Collins St Value Fund's 2020 Performance in the Australian
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V0 - AUSE01Z01MA WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2021 P13 theaustralian.com.au/businessreview S&P/ASX200 -15.06 6742.6 ▼ CLEANING RICHARD STELLA GOLD -US16c UP GLUYAS WHAT? $US1836.89 ▼ DOLLAR Bingo play just the start Excuses will start to wear thin if Westpac’s What do you get when US77.1C +US0.19c ▲ for private equity { P14 } new team is unable to deliver { P20 } you combine Chrysler, Fiat and Peugeot? { P17 } HERITAGE SITE UNCERTAINTY FORCES MINER TO PUSH BACK PILBARA COPPER PROJECT Power prices Juukan fallout slows Rio plans spark a nal yet it intends to push ahead Stausholm gets the New Rio Tinto boss Jakob Michael L’Estrange, the Rio toll on many of us and, Rio’s iron ore shipments legal row NICK EVANS with the development of a giant Stausholm has used the Tinto board has zero credibility. understandably, many of you Million tonnes new iron ore mine at Simandou in message — but are company’s latest production Chair Simon Thompson has are disappointed and feel let 100 The impact of Rio Tinto’s destruc- Guinea, saying it had launched the board on board? report to underline his his work cut out to show the down,” he said. GLEN NORRIS tion of 46,000-year-old heritage early works at the project and ex- understanding of the market he too sees the “For this I am truly sorry. We 80 sites in the Pilbara could reverber- pected to update technical studies remediation efforts needed in importance of the relationship are working hard to heal and Australia’s largest energy class ate through its operations for on the infrastructure needed by the wake of the Juukan Gorge and is willing to back rebuild our relationships, 60 action will be launched in the years, as the mining giant con- the middle of the year. disaster. Stausholm. credibility and reputation — Federal Court on Wednesday, ceeded it doesn’t know how a re- “Activity at the mine area is The message from those Stausholm has come to the both internally and externally. I 40 alleging two Queensland gov- newed focus on relationships with starting, including roadworks. We outside is the new Danish boss job with an impeccable do not underestimate the time 20 ernment-owned electricity gen- traditional owners will affect its are progressing the implemen- at Rio Tinto gets the importance reputation — super-smart but and effort it will take to achieve erators manipulated prices. operations. tation of the project’s 2012 Social of the relationship with native with no ego, which is a this. I have met many of you 0 The action, initiated by law Uncertainty caused by the fall- and Environmental Impact As- title holders and understands it’s combination sorely needed. who care deeply about Rio and Sep Dec Mar Jun Sep Dec firm Piper Alderman and backed out of the Juukan Gorge debacle sessment,” Rio said. more than a moral duty — it’s At stake is Rio Tinto’s social our host communities. We each 2019 2020 by litigation funder LCM, has has forced Rio to push back the Rio finished the year at a rush, good business. licence to operate at a time have a role to play and, Source: The company been filed on behalf of 40,000 development of its Winu copper shipping 88.9 million tonnes of ore The question mark when its reputation is in tatters. collectively, we will learn from customers who paid for elec- project in the Pilbara, with the into a roaring market for the steel- remaining is whether he has In a note to staff on Tuesday this sad incident and put lion tonnes in 2020 — and flagged tricity in Queensland between mining giant flagging the need for making commodity in the De- board backing, because based he said all the right things. ourselves in the shoes of others longer-term impacts from the fall- January 2015 and January 2021. further discussions with tra- cember quarter and lifting output JOHN DURIE on the report prepared by “Juukan Gorge has taken its Continued on Page 20 out of the destruction of the heri- The majority of registrants in ditional owner groups over its guidance for 2021. tage sites at Juukan Gorge. the case against generators CS development, and saying it could Rio released its December- “The future impact on our Pil- Energy and Stanwell are resi- still not quantify the impact of new quarter production report on produced 334.4 million tonnes of ed output, but still behind where it the market in 2018. But fires at movement at its Brockman mines bara iron ore operations, mine dential users, but more than heritage laws likely to be passed in Tuesday, saying its Pilbara