Doug McTaggart, the chief of the $45 billion state-owned
Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC) talks about the secrets of 16 years of investment success in the Financial
Review – Future Fund folk, please take note (not online).

Insurance Australia Group chief Michael Hawker has completed
a year-long quest, signing up to buy a quarter of
the property insurance arm of China’s biggest private insurer – China
Pacific Property Insurance – for about
$400 million, reportsThe Australian. If successful, it would be
the single biggest investment in China
by an Australian company, says John Durie in the Fin‘s Chanticleer. And would mean a big payday for former PM Bob Hawke, who’s on the payroll of the Chinese connection.

Still on the Toll-Patrick-ACCC three-way tussle, The Oz‘s Bryan Frith
says that if the latter gets away with refusing to initiate court
action
preventing Toll from acquiring Patrick, without offering any reasons,
“it would become a law unto itself.” Meanwhile, on the sidelines,
Lindsay Fox has been busy
preparing the ground for Patrick to take him out of the game, says Elizabeth
Knight in The Sydney Morning Herald.

GlaxoSmithKline’s resurrection last week of its
Australia-developed flu drug, Relenza, seems to confirm Biota’s view
that GSK acted too hastily in trying to kill their drug, says
Matthew Stephens in The Australian.

Origin Energy’s plan to spend $2 billion on two gas-fired
base-load power stations, in Victoria and Queensland, is the first commercial
indication that coal’s domination of the power market may be coming
to an end, says Rod Myer in The Age.

Attention investors, happily aloft on
the updrafts of compound interest and wondering where the next air pocket is,
the first thing to think about is the bond market, says Alan Kohler in The
SMH. The second is economic growth.

Shareholder activist Carl Icahn, who with a group of
investors owns about 3% of Time Warner, has unveiled his plan to break up the
world’s largest media company into four divisions. It’s all on the new website: www.enhancetimewarner.com.
But those who’ve been waiting for this moment, saysForbes, may be wondering why they bothered.

After putting Kirk Kerkorian’s right hand man on the board, General Motors has cut its dividend and chief executive’s pay in
half by way of “equality of sacrifice” as it asks
workers to accept cuts in pay, benefits and jobs, says the Financial Times.

And on the Enron trial, Fortune‘s Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind say the biggest
surprise so far is the “remarkably audacious” theme the defence is taking to
keep its clients out of jail: There was absolutely nothing wrong at Enron.

On Wall St, US
stocks ended lower overnight, as a warning from homebuilder Toll Brothers raised
concern the housing market may be cooling off. The Dow Jones ended down 48.51
points at 10,749.