Hong Kong's second-richest man, Lee Shau Kee, is stepping down as chairman of Henderson Land Development, joining the ranks of the city's aging tycoons handing the reins to the next generation.

The 91-year-old billionaire announced his retirement from the top post before the developer's annual meeting Tuesday. While he remains as an executive director at the firm he founded 46 years ago, his sons Peter Lee Ka Kit and Martin Lee Ka Shing will take over as co-chairmen and oversee its mainland and Hong Kong businesses respectively.

His imminent retirement, which he flagged in March because of his advanced age, comes as other tycoons hand the baton to the younger generation. Li Ka-shing, the city's richest man, last year put his son Victor in charge of the family businesses, while David Li of the Bank of East Asia last week stepped down after a 38-year tenure as CEO, the longest for a major Hong Kong-listed company.

In a farewell interview, Lee said he was positive about the outlook for the property market in Hong Kong.

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"The current market still enjoys substantial housing demand, mainly because interest rates are quite low, and also because Chinese people like to have their own properties," said the nonagenarian, who is worth an estimated $US25 billion ($36.1 billion) according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

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"Therefore, investments tend to gear toward properties."

Home prices in the real-estate obsessed city are near record highs, having risen for the past three months. The rebound – fueled by low interest rates and the perennial shortage of housing – makes a sudden slide late last year look like a temporary blip in the relentless increase in property values.

Lee also cited close ties with mainland China as a favorable factor for the property market. UBS Group AG earlier this month forecast house prices will rise for another decade, helped by an influx of residents to the Greater Bay Area – a project that integrates a group of mainland Chinese cities with Hong Kong.

Known as 'Uncle Four' due to being the fourth child in his family, Lee is part of a generation of Chinese tycoons who immigrated to Hong Kong in the mid-20th century, a period of turmoil on the mainland, and built companies that have grown to dominate the local business scene.

He has left his mark on Hong Kong. Henderson Land was one of the developers of the International Finance Centre, the city's second-tallest skyscraper. Among more than 100 residential projects, the firm built the luxury 39 Conduit Rd. apartments, where in 2009 a unit sold for HK$439 million ($56 million), a then-record price per square foot in the city, according to the New York Times.

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In 2017, the company paid a record $3 billion for a car park in Central, which is being developed into an office building.

Lee started his career in currency and gold trading before moving into property. In 1958, along with seven partners including prominent Chinese businessmen Kwok Tak Seng and Fung King Hey, Lee created a real estate business. Five years later, he founded Sun Hung Kai Properties – now the city's biggest developer – with Kwok and Fung but left in 1973 to start Henderson Land.

Paradise City

The city he helped build is in good shape, Lee said.

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"Hong Kong still enjoys a good business environment. The tax system is simple and the tax rate is attractive," he said. "The comprehensive legal system and the cluster of talents enable Hong Kong to maintain its status as an international financial center.

"When I was young, I experienced the period of war and turmoil. Life was very hard back then, but I survived through the adversity and continued to build my career. Comparatively speaking, Hong Kong is already a paradise. I really have no fear nor worry," he said.

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The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, in opposing the proposed merger of Vodafone and TPG Telecom, has focused on the implications for competition if TPG doesn’t build the fourth mobile network. Perhaps it should have paid more attention on the implications for Vodafone if it did.

As it happens, TPG, after the federal government banned the use of Huawei’s equipment in 5G networks, ditched its plans and wrote off $228 million it had already invested.

It has essentially said that, without access to the cheapest technology for its original small-cell based 4G network and an upgrade path to 5G that only Huawei could have provided, there is no credible business case for it to realise its initial ambition.

The ACCC, however, opposed the merger on the basis that, if it blocked it, TPG might change its mind and reactivate the plan.

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On Friday, Vodafone filed a statement of claim with the Federal Court seeking a declaration that the merger would not have the effect, or be likely to have the effect, of substantially lessening competition in any market.

In essence, it is asking the Federal Court to over-rule the ACCC’s judgment and conclude that the combination of two businesses that don’t compete today won’t result in a substantial lessening of competition in future.

It raises another layer to the counter-factual to the ACCC’s position.

In making the case for the merger of Vodafone’s mobile business and TPG’s fixed line operations, the merger partners have argued that, givent TPG has abandoned its plan to build its own network, the combination would strengthen competition in both the wireless and fixed markets by creating a stronger competitor to Telstra (the dominant player in both markets) and Optus.

It would give the combined business a bigger customer base and a strengthened financial position to fund the increasing capital requirements in the mobile telecommunications sector as Telstra and Optus roll out 5G networks.

It would also generate economies of scale to offset the margin squeeze occurring for fixed line resellers like TPG as the national broadband network nears completion of its rollout.

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They haven’t previously argued that the merger might be not just an escape route for TPG from that squeeze on its existing fixed line business but the salvation of a Vodafone business that has been chronically unprofitable.

Friday’s filing doesn’t make that case explicitly but the factual base for it is laid out.

