Pokie plunge leads market lower: Economy round-up

Heavy selling in Tatts Group and Tabcorp Holdings, the two companies set to lose under a new poker machine licensing regime for Victoria announced yesterday, has helped push Australian markets lower today.

At 12.20pm the S&P/ASX200 is down 0.7% on yesterday’s close to 5409.3.

Tatts Group and Tabcorp holdings have both suffered big falls to their share prices today – at midday Tatts was down 28.7% to $2.61 and Tabcorp was down 21.16% to $11.32c – following yesterday’s announcement that they will lose their pokie licence duopoly in 2012.

And the Australian dollar has continued its strong performance of recent days – well, it’s mostly about the weak US dollar – and at 12.25pm was trading at US93.33c.