THE NEWS WRAP: Greens call for bank levy

Greens MP Adam Bandt has called for a levy to be imposed on the major banks to increase competition in the industry.

Bandt says government support of the big banks – through discounted access to the wholesale funding guarantee scheme, combined with the “four pillars” policy – has reinforced the dominance of the big four lenders.

Super fund grilled on $500m loss

One of Australia’s largest industry super funds is being investigated after having lost more than $500 million when it removed currency hedging in the middle of the global financial crisis.

Advisers to the $5.8 billion MTAA Superannuation Fund have been examined under oath in the past month by an inspector investigating the performance of the fund in the three years to June 2010.

Apple unveils iTunes Match at WWDC

Apple chief Steve Jobs has unveiled his company’s new online music service, iTunes Match, at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

iTunes Match will give users access to as many as 20,000 songs online at a cost of $US25 a year. The new music service is part of a broader online storage service called iCloud, which will let customers share content between devices by storing the information at an Apple data centre.

Overnight

The Australian dollar was over a third of a US cent lower this morning, ahead of the Reserve Bank’s decision on interest rates amid global risk aversion.

At 7am, the dollar was trading at US107.13 cents, down from US107.53 cents yesterday.