CBA's stark warning; Guzman chair sells stake; oldest shipwreck found

CBA's stark warning; Guzman chair sells stake; oldest shipwreck found

News in brief

ASIC fears: The corporate regulator has raised concerns about the auditing of $80 billion in unlisted superannuation investments, finding some auditors failed to adequately verify valuations that directly affect members' account balances.

 

Fed Court overturn: The Federal Court has overturned the Albanese government's decision to block Regis Resources' $1.3 billion gold mine in central NSW, finding procedural failures in the original Indigenous heritage protection decision.

 

Fight for Austal: Austal shares jumped 10 per cent as a bidding war for its US shipbuilding operations continued, with South Korea's Hanwha given more time to finalise its $1.7 billion offer while rival Wildcat Infrastructure remains in talks.

 

Guzman chair sells: Guzman y Gomez chairman Guy Russo has sold $35.5 million worth of shares in the Mexican fast-food chain, with the company describing the sale as a personal financial planning decision.

 

Shipwreck found: The world's oldest known shipwreck has reportedly been discovered off the Turkish coast, with archaeologists dating the Bronze Age trading vessel to between 4,400 and 4,700 years old.

Fear-o-meter

Cotality: Spring housing market stalls

 

Australia's spring property market has failed to gain its usual momentum, with home sales down more than 20% compared with the same period last year, properties taking longer to sell and capital city vendors accepting their largest discounts in five years.

 

Cotality's [data] shows an estimated 39,747 homes sold nationally in September, down 20.9% on the same month last year, while the median time to sell a property increased to 41 days, compared with 26 days a year earlier.

 

Despite the start of the traditionally busy spring selling season, new property listings were 7.9% lower than a year ago and almost 12% below the five-year average. Yet total advertised stock increased 19.1%, indicating that homes are accumulating on the market faster than buyers are purchasing them.

Fear & Greed Q+A today

In the first interview in our new weekly series on retirement and investing with MLC Expand, CEO Liz McCarthy speaks with Sean Aylmer about how AI is transforming financial advice, including how it's already saving advisers weeks of administrative work each year.

 

"Where we're seeing large language models used extensively is in pre-populating of an application form where all you're doing is re-keying from one spreadsheet to the other.

 

We're doing that with advisors today. It reduces their risk of making an error in that form as they're filling it out, but also allows them to shave off, I think we're saving some advisors nearly twenty-one days a year in effort because of our ability to just take data from one place to another place and process that during an agentic workflow.

 

We do it with application forms, with annual fee consent forms, forms that we think in the future won't be around. It'll all be data used by a large language model or an AI agent to drive those productivity uplifts."

CBA warns of tougher times ahead

 

Commonwealth Bank chief executive Matt Comyn has warned Australia faces a difficult year ahead, with slowing economic growth, stubborn inflation, high interest rates and increasingly volatile international conditions.

 

Speaking at the bank's annual general meeting, Comyn acknowledged the growing pressure on households following four interest rate hikes this year. CBA established 147,000 payment arrangements for customers experiencing financial difficulty last financial year, highlighting the strain on household budgets.

 

Comyn said Australia needed to improve productivity by building more homes, delivering cheaper energy and embracing artificial intelligence. But AI is also creating uncertainty for the bank's own workforce.

 

Chairman Paul O'Malley refused to guarantee AI wouldn't cost jobs, despite pressure from the Financial Services Union. CBA has committed $90 million over three years to help employees develop new skills.

Greed-o-meter

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Australia’s ETF market is closing in on $400 billion, with investors pouring another $6.9 billion into exchange-traded funds in September. According to VanEck, global shares attracted the most money, at $2.9 billion, while Australian shares drew $1.6 billion despite the local market falling 2.6 per cent during the month. Investors also favoured bonds and other income-producing assets.

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Where September's ETF money went

September 2026 net flows by segment (A$m)

Global shares$2,913m

Australian shares$1,626m

Australian bonds and credit$1,038m

Global infrastructure$338m

Global bonds$263m

Commodities$208m

Multi-asset$202m

Cash$188m

Property$129m

Crypto and currency$19m

Source: ASX and TMX, September 2026. Classifications by VanEck.