Lights out for Brookfield bid

Happy Friday Superheroes,

It’s been a bit of a busy week! The RBA decided to press pause on a rate change, Brookfield’s takeover proposition of Origin Energy was rejected and from 2024, if you want to watch international cricket tournaments, you’ll need an Amazon Prime Video subscription.

Here’s this week’s most interesting stories 👇

Rejected (again)

One of the most talked about acquisitions this year – North American based consortium Brookfield’s takeover of ASX listed Origin Energy – was squashed by shareholders this week. 

Australian Super and other shareholders of Origin Energy have smashed Brookfield’s and EIG’s dreams after over a year of the latter trying to garner support in its bid to privatise Australia’s largest energy provider.

The acquisition was first brought up in November 2022 but despite strong lobbying from Origin’s board and Brookfield to garner support, the $9.39-a-share “best and final” offer was rejected by shareholders on Monday.

So what’s next? 

Well while Brookfield hasn’t publicly made a comment about the failed acquisition, a source familiar with the matter said it had no plans to return with an improved offer for Origin Energy. Rather the source commented that the Australian Government’s green energy plans would be negative for Origin’s future earnings. 👀

Will Brookfield make another play for Origin Energy? Or set its sights on another Aussie energy provider? Guess we’ll have to wait to see. 

Amazon hits it for six!

For our cricket fans, it was announced this week that Amazon Prime Video will be the exclusive Aussie broadcaster of ICC sanctioned tournaments including Cricket World Cups, T20 World Cups, the Champions Trophy and the World Test Championship Final until 2027.

The deal means that local cricket fans will require a Prime Video subscription to watch the Aussie Men’s Cricket Team defend both its Cricket World Cup and World Test Championship as well as the Aussie Women’s Cricket Team defend its Women’s Cricket World Cup and the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup.

This is a huge shift in the broadcasting landscape given there won’t be an attached free-to-air partner for ICC sanctioned tournaments – however all Australian Men’s Tests and all Women’s Internationals on home soil will still be available on Seven, and the 2027 and 2031 Men’s Ashes tours will be available on free-to-air via Nine. 

That’s a lot of zeroes

A trillion dollars is a lot of money. But you know what’s more than that? $3 trillion. 

And that’s what Apple’s market cap closed above for the first time since August earlier this week. 

Apple’s value officially crossed the $3 trillion mark for the first time in June, and was the first and only company globally (so far!) to hit that valuation. It remains the most valuable publicly traded company in the world.

The move back to the big 3,000,000,000,000 – I told you it was a lot of zeroes – is a sign of Apple’s relevance in the market, with the company’s stock rising over 55 per cent in 2023 so far.

However, despite the iPhone maker’s popularity in the market, the company already flagged that it isn’t expecting revenue growth in the December quarter – what is typically thought of as the busiest time of the year for the tech giant. 

🔦  Some other things we’re shining the Spotlight on:

AN EARLY CHRISTMAS GIFT?: The RBA announced that it will not be raising interest rates at its last meeting of the year. Instead the cash rate will stay put at 4.35 per cent – much to the relief of homeowners everywhere.

NOT ANOTHER ONE: Big four bank Westpac suffered an outage earlier this week where its mobile and online banking services were unavailable to some customers following a routine technology update.

FIVE STARS: Ride share giant Uber has been selected to join the S&P 500 Index. The announcement (made Friday last week) saw the company’s share price lift over five per cent this week (so far).

A SAD SONG: While music streamer Spotify released its highly anticipated Spotify Wrapped last week, this week the company announced it would cut 17 per cent of its workforce. This is Spotify’s third round of layoffs this year as it looks to become “both productive and efficient.”

Before we wrap up, we’re super proud to announce that for the third year in a row, Superhero has won Money Magazine’s Best Value Online Share Broker for 2024 🎉 We’re beyond excited for what’s to come in 2024 and wanted to thank you all for sticking with us over the last three years.

And that’s all for this week’s Spotlight!