Australia

Lazard Australia Private Equity is entertaining offers for its stake in Scottish Pacific Debtor Finance.

A component of Asian financial integration.

BlackRock predicts a huge consolidation of Australia's industry super funds, leading to a shake-out of Australian fund managers.

TPG Capital has hired Credit Suisse director and co-head of corporate finance for Southeast Asia, Francis Woo, as a principal for its Southeast Asia team.

A debt-for-equity swap has been proposed by Goldman Sachs and CVC Capital Partners for CVC's Australian television network Nine.

Australian companies may soon be able to tap China's 1.8 trillion yuan or US$285 billion domestic bond market,

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank boosted its earnings by $40 million through the sale of its 7.8 percent stake inlisted wealth management firm IOOF.

Pacific Equity Partners agreed to buy cleaning and catering contractor Spotless Group after raising its bid a second time to A$720 million or $753 million.

Standard & Poor's assigned its 'A+' long-term debt rating to an Australian dollar-denominated senior note issued by the Sydney branch of BTMU.

Macquarie Group cut about 10 percent of its investment banking workforce in Asia last week.

Risk-focused financial advisers in Australia are optimistic about the outlook towards them and their practices despite the changes in the industry.

NAB posted unaudited cash earnings of $1.4 billion in the first quarter of the 2012 financial year.

Islamic financing wealth manager Crescent Wealth and Thomson Reuters launched a new index that will screen Australian Stock Exchange listed.

Over $5billion of the recent issuance of covered bonds were denominated in Australian dollars, due to large transactions from Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Westpac.

The Australian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association is working to attract Asian investors.

The Board of the Aberdeen Australia Equity Fund, Inc. approved a change to the Fund's 80% non-fundamental policy, which will be effective March 14, 2012.