At midday, the sharemarket is down with an overnight tech rout in the US weighing on the benchmark.
The S&P/ASX is 59.6 points, or 0.8 per cent, lower at 7147.3. The All Ordinaries is also down 0.8 per cent.
Tech stocks are 1.9 per cent lower, leading the decline, with sector heavyweights WiseTech Global, Xero and NEXTDC all down more than 1.5 per cent.
IGO, which trades ex-dividend as of today, is the worst performing on the benchmark, down 5.8 per cent.
Shares in drug developer Starpharma are up 42 per cent after positive interim results for its cancer drug, DEP irinotecan.
Centuria’s industrial REIT is down 0.5 per cent after news the trust had offloaded $70 million in Melbourne property assets, as part of a “strategic divestment”.
Dreadnought Resources is up 3.8 per cent after posting high-grade neodymium and praseodymium results from its WA-based project.
Viva Energy is down 1.5 per cent. The fuel retailer has confirmed that major shareholder Vitol is selling a 16 per cent stake of its stake in the company. The $714 million block trade, first revealed by The Australian Financial Review’s Street Talk column, will bring the oil trading giant’s remaining stake to around 30 per cent. Fellow fuel retailer Ampol is down 1.9 per cent.
Shares in Pact Group are up 6.7 per cent, after billionaire businessman Raphael Geminder revealed his is taking the struggling packaging manufacturer private.
Geminder’s Kin Group, which owns a 50 per cent stake in Pact Group, has made a 68¢ per share off-market takeover offer for the remaining stake. That’s close to the most recent 67.5¢ closing price for the shares on Tuesday. Shares last traded at 72¢.
