Regional mortgage lender St George Bank has hit union trouble in its bid to sack local IT specialists and repleace them with cheap overseas labour.
The Finance Sector Union (FSU) will meet St George Bank management today, after staff who are being made redundant refused to train their replacements yesterday.
FSU national secretary Paul Schroder says the jobs of 60 IT staff from Kogarah in Sydney are being outsourced.Mr Schroder says the staff voted to defy orders to train their replacements, who were flown in from overseas this week.“You can get people to work for less than $100 per week to do this work,” he said.“This bank is a profitable bank - it doesn’t need to do this but it is doing this to cut its own costs.“We think that’s the wrong decision for the whole economy and for the bank in particular.“But it’s particularly nasty to expect the people who are losing their jobs to train the people who are taking them.”St George Bank spokesman Jeremy Griffith says the workers do not have to train their replacements if they do not want to.The bank says it has invited staff to apply for jobs in other areas.
If you are a mortgage shopper we suggest that you consider your values when placing your business. After all the mortgage business is a local business, and should be using local people to service the community.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Property investment soars as Aussie investors look for overseas hotspots
Australian property investors are sending huge amounts of investment offshore in search of higher returns and diversified portfolios.
Research by real estate money management firm Jones Lang LaSalle found that Australian investors poured $US5.3 billion ($7.06 billion) into overseas real estate in the first half of this year, up from only $US1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) in the first half of 2005.
Jones Lang LaSalle head of forecasting services John Sears said an increase in the amount of superannuation allocated to listed property trusts (LPT) was largely driving the flight overseas, with LPTs seeking to diversify their portfolios and capitalise on high overseas yields. "There's a huge amount of money flowing into LPTs and they need to find stock,'' he said. "Because there's so much money, there's a lack of stock available in Australia. "LPTs are traditionally seen as a high yielding asset ... So to get the yields, they have to look overseas.''
As a result, Australia is now the third largest international investor in property after the United States and the Middle East. The company's Australian head of research Kathryn Matthews said around 80 per cent of the funds spent overseas in the first half of 2006 were invested in countries outside the Asia Pacific region, particularly in the US. "The US received almost half of our overseas purchases, making Australians the third largest cross border investors in the US,'' she said.
However, Ms Matthews said Australians were increasingly interested in European markets. "Australians invested particularly heavily in Germany where they purchased around $US1 billion ($1.33 billion) worth of assets in the first half of 2006,'' she said. Germany accounted for 19 per cent of Australian offshore property investment in the first six months of this year, followed by Belgium with 6 per cent, the United Kingdom with 3 per cent, Poland and the Netherlands with 2 per cent each, and France with 1 per cent.
Mr Sears said the rising interest in investing in Germany was a result of the county's relatively high yields for the European region coupled with low interest rates, which made borrowing money to invest in the country cheaper.
Source: AAP
Research by real estate money management firm Jones Lang LaSalle found that Australian investors poured $US5.3 billion ($7.06 billion) into overseas real estate in the first half of this year, up from only $US1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) in the first half of 2005.
Jones Lang LaSalle head of forecasting services John Sears said an increase in the amount of superannuation allocated to listed property trusts (LPT) was largely driving the flight overseas, with LPTs seeking to diversify their portfolios and capitalise on high overseas yields. "There's a huge amount of money flowing into LPTs and they need to find stock,'' he said. "Because there's so much money, there's a lack of stock available in Australia. "LPTs are traditionally seen as a high yielding asset ... So to get the yields, they have to look overseas.''
As a result, Australia is now the third largest international investor in property after the United States and the Middle East. The company's Australian head of research Kathryn Matthews said around 80 per cent of the funds spent overseas in the first half of 2006 were invested in countries outside the Asia Pacific region, particularly in the US. "The US received almost half of our overseas purchases, making Australians the third largest cross border investors in the US,'' she said.
However, Ms Matthews said Australians were increasingly interested in European markets. "Australians invested particularly heavily in Germany where they purchased around $US1 billion ($1.33 billion) worth of assets in the first half of 2006,'' she said. Germany accounted for 19 per cent of Australian offshore property investment in the first six months of this year, followed by Belgium with 6 per cent, the United Kingdom with 3 per cent, Poland and the Netherlands with 2 per cent each, and France with 1 per cent.
Mr Sears said the rising interest in investing in Germany was a result of the county's relatively high yields for the European region coupled with low interest rates, which made borrowing money to invest in the country cheaper.
Source: AAP
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