Vodafone has been operating in this market since 1993, initially alone. In 2009 it merged its Australian business with Hutchison Telecom’s.

It is doubtful that Vodafone Australia has ever been profitable but since 2015, at least, it has been technically insolvent –its total liabilities ($9.11 billion) exceed its total assets ($8.19 billion). It survives because its debts are either guaranteed or provided by its two shareholders.

Over the past five years, according to its filing, they have invested about $4.6 billion in the business while incurring losses totalling $1.63 billion. The ACCC appears to believe that, absent the merger, they would continue to fund those losses and guarantee Vodafone Australia’s debt indefinitely.

To remain competitive with Telstra and Optus, Vodafone will have to upgrade its network to 5G.

Its existing 4G network also uses Huawei technology and it had planned to use Huawei’s leading edge 5G equipment to upgrade the network to 5G.

The government’s ban on the Chinese vendor means the upgrade, supposed to start last year, has been significantly delayed and will cost materially more, even as the relentless increases in the volumes of data carried on its 4G network continue to increase congestion.

Over the past five years, the average data downloaded onto mobile phones has increased roughly five-fold and data inclusions in mobile plans have soared even as average revenues per user have fallen.

Vodafone needs to make very large investments in 5G to be competitive with Telstra and Optus but there is no meaningful incremental return on those investments in prospect, at least in the near term.

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With a co-parent, Vodafone Plc , whose share price is trading at its lowest levels for nearly a decade and which has been exiting some markets (most recently New Zealand, where it was the market leader in mobiles), to focus on its European operations there is no guarantee that Vodafone and Hutchison will keep writing large cheques for a business that doesn’t make money.

If the merger were allowed, not only would the merged entity have a bigger and stronger balance sheet , greater customer mass and some operational synergies, it could use TPG’s spectrum holdings and the small cells that it has deployed to ameliorate its network congestion and expand its coverage.

The Vodafone challenge is unlikely to be heard until late this year but will be a test of the ACCC’s ability to regulate market structures that don’t exist today but which it believes (despite, in this case, TPG’s strong assertions to the contrary and the commercial logic that underpins them) might exist in future.

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Damaging winds that caused gusts of up to 90km/h in Sydney's CBD and up to 125km/h in the regions on Monday are likely to return on Tuesday in association with a new cold front, the Bureau of Meteorology has warned, after Sydney's seemingly endless summer came to an abrupt end.

In Sydney, winds whipping through the CBD and dubbed a "polar jet" by Weatherzone forecaster Andrew Miskelly, sent debris flying, causing problems for traffic and pedestrians alike while other areas of the state received a dusting of snow.

A man was killed at Silverdale in Sydney's west when a flying branch hit a truck about 1.50pm, causing it to lose control before hitting a tree. The driver of the truck was flown to Nepean Hospital in a stable condition, but his passenger died at the scene.

A lane also had to be closed on the Sydney Harbour Bridge due to a loose sign, while fallen wires closed Seven Hills Road in Seven Hills.

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There were reports of cars and other people, including a mother with a pram, nearly being hit by several sheets of steel sheeting flying off a building site in the gale. Meanwhile, a Herald reporter narrowly missed loose plastic material landing on him near a construction site during the gust.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service has warned bushwalkers to delay their trips because of the weather. Weatherzone reported Sydney's temperature as being 13.2 degrees at 4.30pm on Monday, with a "feels like" temperature of 4.3 degrees.

Winds picked up about lunchtime with gusts in the city up to 90km/h and average wind speeds of about 60km/h at Sydney Airport.

Earlier on Monday, the Bureau of Meteorology issued a severe weather warning for "vigorous westerly winds" in the state's south-east in the afternoon, including for the Sydney metropolitan area, the Illawarra and parts of Hunter, South Coast, Central Tablelands, Southern Tablelands, South West Slopes and Snowy Mountains.

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Zhi-Weng Chua said the worst winds, which gusted up to almost 90km/h about 1pm at the airport, had probably passed for the day in Sydney.

Mr Chua said wind speeds were expected to ease further on Monday evening but remain strong offshore and strengthen again on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"Tonight will be cold, or below average," Mr Chua said.

But slightly warmer minimum temperatures were expected for the weekend, he added.

The cold front also brought a dumping of snow to the Blue Mountains and Snowy Mountains overnight, with more falls expected during the week.

Perisher reported 20 centimetres of snow as the first blizzard of the season arrived.

The cold fronts bring to a screeching halt the near-record heat that has characterised most of the month so far.

The temperature at Observatory Hill in Sydney was just 13 degrees on Monday afternoon, according to Weatherzone, compared with a high of more than 27 degrees on Saturday.

That recording was more than 7 degrees above the average high for this time of year.

Last week, smoke haze choked Sydney, shrouding the city in a thick fog following hazard reduction burns by the NSW Rural Fire Service. Those conditions were caused by the combination of very light winds and a temperature inversion resulting from a high pressure system.

Weatherzone is owned by the publisher of this website.

