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Porsche, Ferrari and other fast-car dealers are licking their lips at the prospect of Australian stockbrokers hitting the streets with bulging pockets from record annual bonuses.
A potent combination of the resources boom and a fired-up A$1 trillion superannuation industry is about to deliver the biggest dividends for brokers and analysts.
So bullish is sentiment at present that the Australian equity markets were described this week by Goldman Sachs JBWere as a "monster truck, crushing everything in its path".
Behind the big wave is a swag of people taking their share of the cream - even humble research analysts earning A$400,000 ($455,000) a year can expect bonuses of up to A$2 million from last year's trading results.
Last year there were 614 equity deals in the capital markets worth A$49 billion and a noteworthy trend is the increase in trading activity among individuals.
E*Trade, for instance, flagged that first half earnings would rise 75 per cent in 2006-2007 over the same period in 2005-2006.
The rocketing fortunes of stockbrokers and investment advisers was made clear on Thursday when Wall St banking hulk Lehman Brothers made three Australian directors of boutique outfit Grange Securities $100 million richer.
Lehman Brothers is the only major US bank that does not have a big footprint in the Australian market and its takeover of Grange, which has a solid niche in fixed interest and hybrid securities, is planned as the launching pad to much bigger things.
"Over the next five years this is absolutely going to become a first-rate investment bank," said Lehman Brothers Asia boss, Jesse Bhattal. The estimated A$120 million buyout of Grange "fills the last geographic gap in terms of the Asia-Pacific" for Lehmans.
The firm wants to turn Grange Securities into a top-five operator in Australia in investment banking, equities and corporate finance, taking on other North American groups such as JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Macquarie Bank and Europe's UBS.
For payouts of more than A$30 million each, Grange's executive director Geoff Malkin, chairman Tony Berg and managing director Glenn Willis voiced no opposition to Lehman's ambitious growth plans in Australia.
"We've got strong growth plans across all our businesses," Willis said. "We will need to be able to attract talented people to achieve those plans and deliver on the results we intend to."
And that will be Lehman's first snag. The booming stockmarket means that a poaching war between banks for top talent is a high probability.
Grange's own accounts already show the drag from a rising wages bill.
For the 12 months to June last year, Grange posted a A$5.65 million profit, which was down 18 per cent on the previous year because of increased employment costs.
Revenues were up 11.4 per cent during the same period but at A$120 million for the estimated buyout, Lehman has still paid nearly 15 times pretax profit for the Australian boutique securities firm.
The full multiples simply reflect what's going on in the broader marker for mergers and acquisitions, although the competition regulator this week sought to hose down some of the bullish M&A expectations for this year.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman, Graeme Samuel, pledged this week to impose strict new rules on corporate mergers after becoming increasingly frustrated by the way some companies have turned their back on pledges made to the regulator in their bids to ensure merger approval last year.
Under the new rules which took effect on January 1, companies now have the ability to get their mergers and acquisitions approved directly by the Australian Competition Tribunal, allowing them for the first time to bypass the ACCC.
But Samuel and his ACCC troops also have the ability to challenge mergers being examined by the Competition Tribunal and Samuel has signalled he will do just that, flagging his concerns about companies trying to "game" the regulator.
"There will be no flexibility - and I emphasise no flexibility - in the use of the formal process, at least in the early stages over the first several months or so," Samuel said.
"I just want to be very careful that with a new process we don't find ourselves locked into a position under the law where an anti-competitive merger slips through because of our adopting, or trying to adopt, some commercial flexibility.
"So the formal process will be administered very tightly and rigorously and inflexibly until we see how it operates in practice."
Those stockbrokers had better enjoy their bonuses while the sun shines.
