[zz SMH]Shopping giant falls as US crisis hits home

miles

Danny John and Matt O'Sullivan
December 18, 2007

AUSTRALIA'S second-biggest shopping centre owner has joined the RAMS home loans provider as a casualty of the global liquidity crisis.

Centro Property Group, with Woolworths and Coles among its main clients, yesterday revealed that the cost of borrowing at least $2 billion from US credit markets to fund its expansion in North America had soared so high that its future was now in doubt.

On a day that $54 billion was wiped from the value of Australian shares, Centro's stock plunged 76 per cent, down $4.34 to $1.36. That lopped $3.5 billion off its market value and Centro is now worth just $1.15 billion - compared with $10 billion in May.

The company admitted it was having big trouble repaying the debt and slashed its planned annual payment to shareholders.

Investors across Australia were hit as Centro's difficulties exacerbated concerns about a looming recession in the US. In the biggest one-day fall since August, the benchmark ASX200 index fell 228.2 points to 6263.5 while the broader All Ordinaries dropped 224.3 to 6331.8.

Market strategists said the sell-off illustrated that Australia was not immune to the global credit crunch nor the subprime mortgage crisis in the US, which prompted the freezing of funding markets that has hit companies such as Centro and RAMS.

"The subprime situation is a bit like Voldemort - you never know when he is dead," Nomura Australia's market strategist, Eric Betts, said yesterday. "People are worried about the fragility of the financial system. The era of cheap debt is over - and that was really brought home with a thud."

Last week central banks in Europe and North America tried to avoid US recession with a commitment to pump $100 billion in liquidity into the financial system.

Market strategists expect the severe volatility on the Australian market to continue for at least the next two months as investors search for safe havens in companies without high debt or exposure to the US economy.

miles

这么大的公司也能一下子倒下来.
因为金融界的资金流动广泛,澳洲的金融根本不可能脱离美国经济衰退的影响,金融机构必须更加注意自己的资产,因此,当澳洲经济稍有动作,他们必须反映快速.类似这种大公司轰然倒下,连锁的反应就是很多人失业,投资它的人亏损(注意,跌了76%),银行坏账,而且对房地产市场影响很大,毕竟是大的shopping center。
会不会因此各大银行开始谨慎借贷，另外对贷款高于市价的房子要求付清gap之类的。个人感觉澳洲的房产被高估了，买房的承受力大大降低，因此这个影响多少会在房市中体现出来吧？
请懂行的分析一下,这是不是美国次级贷款危机在澳洲引发危机的标志?