Most influential Australian brands on LinkedIn revealed; Motoring lobby backflips on opposition to fuel tax: Midday Roundup

Australian professionals consider The Australian Institute of Business, Telstra and the Commonwealth Bank to be the most influential brands, according to social networking platform LinkedIn.

The financial services industry dominates LinkedIn’s list of the ten most influential Australian brands, with the ANZ and National Bank of Australia taking out the fourth and fifth spots respectively.

Deloitte, Qantas and Optus also made the list.

LinkedIn’s head of marketing solutions for Australia and New Zealand, Matt Tindale, said in a statement the list shows that the most effective brands on LinkedIn encourage their employees to share their content.

“The brands achieving cut-through are developing high-quality content that is personalised to their audience’s interest areas and are humanising it by getting their employees to amplify it through their networks,” he said.

“Brands that get content, context and relevance right at scale are winning.”

Motoring lobby backflips on opposition to fuel tax

The Australian Automobile Association has renounced its opposition to the Abbott government’s plan to alter the fuel excise after previously describing the policy as a tax grab, according to Fairfax.

The government is negotiating with the Greens to pass a 2014 budgetary measure to increase the fuel excise, with the Greens hoping to see a portion of the funds raised by the tax to go to funding public transport.

The nation’s peak motoring lobby is now backing the policy, saying putting money into public transport will help ease road congestion.

Peter Strong, the executive director of the Council of Small Business of Australia, previously told SmartCompany that small business owners will feel the pinch should the price of fuel go up.

“If you’re in a business where you’re using your car a lot you’re going to have to think about what this means,” he said.

“It would be really nice to have the government highlight what it means for specific sectors, not just generically for business. The thing about a petrol rise is it is going to impact some sectors more than others.”

Shares up on open

Local shares have made positive returns this morning off the back of a strong showing from Wall Street.

Ric Spooner, chief market analyst for CMC Markets, said in a statement this morning’s healthy start was thanks to ongoing moderate inflation in the US and yesterday’s underperformance.

“Despite these positive factors, it’s likely that looming deadlines in the Greek debt crisis will sound a note of caution and cap market exuberance today,” Spooner said.

“Today’s trading looks likely to remain inside yesterday’s range on the ASX 200. From a chart point of view this would leave today’s trading as a neutral, indecisive day but with the short term downtrend intact and the index struggling at the resistance of its 200 day moving average at around 5584.”

The S&P/ASX200 benchmark was up 67.7 points, rising 1.21% to 5524.9 points at 11:56am AEST. On Thursday, the Dow Jones closed up 1%, rising 180.10 points to 18,115.84 points.