mines iron ore in 2020, up 2 per cent expected to be a few years ago. processing and handling facilities emerged. developments and heritage 1600 businesses also have signed Western Australia this year on its shipped at a rate of 355 million compared to 2019. Rio had originally expected to at its ports, as well as lost ship- Rio’s iron ore division is getting approach from the reform of the on. future operations. tonnes a year in the quarter, tak- The mining giant lifted Pilbara ship 338-350 million tonnes of ments from Cyclone Veronica, back on track, but is still shipping Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972 Piper Alderman dispute res- And, in the December quarter ing the company’s annual ship- guidance to a range of 325-340 iron ore from the Pilbara in 2019, forced Rio to cut its guidance, to significant quantities of lower- (WA) remains unknown,” Rio said olution and litigation team head production report released on ments to 330.6 million tonnes. The million tonnes in 2021, a record an improvement from the record 333-343 million tonnes, and then grade ore — 1.8 million tonnes in on Tuesday. Greg Whyte said the firm had Tuesday, Rio gave its clearest sig- mines Rio operates in the Pilbara rate if it hits the top end of expect- 338.1 million tonnes it moved into again when problems with ore the December period, and 6 mil- Continued on Page 16 spent more than two years inves- tigating Stanwell and CS En- ergy’s conduct on the National Electricity Market (NEM), which allegedly involved manip- Active fund managers ‘Beware Biden’s ulating the pricing system and artificially inflating consumers’ electricity bills. clean up amid chaos “There is a lot of complexity China trade bid’ in generation and power prices,” Mr Whyte said. ideas, but our cash reserve also “The conduct occurred at the DAVID ROGERS helped,” Mr Goldberg told The ond largest, finished the year on a generation stage and retailers MARKETS EDITOR Australian. EXCLUSIVE high note. Gross domestic prod- passed that cost through to con- “I don’t want to pretend for a uct rose 6.5 per cent in the fourth sumers.” The most extraordinary year for second that we picked GLENDA KORPORAAL quarter from a year earlier, ac- He said the action would seek financial markets in living mem- COVID-19, but we had concerns cording to data released by the to prove that the state-owned ory was a good one for active about the broader market be- Australia will need to keep a National Bureau of Statistics on power generators manipulated equity fund managers, particu- cause the market was expensive watching brief on the policies of Monday, marking China’s best the wholesale cost of electricity larly those who were wary of and it was getting harder to find the Biden administration to make quarter of year-over-year growth for their own profit, amounting economic risk before COVID-19 stocks that were attractive and sure it is not dealt out of trade with in two years. to a hidden tax. struck and also took the oppor- cheap, so we had built up a cash China, one of the nation’s top China would continue to be Brisbane business owner Iain tunity to add structural-growth position of about 35 per cent by trade experts has warned. one of the world’s strongest econ- Saul said he registered in the and cyclic exposures after the the time COVID hit. “There is no indication, apart omies and many countries would class action to help highlight the sell-off. “But the real key was being from his political appointments, continue to want to trade with it impact of soaring power prices Passive funds made subpar able to allocate that capital when on which way he will go with in the wake of the COVID-19 on the economy. “I don’t want returns in the year to the end of the market was panicking. China,” said Helen Sawczak, for- pandemic, she said. anything out of it personally but I December as the S&P/ASX 300 “I think we did more buying in mer CEO of the Australia-China Ms Sawczak, who was speak- want to help other people,” said index fell 1.2 per cent and divi- 2020 than we did in the two or Business Council, referring to US ing to The Australian ahead of a Mr Saul, who runs an electronics dends were crimped by a combin- three years before that.” president-elect Joe Biden. speech to Hong Kong-based company. ation of recession and the After the index dived as much “He has campaigned in a very trade and tech consultancy Lynk He said he had noticed a sig- regulation of banking sector pay- as 39 per cent from a record high hawkish manner during the elec- later this week, said observers in nificant increase in power prices outs.