ANZ to pay $250m penalty, ASX finishes slightly up — as it happened

Australia's share market finished slightly up, with the ASX 200 33 points higher at 8,621.

Gold is down 0.17% to $6560.

Brent crude is down 0.1% to just over $59USD.

The Australian dollar continues to cling on just above 66 US cents.

Bitcoin is up 2.5% to $87,791USD.

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TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, says it's signed binding agreements with three major investors to form a joint venture to operate TikTok's US app.

Led by American and global investors in a bid to avoid a US government ban, it's a big step toward ending years of uncertainty.

The deal comes after years of battles that began in August 2020, when President Donald Trump first tried unsuccessfully to ban the app.

The Productivity Commission has released its final reports for the year, with a raft of recommendations across areas from the workforce to tax to technology, energy to the care economy.

One of the pillars involves  moving to a hybrid corporate tax system, combining a lower company income tax of 20% for small and medium businesses earning up to $1 billion, and a tax rate of 28% for larger firms, with a net cashflow tax of 5% for all companies.

The Commission estimates the move would increase GDP by just over $13 billion (0.7%).

But the industry body for accountants, CPA Australia, argues the changes would add layers of complexity and ultimately cost consumers.

“This additional tax will create uncertainty and confusion for taxpayers and advisers alike," CPA Australia Tax Lead Jenny Wong says.

“This complexity will drive up compliance costs, increase administrative burdens and make Australia’s tax system harder to navigate for businesses already struggling with red tape.”

You can read the final reports here.

The Japanese 10 year bond has hit 2% — the highest in 17 years after the Bank of Japan raised interest rates to levels unseen in three decades.

In a widely expected move, the BOJ raised short-term interest rates to 0.75% from 0.5% in the first increase since January. The decision was made by a unanimous vote.

The move takes interest rates to levels unseen since 1995, when Japan was reeling from the burst of an asset-inflated bubble that drew the BOJ into a prolonged battle with deflation.

The bank has signaled its readiness for further hikes beyond next year, taking another landmark step in ending decades of huge monetary support and near-zero borrowing costs.

The yen has fallen slightly in choppy trading after the decision, by around 0.3% to 103 per dollar.

Much of the yen's trajectory now hinges on BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda's press conference at 5.30pm AEDT to lay out the future interest rate path.

 - with Reuters

The Bank of Japan has raised its benchmark rate today by a quarter of a percentage point to 0.75%.

It's now the highest rate in 30 years.

It follows evidence that inflation in Japan remains above the BoJ's target.

All eyes will now be on the governor's remarks, which we'll bring you shortly.

The Nikkei has extended its rise slightly, up 1.3%.

ANZ has released a statement after the Federal Court ordered it pay a $250 million penalty, indicating it's working on its risk management and its service to retail customers.

"ANZ is focused on significantly improving its management of non-financial risks across the bank, with a dedicated program of work underway as part of its Root Cause Remediation Plan.

"In addition, ANZ has established an ASIC Matters Resolution Program within Australia Retail to meet commitments to ASIC to deliver improvements across a number of areas in its Retail division.

"Both programs of work will be reviewed by Promontory, an independent expert appointed to review and report on progress and delivery of this work."

Despite a record combined penalty of $250 million being awarded against the bank by the Federal Court, ANZ is trading higher.

Around 2:00pm AEDT the bank's shares were up 1% to $36.40.

The $250 million penalty was only $10 million higher than what ANZ had previously agreed to with regulator ASIC, and that's chump change for a bank that made a $5.9 billion net profit last financial year.

It must be noted the entire banking sector is higher today, following on from strong gains on Wall Street overnight amid optimism US interest rates will keep falling further in 2026.

Back in September, ANZ was facing a record $240 million penalty for engaging in "unconscionable conduct" in some of its bond trading for the federal government, as well as "widespread misconduct" affecting nearly 65,000 retail customers.

The bank and ASIC agreed on that amount, but a Federal Court judge has today decided that wasn't enough.

Justice Jonathan Beach increased the penalty for ANZ’s inaccurate reporting of secondary bond market turnover data by $10 million, bringing the penalty in relation to that misconduct to $50 million, and the total to $250 million.

His reasoning: ANZ's conduct was both ‘inexcusable’ and had ‘no redeeming feature whatsoever’ and that a ‘very substantial penalty needs to be imposed to achieve both specific deterrence and general deterrence.’

It's the largest combined penalties ASIC has ever secured against a single entity.

You can read our earlier recap of the case below.

Is 2025 the year of the home battery?

