Retail brand Premier Investments says it has “prioritised exploring” Myer’s approach of a proposed combination with its  Apparel Brands business.

The department store revealed back in June that is was considering buying up more than 700 of Premier Investment’s apparel stores, including Just Jeans, Jay Jays, Portmans, Jacqui E and Dotti.

In a statement to the ASX today, Premier confirmed they were still looking at the offer.

“Premier has prioritised exploring Myer’s approach of a proposed combination with Premier’s Apparel Brands business,” it said in its financial year results.

Premier also recorded a drop in profit for the 2024 financial year.

It posted a statutory profit after tax of $258 million, which was down 4.8% from last financial year.

Sales were also lower, declining 2.9 per cent to $1.6 billion in the same period.

Premier Investment had issued a warning earlier this month about weaker than expected sales ahead of the release of its financial year results.

You can read more about the looming major fashion retail consolidation here.

Macquarie Bank has been fined a record $4.9 million for failing to prevent suspicious orders being placed on the electricity futures market.

The Markets Disciplinary Panel (MDP) issued the fine following an ASIC investigation, which found on 50 occasions, from January to September 2022, Macquarie breached market integrity rules by permitting three of its clients to place suspicious orders.

It said each order displayed characteristics of an intention to ‘mark the close’, meaning each order was placed within the last minute of market close, impacting the daily settlement price, in a direction favourable to the client’s existing interest in that contract.

MDP found Macquarie should have suspected each of the 50 orders were submitted with the intention of creating a false or misleading appearance in the market.

“The consequences of manipulating energy markets can have a detrimental flow on impact to supplier funding costs, and in turn energy prices,” ASIC Chair Joe Longo said.

“This can lead to higher energy bills for consumers who are already struggling with the cost of living.”

It’s the highest penalty the MDP has ever imposed.

Missed yesterday’s finance news?

Ian Verrender has you covered with this quick summary below, featuring mining stocks, the Australian dollar and the People’s Bank of China.

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Doubts about consumer confidence in the United States were quickly shrugged off overnight as Wall Street hit news highs.

The S&P 500 and Dow ended at record numbers despite a report showing the US consumer confidence level declined in September, according to the Conference Board.

The data showed US households are feeling more worried about the job market and came as a surprise to many economists who had expected the level to rise.

Also making news overnight was the Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman cautioning that key inflation measures in the US remained “uncomfortably above” the Fed’s 2% target. The warning came after last week’s interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve.

But the big ticket item was China’s announcement yesterday of a sweeping stimulus package, which saw mining stocks surge.

Beijing’s pledge to cut interest rates in the future boosted investor expectations, according to analysts.

As NAB wrote in an analyst note, “there is a slight risk-on mood today, driven by hopes that China will offer a comprehensive package to kick start their economy”.

The monthly inflation figures will be released later this morning at 11:30am.

The data will be closely watched after the Reserve Bank of Australia’s decision to keep rates on hold yesterday.

RBA Governor Michele Bullock revealed in her press conference after the announcement that a rate hike was not explicitly discussed at the meeting.

NAB has made the following forecast for the August CPI indicator:

• Headline at 2.7% y/y, down from 3.5%

It believes electricity subsidies and fuel base effects will drive the lower print, “with gradual but ongoing progress expected across other parts of the basket, including market services”.

“We expect the detail to be consistent with our Q3 trimmed mean expectation of 0.8% q/q, which would see the year-ended rate fall to 3.5% from 3.9% y/y in Q2, in line with the RBA’s forecast,” it wrote in a note.

 Good morning and welcome to the ABC’s finance and business blog.

It has been another night of gains on Wall Street as US stocks hit new record highs.

All three indicies were in the green with the Dow Jones index gaining 0.2 per cent, the S&P 500 up 0.2 per cent and the Nasdaq rising 0.5 per cent.

That was despite some weaker consumer confidence data released in the United States, which was driven by increased concerns about the job market. We’ll have more on that soon.

All of this means we’re on track for the ASX to open higher, with futures currently pointing to a gain of about 0.2%.

It’s another big day of finance news so let’s get to it.

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