Who would have thought nine months ago when Telstra’s then chief
executive, Ziggy Switkowski, was sacked because he apparently
didn’t have the skills to take the telco to full privatisation,
that it would take his replacement just two months to
comprehensively stuff up the entire process? asks Elizabeth Knight in TheSMH. Not only have Sol Trujillo and Phil Burgess alienated and
infuriated the Government, says Stephen Bartholomeusz in The Age, they have trashed the Telstra share
price, devalued the Government’s shareholding by $4 billion and
counting, jeopardised Telstra’s pristine credit rating, probably
derailed the T3 sales process and ensured that the regulatory
reforms will be even more robust than may otherwise have been the
case.

And without wishing to add to scurrilous suggestions that the strike
price does not yet appear to have been set for Sol Trujillo’s
options, says Alan Kohler in The Smage –
it is striking that he and the team now running Telstra seem much
less concerned than their shareholders about its share price.

The Fin Review reports that the federal government has opened
the way for international banks to take a bigger slice of the
Australian market by flagging crucial changes to the way banks can
confirm the identity of new customers. Justice Minister Chris Ellison
and the big banks have agreed to amend draft anti-money laundering
legislation to allow electronic verification of customer identity – a
major departure from the existing need for face-to-face verification.

And Babcock & Brown Infrastructure is still on
the acquisition trail after trebling the size of the company to more
than $4.5 billion in assets and raising $600 million in new equity, reports The Australian.

On Wall Street, US stocks closed strongly overnight, with
the Dow Jones posting its first triple-digit gain (up 141.87 points to 10,589) in
nearly two months, on a sharp pullback in oil prices and an economic
report showing the nation’s services sector in robust health – Market Watch has a full report here.