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Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, the third of June twenty twenty five. Welcome

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Speaker 1: to the Fast five Business News by Fear and Greed,

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Speaker 1: where we give you the top five business stories you

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Speaker 1: need to know in just five minutes. O'm Michael Thompson

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Speaker 1: and good morning Sean Ale.

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Speaker 2: Good morning Michael.

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Speaker 1: Sean Five stories, five minutes. Let's go. Story number one.

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Speaker 1: One of Australia's biggest conglomerates, soul Pats, is merging with

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Speaker 1: building materials group Brickworks, creating a new company worth around

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Speaker 1: fourteen billion dollars.

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Speaker 2: Big deal this one. Both companies have storied history in

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Speaker 2: corporate Australia. They're backed by the billionaire Milner family. For

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Speaker 2: the last fifty six years each company has owned part

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Speaker 2: of the other, so currently Sol Patz owns forty three

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Speaker 2: percent of Brickworks, Brickworks owns twenty six percent of sol Pats.

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Speaker 2: The idea when this was formed in the late sixties

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Speaker 2: was that by buying chees in each other they protect

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Speaker 2: themselves from corporate raiders, and it's succeeded. But now the

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Speaker 2: boss of soul Pats, Todd Barlow, says merging makes strategic

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Speaker 2: and financial sense. Splifying the structure it had scale and

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Speaker 2: creates a more investable company. Solpats is the country's second

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Speaker 2: oldest listed company. Began in eighteen eighty six as a

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Speaker 2: pharmacy business in Sydney's Balmain. Listed in nine oh three

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Speaker 2: as Washington H. Sol Pattinson. Nowadays it has interests in coal, telcos, finance,

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Speaker 2: all sorts of things. Brickworks, listed on the ASEX in

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Speaker 2: nineteen sixty, though is more than ninety years old. Mostly

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Speaker 2: it's been about making bricks, believe it or not. Michael

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Speaker 2: has forty five manufacturing plants, seventeen different brands.

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Speaker 1: Love that you never assume anything with me. Sean look,

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Speaker 1: I mentioned it's worth about what fourteen billion dollars are there?

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Speaker 1: About how big in kind of relative terms compared to

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Speaker 1: other companies there is going to be if and when

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Speaker 1: this goes ahead, So.

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Speaker 2: Four end million. Before the share price moves yesterday, Big

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Speaker 2: Works was up twenty seven percent, sol Pats sixteen percent.

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Speaker 2: The new entity will be close to a top forty company,

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Speaker 2: think quantas James Hardy, Jbhi Fi Cochlear that sort of group.

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Speaker 2: Solpat's boast of never having missed a dividend since listing

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Speaker 2: in nineteen o three, three, and having increased dividends every

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Speaker 2: year since two thousand and one, creating one company will

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Speaker 2: certainly help that street going all.

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Speaker 1: Right, Moving on to story in number two now and

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Speaker 1: relations between Canberra and Washington over defense spending are worsening,

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Speaker 1: with Prime Minister Anthony Alberanezi rejecting US calls for Australia

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Speaker 1: to spend another forty billion dollars a year on the military.

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Speaker 2: Yesterday morning, the Pentagon issue a statement about the meeting

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Speaker 2: between Defense Minister Richard Miles and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegsath.

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Speaker 2: It says that Secretary Hegxeth conveyed that Australia should increase

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Speaker 2: its defense spending to three and a half percent of

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Speaker 2: GDP as soon as possible. Now we've budgeted for two

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Speaker 2: and a half percent of GDP by the end of

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Speaker 2: the decade. Yesterday, the Prime Minister pushed back on news demands.

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Speaker 2: He said, and I quote, what you should do in

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Speaker 2: defense is decide what you need your capability and then

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Speaker 2: provide for it end quote. It adds to tensions between

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Speaker 2: the two countries. They're heightened at the moment, particularly over

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Speaker 2: tariffs and especially still an aluminium tariffs.

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Speaker 1: How about this one. Story Number three. Regional Australia is

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Speaker 1: leading the national property market, with the strongest growth over

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Speaker 1: the past year coming in Western Australia and South Australia

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Speaker 1: outside Perth and Adelaide.

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Speaker 2: Exactly so, Perth and adelaid the best performing capital city

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Speaker 2: markets over the past twelve months, according to Coatality formerly

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Speaker 2: known as core Logic, but the regions in those states

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Speaker 2: have done even better. Beyond Wa and South Australia, the

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Speaker 2: best performing state was Queensland. Again, the regions in the

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Speaker 2: Sunshine State did better than Brisbane. If it invested in

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Speaker 2: New South Wales would have been better off buying regional

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Speaker 2: that was up three percent, rather than Sydney, which is

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Speaker 2: that one percent. Regional Victoria was flat. Problem is, well

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Speaker 2: not problem is, but that actually outperforms Melbourne because it

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Speaker 2: went backwards by more than one percent and the other

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Speaker 2: geography to go backwards was the act.

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Speaker 1: Story Number four. Ukraine launched a massive drone attack on

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Speaker 1: four airfields deep inside Russia. That how strategic bombers used

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Speaker 1: in air raids. Now Ukrainian officials say more than forty

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Speaker 1: aircraft were hit.

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Speaker 2: According to The Financial Times. At the drones struck four

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Speaker 2: Russian military airfields in one coordinated operation, thousands of kilometers

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Speaker 2: away from the front line. Aircraft were burning at each

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Speaker 2: including the Belaya Airfield, which is about five and a

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Speaker 2: half thousand kilometers east of the Ukrainian border. Video footage

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Speaker 2: filmed by a Ukrainian reconnaissance aircraft appears to show one

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Speaker 2: Russian airfield in flames and drones attacking several planes, and

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Speaker 2: a message on ex President of Votimir Zelenski called it

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Speaker 2: an absolutely brilliant result. The operation took eighteen months to execute,

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Speaker 2: was codenamed Operation Spiderweb and was overseen by Zelenski.

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Speaker 1: Last one story number five. Chinese electric vehicle maker BID

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Speaker 1: might be selling record numbers of cars, but at share

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Speaker 1: price is actually falling on the back of concerns over

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Speaker 1: its deep discounting policy.

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Speaker 2: BID sold three hundred and seventy seven thousand passenger cars

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Speaker 2: last month, the highest this year and fifteen percent more

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Speaker 2: than twelve months ago. It's now selling more pure evs

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Speaker 2: than plug in hybrids, but it's share price down five

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Speaker 2: percent yesterday fifteen percent last week. That's because it's been

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Speaker 2: cutting prices by to one third. The reduction is so

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Speaker 2: severe that the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of China's Communist Party,

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Speaker 2: criticize the rat race competition, saying low price, low quality

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Speaker 2: will damage the Maid in China brand. That will put

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Speaker 2: pressure on BYD to increase its prices. And I think

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Speaker 2: that's the moral of the story.

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Speaker 1: All right, Now we go the top five business stories

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Speaker 1: in five minutes. Thank you very much, Sean, Thank you, Michael.

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Speaker 1: It is Tuesday, the third of June twenty twenty five.

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Speaker 1: Remember to hit follow on the podcast, and if five

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Speaker 1: minutes isn't enough, you can find our longer daily show

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Speaker 1: called Fear and Greed wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm

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Speaker 1: Michael Thompson and that was the fast five business news

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Speaker 1: by Fear and Greed. Have a great day.