Adani And What You Tell Your Mistress!

Aloysuis says to his lover that he intends to leave his wife and move to Queensland, but it’s just a little inconvenient now because well, his son, Bobo’s doing Year 12 and his daughter, Momo’s getting married, but after that, well, there’s nothing to stand in the way of their love. On the other hand, when he goes home, he continues to plan for the overseas trip with his wife for the middle of 2018.

Who’s he lying to?

On the law of averages, it’ll be the lover. It’s not certain, but nothing’s certain.

Although Warren Truss (you know, our Deputy PM) seems to be certain that coal will be around for the next hundred years, because Adani told him so. He tweeted:

“Coalition Friends of Mining heard today of the exciting opportunities the Adani coal mine will deliver to Australia and India for 100 years.”

Well, Warren’s trust in Adani and the excting opportunities notwithstanding, let me remind everyone that companies are required to report changes in their circumstances in a timely manner. In other words, it’s illegal to hold onto information about your bottom line and not report it to the general market. On the other hand, what you say in a general sense can use the same sort of hyperbole as a politician at election time.

In other words, you can tell everyone that you’re excited about your new product and you think it’s going to turn your company into a market leader, but you have to report if sales are so slow that it’ll affect your profits as soon as that information is available. If you, for example, divested yourself of half your personal shares in the company before the update was made public, it’s called insider trading and it’s illegal.

Late last year, Adani announced that it had “secured” a billion dollar loan from the State Bank of India for the coal project in Queensland. Naturally, the Indian Stock Exchange wanted to know if just maybe, there was information that should have been reported, given that financial arrangements of that size are quite significant.

Well, no big deal really, said Adani because we haven’t actually done anything yet, but the bank “has agreed in principle to consider extending financial assistance of an amount up to $US1b for development of Carmichael coal mine”.

(And Aloysuis has told his mistress that “in principle” he’ll leave his wife at some future date, circumstances permitting.)

Let’s just consider Adani’s statement for a moment. Apart from it reminding me of those finance ads that promise you’ll have a response within sixty seconds where I suspect they’ll tell you: “Thanks, for ringing – our response is that we’ll take your details and let you know if the next few days”, there are so many qualifiers that I could just as easily say the I have full support from my wife to try and beat Bart Cummings record of Melbourne Cup winners, on the condition that I can get a training licence and persuade the owners of the top horses to switch to me.

The Bank has agreed in principle to CONSIDER extending financial assistance of an amount of up to $US1b (but not more, only up to that amount).

In other words, Indian Stock Exchange, we didn’t see the need to tell you because well, it’s just something we’ve discussed and they didn’t say go away we’d never lend you money, but hey, nothing’s been finalised, they just said come back later when you know what’s going on.

Now, I’m bringing this old story up to highlight the difference between what Adani are telling analysts and what they’re publicly saying.

As I wrote the other day, they’re telling analysts that the project is on hold until the price of coal improves. However, they assured us that – like Aloysuis – they’re still firmly “committed” to the Queensland project.

Of course, one suspects that if they told that to the analysts, then they’re share price would tank – in much the same way that, after the salmonella scare, a decision by Woolworths to run a campaign to eat more pre-packaged salads would lead one to suspect that management didn’t have a clue and that Masters hardware stores wasn’t going to be a one-off disaster.

So, expect to see lots of rhetoric about the legal challenges to Adani holding up jobs and growth by politicians. As for Adani, look at what they tell the market, not what they tell Australia.

On the lighter side:

Tony Abbott passes away and is met by St Peter who gives him a quick tour of Heaven. At the end, St Peter tells him that because of his life on earth as politician, he has to spend the weekend in Hell. Tony assures him that it’s not necessary, that he was a good politician, but St Peter insists that all politicians have to spend their first weekend in Hell.

Tony takes the elevator to where Lucifer greats him with a beer. “G’day, mate. Would you like to go your room first and have a rest or would you rather go to the spa?”

“I’m not sure,” says Tony, so Lucifer tells him to go to the bar and think about it. Tony goes to the bar and catches up with a few of his Liberal colleagues before he’s mobbed by a group of women who tell him how much they loved him and present him with a bottle of Grange.

After a weekend of drinking, surfing and cycling, Tony goes back up to see St Peter.

“Well,” says St Peter, “would you like to come to Heaven, or would you rather go back to Hell?”

“To be perfectly honest,” says Tony, “I found Heaven a little boring even during the short tour you gave me.”

“Remember this is forever!”

“Ok, Hell it is. I couldn’t stand to be here forever.”

So St Peter puts Tony in the elevator and he goes back down to Hell where Lucifer meets him.

“Ah, Abbott. You get in that cell over there, and we’ll send your tormentors in to…”

“Hang on, where’s the bar and all the stuff I saw when I was here before?” asks Tony.

“Gee mate, we were campaigning, surely you didn’t expect we’d be able to afford all that after you’d voted, did you?”