Record coal exports to China boost Aurizon's forecast

Aurizon chief executive Lance Hockridge has signalled that cost-cutting by mining customers is paying off, with the rail operator hauling record amounts of coal in the first half of the year and raising 2014 forecasts, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The weakening Australian dollar and extensive cost-cutting by key customers such as the BHP Mitsubishi Alliance had improved local miners’ competitiveness as they sold coal to China, Mr Hockridge said.

“Our Australian customers are very focused on retaining, indeed improving, their market share of the available demand, and that's all about a cost and efficiency game,” he said.

UGL boss denies ‘blowing the place up’

UGL chief executive Richard Leupen has defended his 13-year tenure at the engineering contractor, saying he had not “blown the place up” after abandoning its interim dividend and scaling back the group's 2014 profit forecast, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

UGL's shares fell 12%, close to eight-year lows reached in December, after engineering profits tumbled 40% in the first half.

Leupen, who has been UGL's chief executive since 2000, argued the group's business model was holding up “reasonably well” under stress as a 27% rise in property group DTZ's earnings and a lower tax rate boosted first-half net profits. “I didn't get us into potentially some of the biggest trouble this company could have found itself in,” Leupen said.

AWU-Rio deal puts jobs above pay rises

Rio Tinto has struck a landmark workplace agreement with the Australian Workers Union that forgoes guaranteed pay rises in exchange for better job security and protection of conditions that could previously be cut at the company’s discretion, according to The Australian.

The deal, which Rio and the AWU last night both applauded for its flexibility, covers workers at the company’s Bell Bay aluminium smelter in Tasmania, which in 1994, was the first major plant in the country to be de-unionised.