Australian's have lept on the federal government's Cheaper Home Battery Program with unexpected enthusiasm that's prompted the government to triple its size.

Under the program, announced in the run-up to the election in April and which came into effect in July, households and small businesses can claim rebates on the up-front cost of batteries.

The Commonwealth Bank commodities research team says it's expecting the ratio of battery to solar installations across the country to 90 per cent by the end of the year.

That's a huge jump from a ratio of 18% in 2023, and 25% in 2024, "suggesting households are in better position to self-generate and store electricity", today's Commodity Daily update says.

"The installations to date in H2 2025 are estimated at 160,000, signalling a +254%/yr increase from H2 2024 and underscoring the strong uptake of the program."

This comes off the back of unexpectedly strong uptake of the scheme, which prompted the government to make a massive cash injection last week just six months after its launch —  an extra $4.9 billion, taking the program funding from $2.3bn to $7.2bn over the next 4 years.

The massive uptake also means the energy minister Chris Bowen expects domestic battery capacity to hit 40GWh by 2030, eclipsing that of utility scale batteries, which is expected to bring online 25-30GWh.

Solar and battery industries have expressed concerns about the risks of a boom-bust cycle fuelled by the scheme.

CBA notes: "The potential for behind-the-meter storage to overshoot expectations is...worth watching in coming years."

Read more about the government's scramble to boost the scheme —  and the industry concerns around it —  below.

Co-founder and former CEO of tech giant WiseTech, Richard White, has been cleared by an internal review of allegations he misused company funds in relation to two people who were at a time either WiseTech employees, suppliers or contractors.

It marks the conclusion of a review that previously found Mr White misled the firm's board about the nature of several relationships.

He is now the company's executive chair.

The company posted an ASX announcement last night that the review, undertaken by Seyfarth Shaw, found "no evidence" to support allegations Mr White used company funds inappropriately to pay for overseas travel, rent and plastic surgery for one of the individuals, and travel as well as financial dealings in relation to companies associated with another.

It said another matter raised about a third individual was being assessed "through a separate confidential company process".

WiseTech shares are up 2% today.

The ACCC says it will not oppose Coles acquiring leasehold interests to establish new supermarkets in Victoria at Mt Atkinson Major Town Centre and Deanside Central Town Centre, subject to an undertaking.

The consumer watchdog had concerns the proposed acquisitions would have the effect, or be likely to have the effect, of substantially lessening competition in the retail supply of groceries and household products within the local markets of each of Deanside Central and Mt Atkinson.

Coles operates more than 800 supermarkets nationwide.

The court-enforceable undertaking accepted by the ACCC requires Coles to divest its ownership and interest in a site at the nearby Kororoit Town Centre.

The two proposed acquisitions combined with Coles’ interest in the Kororoit site would have meant consumers would have limited choice beyond Coles supermarkets in the relevant local area.

Mt Atkinson, Deanside and Kororoit are all areas close to each other, in the Melton Growth Corridor, northwest of Melbourne. Each of the relevant Coles sites in these areas is suitable for large format supermarkets.

Coles has undertaken to divest the Kororoit site to Neale Deanside Developments Pty Ltd, trading as Oreana, so that it will be available for a competitor to enter the local area. The ACCC has approved this purchaser.

“Without the divestiture undertaking, the proposed acquisitions would have given Coles three supermarkets within close proximity to each other, in local areas with few alternative sites suitable for supermarkets and few existing competitors,” ACCC Deputy Chair Mick Keogh said.

Macquarie Group has agreed to pay a fine of $35 million for systemic failures that led to years of misreporting short sales at its Macquarie Securities unit in Australia.

The corporate regulator ASIC alleged the brokerage arm of Macquarie misreported up to 1.5 billion short sales over a decade and a half and took the bank to court in May.

Macquarie Securities admitted it failed to correctly report at least 73 million short sales between December 11, 2009 and February 14, 2024.

ASIC said it is estimated that Macquarie Securities misreported between 298 million and 1.5 billion short sales, adding the inaccurate reporting was due to multiple systems-related failures, many of which remained undetected for more than a decade.

Macquarie Securities also acknowledged incorrectly reporting regulatory data for more than 633,000 orders submitted to the market operator between November 16, 2022 and March 21, 2023.

ASIC said its action against the brokerage arm is part of its broader body of work addressing misconduct and failures to comply with regulatory obligations by large Australian financial institutions.

Shares of Macquarie Group was up 1.5% to $200.55.

In the first 30 minutes of trade, all sectors were higher except for the energy sector, which shed 0.4%.

