out to woo usa investors

Big companies out to woo US investors

The heads of some of Australia's biggest companies will be out wooing major US investment houses this week, hoping to attract some of the billions of investment dollars on offer.

Against the backdrop of a solid profit reporting season and a share market trading around record levels, a number of Australian companies will be putting their case to US institutional investors.

The annual North American conference season kicks off on Monday (US time) with the 10th annual JPMorgan Asia Pacific Conference, closely followed by the 20th Merrill Lynch Australia Investment Conference starting Thursday, also in New York.

Treasurer Peter Costello has been called in as a keynote speaker for the Merrill Lynch conference.

Merrill Lynch country head and chairman of investment banking, Kevin Skelton, said the stability of the Australian economy helped make the country an attractive place for US investors to park their money.

Mr Skelton said Australia continued to be considered an important investment market for institutional investors in North America.

He said investors were looking for growth and consistent growth.

"Australian companies tend to grow and keep growing on a consistent basis," he said.

"There's an attraction for a lot of these Australian companies to be a core part of a portfolio."

Australia's attractiveness could be enhanced in the context of record high oil prices and concerns over the US economy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and now Rita.

"Australia's a lot safer place to be investing when you're getting a shock on your home territory," Mr Skelton said.

"It just shows the advantages as an investor of having risk diversification - company and country risk diversification."

As well as making presentations to groups of investors, the Australian executives will be involved in a series of one-on-one meetings with some of the world's biggest equity investors - some of whom have more than $US100 billion ($A131 billion) in funds under management.

Presenting at JPMorgan's New York conference are Coca-Cola Amatil, BHP Billiton, Westfield Group, Centennial Coal, Bluescope Steel, Macquarie Airports and QBE Insurance.

BHP Billiton, Westfield, Macquarie Airports and QBE will then move on to fellow financial services group Merrill Lynch's conference.

There they will be joined by chief executives or chief financial officers from AMP, AXA Asia Pacific, Coles Myer, Insurance Australia Group, Fairfax, Lend Lease, Macquarie Bank, Oil Search, Orica, Qantas, Santos, St George Bank, Suncorp-Metway, Tabcorp, Toll Holdings, Westpac and Woodside.

The following week, JPMorgan will also run investor conferences featuring Australian corporates in Hong Kong, Singapore and Edinburgh.