triggered by the terrorist attacks in London. The
Dow Jones closed up 31.6 points to 10,302 – MarketWatch has a full
report here.