Education jumped 2.1% while tech rose 1.4%.

Here were the top and bottom movers in early trade.

The ASX 200 has opened higher on Friday, adding 0.5% to 8,628, by 10:15am AEDT.

The Bank of England has cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point to 3.75% with BoE Governor Andrew Bailey saying that further reductions would be "a closer call".

In an interview with broadcasters, Mr Bailey said he was "very encouraged" by how far inflation had fallen since the middle of the year when it reached a peak of 3.8%.

Official data on Wednesday showed that inflation dropped to 3.2% in November from 3.6% in October.

"I think now that we're on a path where we'll probably be around this level for a few months. But we think that come the spring, April or May time, we should see another quite sharp drop, and take this, I hope, to around target," he said.

The BoE forecast in early November that inflation would remain above its 2% target until the second quarter of 2027.

"We're going to come back to target sooner than we thought. So that's encouraging. All of this is very encouraging. And for me, certainly, it was a strong basis to cut today," Mr Bailey said.

British inflation remains higher than in other large, advanced economies.

Mr Bailey said that even after the latest cut, he believed that interest rates were still bearing down on inflation — a view that was not shared by some of the Monetary Policy Committee members who voted against the cut.

But he said that interest rates were getting closer to a neutral level and rate cuts were likely to become less frequent.

"The calls will become closer, and I would expect the pace of cuts, therefore, to ease off at some point. But I'm not going to judge exactly when that is, because it's too uncertain at the moment," he said.

Reporting with Reuters

The European Central Bank has kept its policy rates steady on Thursday, a move that probably closes the door to further rate cuts in the near term.

Asked at a press conference whether the ECB's next rate move was more likely to be up than down, the bank's President Christine Lagarde said policymakers agreed there was "no set date for any move".

It was a unanimous view around the table, she said, repeating the ECB line that it would set borrowing costs meeting-by-meeting depending on incoming data and that it was not pre-committing to a particular rate path.

"With the degree of uncertainty we are facing, we simply cannot offer forward guidance," she added.

In its statement, the ECB said the uncertain global outlook would remain a drag on growth in the 20-country eurozone and renewed its appeal for national governments to push ahead with reforms to make the economy more efficient and competitive.

In its new projections, the ECB still sees inflation dipping below 2% next year and in 2027, mostly on lower energy costs, but then expects it to come back to the target in 2028.

It signalled that services inflation might decline more slowly than expected due to wage costs.

Output growth was seen as slightly quicker this year because the eurozone economy is proving more resilient than feared to the impact of higher US tariffs and cheap Chinese imports. Lagarde said exports meanwhile remained "sustainable" in the current climate.

The ECB now expects growth of 1.4% this year, 1.2% in 2026, and 1.4% in 2027 and 2028.

Reporting with Reuters

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1%, to 47,951, the S&P 500 gained 0.8%, to 6,774 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.4%, to 23,006.

Trump Media & Technology Group, the company which owns the US president's social media platform Truth Social, has bought a fusion power company for $US6 billion ($9 billion).

Fusion energy, which is different from nuclear energy, has long been hoped to generate vast amounts of energy with little danger but has so far not been commercially viable.

The unusual tie-up comes as the Trump administration pushes power-hungry AI technology that will require a massive build-out of energy sources.

Read more by clicking the link below.

The three major indexes on Wall Street have rebounded from three-week lows on Wednesday, while the Russell 2000 index, tracking rate-sensitive small caps, has advanced 1%.

Seven of the 11 S&P sectors advanced, led by consumer discretionary (+1.9%) as Lululemon surged 4.8% on a report that activist investor Elliott has acquired more than a $US1 billion stake in the athletic-wear company.

Starbucks also rallied 5.1%.

Among tech stocks, Micron Technology jumped 13% after the company forecast quarterly profit at nearly double what analysts were expecting on strong artificial intelligence-related demand.

Other memory companies including SanDisk and Western Digital also surged, while the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index climbed 3.2%.

Companies' massive debt-backed spending on developing AI technology and uncertainty about how they plan to monetise it have plagued risk-taking this quarter.

Oracle climbed 0.7%, recovering from a fall on Wednesday when funding plans for a Stargate data centre sparked a broad equities selloff.

Trump Media & Technology jumped 38.1% after the company and fusion power firm TAE Technologies said they have agreed to combine in an all-stock deal valued at more than $US6 billion.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order to expedite reclassifying cannabis as a less dangerous drug, boosting shares of cannabis companies.

Reporting with Reuters