The Don McGauchie-Sol Trujillo circus has descended into farcical
proportions, opening them to outright cynicism but, worse, masking
genuine policy complaint, says Chanticleer’s John Durie. The real
tragedy of their hopelessly misguided strategy is Telstra has a genuine
case against the government plans but the dynamic duo have declared war
on Canberra, ultimately risking the very sale of the government stake
they need.

Despite the sharemarket reaction to his comments, Sol Trujillo
didn’t really tell us anything we didn’t know yesterday, says Stephen Bartholomeusz in The Smage. His statement and briefing was more about
the politics of Telstra than its economics – this is the final chance for Telstra to argue its case before a
new regulatory regime is locked in and it’s prepared to risk antagonising its
political masters in order to weaken the proposed regime.

And institutional investors who do not have to own
Telstra are
now selling their shares, reports The Australian. Few institutional investors now hold the stock out of choice
although many are constrained by investment mandates that oblige them
to stay close to the ASX 200 index to retain some weighting on the
stock.

Transport companies Patrick Corp and Toll Holdings continued to
throw punches in their takeover fight yesterday as co-operation
over their joint-venture national rail operation looked
increasingly fragile, reports The SMH.

And The Fin Review reports that British banking giant HBOS is
joining forces with the world’s largest credit card processor, First
Data Crop, to target the $250 billion Australian Eftpos and credit
market, providing a new threat to the big banks’ dominance of the
sector.