This week in The Fin podcast, senior reporter James Eyers on Apple’s latest push into financial services in Australia, what it means for the consumer and why it’s threatening the big four banks.

Further reading:

• Apple Pay on a roll and the banks are rattled to their core While Westpac and Tyro touted a deal with Apple this week to let iPhones accept payments, senior bankers are worried about where the tech giant will go next.
• Apple lets iPhones accept payments for Westpac and Tyro The move expands the payments market, generating higher fees for banks and Apple, which is continuing to push for a cashless society.
• Apple Pay costs for Australian banks revealed Apple is raking in more than $110 million in annual fees from Australian banks, an amount that will further rise as paying with mobile phones becomes more common.

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This week in The Fin podcast, senior writer Neil Chenoweth and professional services editor Edmund Tadros on the tax controversy engulfing PwC, how the story broke, who was involved and what happens from here.

Required reading:

• Panic at PwC: how a tax scandal played out behind closed doors In the space of 10 days, an almost daily drumbeat of bad news has reduced the firm and its reputation to a level its partners could have barely imagined at the start of the month.
• The inside story of PwC’s tax scandal The consultancy is facing one of the biggest crises in its history following revelations that dozens of PwC operatives used confidential updates on government tax plans to drum up new clients. This is how it happened.
• For your eyes only: How PwC leaks helped global clients dodge tax Accounting giant PwC Australia charged $2.5 million in fees to advise 14 clients how to sidestep new multinational tax avoidance laws in 2016.

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This week in The Fin podcast, companies editor Vesna Poljak and senior reporter Jonathan Shapiro on the reasons behind the Future Fund’s about face and why its decision was a jolt to the investment industry. And senior correspondent Jacob Greber gives his take on this week’s federal budget.

Required reading:

• Is this the dawn of the age of active investing There was a buzz in the lobby of Sydney Sheraton hotel on Thursday morning among the fund managers in attendance at The Australian Financial Review Alpha Live conference.
• Future Fund to embrace stock picking again The head of the $200 billion Future Fund declared the easy gains fuelled by the era of cheap money is over, and the sovereign wealth giant is prepared to back stock pickers again.
• Future Fund’s seismic revamp to hit active funds The Future Fund, has revealed for the first time the reasons behind its decision to cut active stock pickers in favour of low cost algorithms and passive funds.

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This week in The Fin podcast, political editor Phillip Coorey on what to expect from next week’s federal budget, why this might be the time for brave decisions and what lessons Jim Chalmers can learn from Peter Costello.

Suggested reading:

• Chalmers’ budget warning after RBA shock Treasurer Jim Chalmers has used the Reserve Bank’s shock resumption of interest rate rises to warn that fighting Australia’s 7 per cent inflation rate must come ahead of demands to increase welfare spending in next week’s budget.
• Cutting NDIS waste to save more than $60b in a decade The Albanese government expects to save more than $60 billion over the next decade by cutting the growth rate of the “unsustainable” National Disability Insurance Scheme by almost half within three years, and pushing it lower after that.
• Labor MPs join growing calls to increase the dole Four federal Labor MPs have broken ranks to join calls for the government to increase the JobSeeker payment by $24 billion at next month’s federal budget.

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This week in The Fin podcast, technology reporter Jessica Sier on why MilkRun closed its doors, how its failure marks the end of an era of easy money for start-ups in Australia and what that means for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Further reading:

• MilkRun to close doors, all staff made redundant MilkRun, the rapid local delivery service, will close and make its staff redundant, bringing an abrupt end to a company which raised one of the biggest early-stage funding rounds in Australian venture capital history.
• MilkRun collapse kill “spray and pray”at burned venture capital firms The dramatic collapse of delivery start-up MilkRun has left Australian venture capital firms divided over whether to plough fresh money into capital-efficient companies, or to pull back and wait for cash-burning start-ups to snuff themselves out before re-entering the market.
• MilkRun is last man standing With inflation surging in the US and Australia and central banks raising interest rates in the first half of the year, the category of high-growth, high cash-burn start-ups is out of fashion among investors.

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This week in The Fin podcast, wealth editor Aleks Vickovich on the noisy minority opposing the superannuation tax reforms, why they are angry and where the government goes from here. And reporter Hannah Wootton on what Millennials think about the debate.

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This week in The Fin podcast, senior writer Neil Chenoweth on the events leading up to the multibillion-dollar legal battle between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems and what it means for the Murdoch media empire. And reporter Mark Di Stefano tells us about the money and the PR machine behind the case.

Background reading:

• Murdochs can’t avoid testifying Rupert Murdoch and his son, Lachlan, cannot avoid testifying at trial if they are subpoenaed by Dominion Voting Systems in the company’s $US1.6 billion ($2.4 billion) defamation suit over Fox News’s airing of false claims that it rigged the 2020 presidential election, a judge said.
• Jury to weigh Murdochs’ role in Fox-Dominion trial One of the most closely watched US defamation cases in decades is set to begin on Thursday as a Delaware court picks a jury to decide whether Fox News should pay Dominion Voting Systems $US1.6 billion ($2.4 billion) for spreading election-rigging falsehoods.
• ‘Really crazy stuff’: Emails reveal Murdoch trashing Trump poll claims Emails and texts unearthed as part of a major US defamation case against Fox Corporation reveal Rupert Murdoch labelling the Trump campaign’s false claims about election fraud as “really crazy stuff” and “damaging”.

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This week in The Fin podcast, South-East Asia correspondent Emma Connors on how India is poised to overtake China as the world's most populous nation, why this historic shift will change the balance of power and what it means for the global economy and Australia's trade with the region.

Background reading:

• China’s drop in births triggers a new global challenge China is facing a demographic crisis after deaths outstripped births last year for the first time since the country was ravaged by famine under Mao Zedong’s rule in the 1960s.
• Why Australia needs India more than ever (in five charts) Not since China’s rapid rise in the 1990s have people been so excited about what the Australian DFAT describes as an ‘unprecedented economic opportunity’.
• Modi’s India: Condoms, contradictions and global ambitions In April, India will pass China to become the world’s biggest country by population, and it’s flexing its muscles from the G20 stage.

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This week in The Fin podcast, senior reporter Jonathan Shapiro on how the latest financial crisis spread across the globe, what Australian banks and regulators are doing about it and where the next fire might start.

Background reading:

• The dark side of Australian banking exceptionalism Making too-big-to-fail banks even bigger might not be the solution the global banking system needs or wants.
• Total wipeout for Credit Suisse hybrid holders rattles debt investors The total loss for hybrid holders, who have fared even worse than lower ranking equity holders, could have widespread ramifications in already skittish fixed income markets.
• Where the banking crisis goes next The speed with which the banking crisis has rolled out, and government support has rolled in, raises big questions for investors.

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This week in The Fin podcast, reporter Michael Read on what has caused this rental squeeze, how it’s affecting the economy and what’s being done to fix it.

Background reading:

• Record monthly rent surge is a timebomb for inflation Asking rents in capital cities jumped a record-breaking 2.4 per cent in the past 30 days, triggering fears that the increase will further stoke inflation.
• Why rents are only going higher In the past 12 months, rents surged at a record-breaking pace of 14.6 per cent for houses and by 17.6 per cent for units as vacancies plummeted to a record low.
• The suburbs that are home to Sydney’s biggest NIMBYs Councils in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and lower north shore are the city’s most anti-development local government areas, with new research showing aggressive NIMBYism is driving property prices higher amid chronic under-building.

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