Adele Ferguson deserves an apology: News Ltd
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Crikey was incredibly agitated yesterday about coverage in The Australian of one Eric Beecher’s largest advertisers, Macquarie Bank. Coming to the defence of an advertiser is admirable in management, but not such a good look editorially. Crikey said Adele Ferguson’s reports for The Australian were “highly speculative, highly questionable, highly irresponsible and highly damaging” to Macquarie Bank and that her report was also “reckless”. They were none of the above; they were accurate. Macquarie’s own accounts and the broker report from JP Morgan clearly show that Macquarie has “$46 billion in funding maturing within one year”. The JP Morgan report goes on to say that $14 billion of loan assets with a duration of less than one year is to be funded by external markets”. Adele Ferguson’s reports pointed out a figure of $45 billion ($1 billion short of JP Morgan’s 46 billion but just a rounding error in Macquarie-land) and that as much as $5 billion might be difficult to refinance at a decent price and in a decent length of time. The cost of insuring Macquarie’s medium term debt against default doubled this week, validating this. Stephen Mayne argued in emails this morning that Macquarie “has denied the figure of $45 billion as have most reputable analysts”. No they haven’t. JP Morgan’s report saying the opposite was only issued yesterday. Macquarie carefully and cleverly avoided saying so with suspiciously precise wording in a statement two days ago. It also tried to deny the story by misquoting from it, an oldie but a goodie. Mayne also argued that his report yesterday afternoon was justified by what the JP Morgan analyst said almost eight hours later on Lateline last night. Sorry, how does that work? You retrospectively defend your story on the basis on something someone said subsequently? When you look at what the analyst did say subsequently you find more oddities. He said media reports were misleading and that the $45 billion was an accounting quirk - odd considering the clear statement to the contrary that appeared in his printed report on exactly the same day. Mayne also claimed The Australian’s stories selectively quoted sources. After his spray yesterday, give me a break. Perhaps Mayne should also note that a lot of selling of Macquarie shares occurred yesterday afternoon AFTER its head honchos had briefed shareholders to calm them down. Crikey’s claim that The Australian and its proprietor Rupert Murdoch “could be singly responsible for undermining confidence in Australia’s largest investment bank and as a result in Australia’s financial marketplace” is flattering but must be denied. Clearly if we could move share prices so much we’d all be on the dealing desk and not wasting our time writing stories.
Crikey has campaigned long and hard against Adele Ferguson since she came to work for The Australian. She deserves an apology. A large grovelling one. |
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9 Comments
It’s not just The Oz….News Limited and Fairfax are churning out veneer information supported by supposition. Reason - beancounters with personal or corporate fiscal agendas are pruning talent, time, research and the senatorious staff who’d tell them their product is crap. When the purpose of the product becomes defunct they move onto other industries like radio broadcasting and use the same formula with the same outcome. our de-regulated, no standards, fated media.
Excellent news. Crikey! has now made the big league. If the editors and publishers of the thin-skinned Oz are responding to Mssrs Mayne and Beecher it means this website counts. It makes me feel happy as a subscriber, as opposed to a sometime reader of mush stuffed in my face for free.
Macquarie up 37% today. Obviously not enough people read the Oz to make much diff in the share market.
Keep up the good work
I’m with Hugh McMahon……the Oz has been a spent force in local Aussie news for a decade or so.
Have to agree with Hugh, and others. The only time I read the Oz these days is when I’m looking for support of my own prejudices.
Why does everyone get so agitated about The Australian? The paper has no credibility with anyone except far-right troglodytes in Qantas Club lounges. Its news coverage is so compromised that a bizarre sort of inverse relationship exists between the truth and The Australian’s reportage. If the Oz front page says something is, then it isn’t, and vice versa.
Have to agree with Hugh, and others. The only time I read the Oz these days is when I’m looking for support of my own prejudices.
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Clearly if we could move share prices so much we’d all be on the dealing desk and not wasting our time writing stories.
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Let me fix that for you
Clearly if we could move share prices so much we’d all be in jail for insider trading
There is a fascinating and important debate about the weight of words and what is left in and left out of a report, but Greg Baxter? He’s the spinner with a memorable role in the James Hardie scandal – refresh your memory courtesy of the ABC http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2004/s1131621.htm . No surprise he slid so comfortably and successfully into News Ltd. Evidence he hasn’t changed is the misrepresentation above of the overwhelming thrust of Brian Johnson’s badly-worded JP Morgan report. Beecher has been a bit precious, Macquarie’s communication with the market has been abysmal and its at-times bullying use of legal muscle appalling, ASIC’s always-belated involvement is a joke, Rupert Murdoch’s Oz will always be tainted by being Rupert Murdoch’s Oz, but Greg Baxter? He has all the credibility of, well, Greg Baxter. Maybe for a laugh he can tell us what a good job his company has done in its recent reporting of Citi’s NAB analysis.
- Michael Pascoe
I’d love to see Baxter defend Rupert Murdoch’s claims that a particular set of religious congregations have genetic defects because they marry their cousins. Care to have a try, Greg?