• Fonterra has sold its New Zealand ice cream company Tip Top to global ice cream company Froneri for $380 million. There will be some one-off costs, but Fonterra tells the market this morning the $380 million price tag represents a gain of $100 million above book value "which would have a positive six cents per share impact on earnings".
• a2 Milk non-executive director Peter Hinton, who is also the partner of the company's founder Dr Corran McLachlan, is retiring. He will be replaced by New Zealand director Pip Greenwood.
• News Corp releases Foxtel data showing subscriber numbers have dropped from 2.4 million in mid-2017 to 2.2 million in December 2018.

Eclipx has changed chief executives as it warns of an impairment charge up to $130 million for the six months ending 31 March, 2019.

Doc Klotz will leave the chief executive role immediately to be replaced by Julian Russell. Currently managing director of Fleet Australia, Bevan Guest, has been appointed chief commercial officer.

"The non-executive board members have been intensely focussed on the best way forward for the Company. This follows the very recent period of disappointing performance," chairman Kerry Roxburgh tells the market this morning.

"We all welcome these significant senior leadership changes. They represent an important step in delivery our stated strategy to improve performance and deliver better outcomes for our shareholders."

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AUD +0.2% to 70.02 US cents
On Wall St: Dow +0.4% S&P 500 +0.4% Nasdaq +0.1%
In New York, BHP +0.8% Rio +2% Atlassian +3%
In Europe: Stoxx 50 +0.3% FTSE -0.1% CAC +0.3% DAX +0.7%
Spot gold +0.2% to $US1286.05 an ounce
Brent crude +0.3% to $US70.62 a barrel
US oil -0.1% to $US61.66 a barrel
Iron ore +2% to $US97.24 a tonne
Dalian iron ore +0.8% to 652 yuan
LME aluminium +0.6% to $US1808 a tonne
LME copper +0.4% to $US6126 a tonne
2-year yield: US 2.27% Australia 1.31%
5-year yield: US 2.26% Australia 1.34%
10-year yield: US 2.47% Australia 1.73% Germany -0.05%
10-year US/Australia yield gap: 74 basis points

IG MARKETS SPONSORED POST

Futures are pointing to a positive start for the ASX this morning, but the fluid nature of trade talks between the US-China is keeping uncertainty in the air.

The latest round of trade talks didn't have the desired outcome. But nevertheless, the always forward-looking equity market closed last week on something of a high-note. It was a choppy day's trade in Asia as the news filtered through that an agreement between the US and China in Washington wouldn't be reached. Ultimately though, and just like the last time tariffs were hiked, financial markets handled the news with aplomb. The simplest explanation for why there wasn't a huge reaction financial markets is roughly this: it "was buy the news and sell the fact" with markets having already discounted a trade-war escalation.

The question moves today to: where to from here? From a pure fundamentalists point of view, those folks probably just wait to see how new trade-barriers show up in the hard-data. That one is probably going to be a slow-burn. Recall, after the last round of tariffs were implemented, it took the better part of a quarter for them to show in the data, and vaguely reflect in market fundamentals.