Rachel Waterhouse from the Australian Shareholders Association spoke to ABC’s The Business last night about the ongoing scandal at WiseTech.
She says the ASX listed entity’s shareholders have expressed concern about succession planning for the company.
The share price has fallen this week after questions were raised about the actions of its founder and CEO Richard White.
“The board feel they have the right leadership team in place,” she says.
“As far as retail shareholders, we’re concerned around succession planning. There’s a lot of reliance in a founder-led organisation on the CEO.”
“A lot of the allegations out in the media, they are impacting the share price.”
Ms Waterhouse wouldn’t say if Mr White should step aside, saying it’s a decision for the board and Mr White.
She also isn’t sure if the issues will be fixed by WiseTech’s scheduled AGM next month.
Watch more here:
Loading…
Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO faces sex trafficking charges
The former head of the clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch is facing charges of running an international sex-trafficking ring, targeting vulnerable young men.
This video from ABC News.
Loading…
US home sales at lowest level in 14 years
This note from ANZ:
Existing home sales fell 1.0% m/m to 3.84m in September vs consensus expectation of a small uptick. Sales slowed to their lowest level in nearly 14 years.
It is likely that consumers are holding back their decisions on major purchases ahead of the upcoming presidential election. The median price of existing homes was USD404.5k, up 3.0% y/y.
Speaking of… what were your thoughts on this stunt?
Banking union raising concerns about AI
More on that story by Nassim Khadem:
The union for finance sector workers has concerns about the way AI is being used and expects there could be thousands of job losses.
“If some of the large banks were to replace their contact centre staff with AI, that would cost thousands of jobs across Australia,” Finance Sector Union national assistant secretary Nicole McPherson says.
She wants more transparency from the banks, including about how people’s jobs will change.
“We are very worried about people in contact centres, people in administration roles, people in processing roles — we think that they’re the roles that are going to be most quickly impacted by AI.”
How the Big 4 are using AI to assess your home loan
This exclusive from my colleague Nassim Khadem:
ANZ’s chief technology officer Tim Hogarth says AI is currently helping ANZ staff quickly verify documents like pay slips and assess complex loan contracts.
Over time, the technology will be able to give customers insights into how to spend their money.
“AI can now allow us to actually take information from documents and extract all of that meaning and cutting the amount of time it takes from hours and hours, down to sometimes mere seconds,” Mr Hogarth says.
“In future, AI is going to help you find and spot patterns more readily.
“For example, it might help you understand all those subscriptions that you’ve collected over time and give you some ideas on what you might want to do with those.”
AI is also helping ANZ staff with other tasks: it can identify cases of financial hardship so they can interact with a customer before a situation gets dire and the customer may be forced to sell their home. And it can be used as an authentication tool to check people are who they say they are.
A fascinating read!
Australian share market to have muted open
Good morning!
The Aussie share market could open on a muted note this morning, after battered trade on Wall Street. The Dow and S&P both lost almost 1% while the tech heavy Nasdaq lost even more.
Some investors are putting it down to rising Treasury yields, which are pointing to higher interest rates in the future, even though the US Federal Reserve has started cutting rates.
