News Round Up

Investors are being faced with a welter of fixed interest offerings at present. The two latest are a retail bond from WestpacTrust and a second capital notes offering from meat processor Richmond.

The WestpacTrust three year bond pays 5.5% annually and the minimum investment is $10,000.

They are unsecured senior ranking debt and offer better security than other options such as capital notes.

Standard and Poors has given them an AA- rating.

Richmond says it plans to raise up to $50 million through the issue of unsecured, subordinated capital notes next year.

It successfully raised $50 million through a notes issue in February. The issue was over-subscribed and applications had to be scaled

The reconfirmation comes after the research house completed a review of BT's corporate strength and its sector strength rating: Australian equities.

The researcher downgraded BT in both areas but the changes weren't sufficient to affect the overall rating.

However, Morningstar has moved the Pacific Basin share fund up one notch to a four star fund, but taken one star off the Global Bond Fund making it a three star one.

These changes can about due to performance rather than qualitative factors.

Morningstar says 59% of BT's funds are either four or five star rated, and the proportion of five star funds has increased over the past year.

Chartist failed to pick its demise
Charting software provider Henley Communications has ceased trading, blaming a failed expansion into Australia and a downturn in markets for its demise.

The company raised $2.1 mill last year through an IPO ($1.2 mill) and a private placement ($900,000).

It aimed on having 39,000 software subscribers by March 2002, however only as about 1000 so far.

In its investment statement last year the company valued itself at $20 mill and forecast a profit of $162,000 on sales of $5.16 mill in the year to March 31, 2001. In reality it reported a loss of $687,883 on sales of $218,868.