[thorn bird]

Business is business according to the big end of town.

No one should be under any miscomprehension that Sydney Airport is a monopoly.

As a famous person once said "Everyone abhors a monopoly unless you own one"

A bank once bought an airport for around 5 billion Dollars.

That airport turned over a billion dollars a year, give or take, with reported profit margins of over 70%.

They ran the airport for more than a decade, yet they paid no Tax.

The big end of town describes that as "creative accounting".

After they had retrieved the funds they had paid out to gain the airport plus a nice little profit

They then IPO'd their asset, making its anyones guess how much more treasure they gained but it would have been substantial.

On tonights news we hear that a superannuation fund, essentially a trust, is bidding to buy out the company the "bank" created, which is essentially illegal as the Airport Act precludes a trust from owning an airport, but what the hell, the Act also precludes a foreign entity from owning an airport, so its not surprising that the leaseholder of the airport is a company that resides in the Bahamas a notorious tax haven, which may explain the lack of tax paid.

The offer is 22.5 Billion dollars which amounts to almost five times the original purchase price for what was a public asset owned by the people of Australia.

Ah the machinations of the big end of town playing us all for suckers, but then I'm just pissed I didn't buy shares in the "bank" at the time.

Who cares that we have one of the most expensive airports in the world from which aviation operates, certainly not the big end of town.