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A heavily guarded Ivan Milat has been moved from a high-security ward in Sydney's Prince of Wales hospital to Long Bay Jail hospital in a convoy of three cars.

The convicted serial killer has been in the Randwick hospital since May 13, when he was first transported from his cell at Goulburn supermax jail.

He has been diagnosed with advanced cancer of the oesophagus, and told he may only have weeks to live.

On Tuesday the 74-year-old travelled in the convoy of cars that left Prince of Wales hospital around 12.25pm.

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He was seated in the right-hand, back passenger seat of a white Nissan 4WD, which stopped briefly on Randwick's Hospital Road as a large media scrum surrounded the vehicle.

The car, which was followed by two other vehicles carrying Corrective Services officers and staff, drove straight to Long Bay Jail Hospital on Anzac Parade.

Over the past two weeks Milat has undergone testing and possible treatment of advanced malignant tumours on his throat and in his stomach, in a secure inmate-only annexe of the hospital.

He is serving seven life sentences for the killing of seven young backpackers between 1989 and 1993. Despite his conviction in 1996 he has never admitted to any of the murders.

Milat is not expected to return to his solitary confinement cell in Goulburn – rather he is likely to see out his days in the Long Bay hospital facility.

Milat's nephew Alistair Shipsey told The Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday that he was expecting to visit the 74-year-old once he arrived at Long Bay Hospital.

"I'm going to be applying definitely to visit, as soon I know he's there, solid, locked in, I'll be going to visit him."

Mr Shipsey said his mother Dianne and his uncle Bill had both been to visit Milat in the past week at the Prince of Wales.

"Mum said he was in high spirits, said he talks very clearly, no dementia … nothing wrong. He's switched on," he said, adding that both his mother and his uncle commented on how much weight Milat had lost.

"Bill said I'd be lucky to recognise him, he's lost so much weight … [but] last week he actually got to have some soup, he's keeping food down, and is fully coherent, feeling a lot better."

It is unclear what treatment Milat will undertake, however it is understood all custodial patients are triaged for treatment like other public patients at the hospital, by a multidisciplinary team of nurses, doctors, psychiatrists and allied health staff, including aged care and cancer care clinicians.

Custodial patients are not given priority treatment beyond what is appropriate and required.

A Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network spokeswoman told the Herald that treatment plans were "determined by clinicians based on the individual needs of the patient, including consultation with specialists (such as cancer and surgical specialists) from Prince of Wales Hospital."

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While she could not comment on individual patient cases, the spokeswoman said all custodial patients who complete care at Prince of Wales Hospital can be moved to Long Bay Hospital for clinical care, in collaboration with the cancer specialists.

Mr Shipsey said the Milat family had been told the convicted serial killer would potentially undergo chemotherapy, adding that he had had "two procedures" while he's been at the Randwick hospital.

Milat has always maintained his innocence.

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This month NSW Police minister David Elliot made a public statement urging the 74-year-old to do “one last honourable thing on his deathbed” and assist police with any questions related to his crimes and other unsolved murders to which he has been linked.

For a long time, my coming out story was not something I wanted to share. It would often bring me to tears. And, sometimes, to a dark place of self-harm and not wanting to live.

Growing up in a traditional Christian home, I was terrified of coming out. As expected, my parents – who were divorced – did not take it well.

Shortly after telling them I was transgender at 16, I was moved, against my will, to a Christian high school. My friends were considered a bad influence and had somehow “made me trans”, so by moving me away from them, this would “all go away”. I was also banned from talking to, or seeing, my friends who were my only source of support at the time.

To have my parents so strongly reject me as their son, to refuse to use my correct name and pronouns, to cut off my support network, to move me to a school where I was forced to wear dresses and skirts, to force me to stay in the closet and hide like something shameful, was incredibly damaging to my mental health.

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I became depressed. My enjoyment in life and activities I had previously enjoyed declined dramatically. I hated looking at myself naked in the mirror and I would shower with my eyes closed. I swung between feeling overwhelmed and hopeless, to feeling nothing at all. I still wonder which was worse. I had suicidal thoughts. I often thought to myself, “Wouldn't it be easier for everyone if I just wasn't here?”

I never attempted suicide but I did come very close once. I had tried many times to take baby steps with my parents. Just little things like asking them to not use any pronouns at all, rather than “she” or “her” pronouns. But even these were met with anger and even disgust.

After one such failed attempt, I felt absolutely and totally hopeless. I felt like my family would never accept me; that they would never understand or support me, or even respect me. That day I considered ending it all.

But I was terrified I wouldn't die; that I'd be mis-gendered in hospital and that in the rush to operate on me, the medical staff would destroy the chest binder I wore to keep my chest flat, and mitigate how distressed my chest made me feel. Then I thought of how sad my friends and family would be. I thought of the driver, and how selfish it would be to traumatise some poor, innocent driver to make my own life easier.

So I didn't kill myself that day, and I am so glad I didn't.

Given my parents' disapproval and rejection, I couldn't start medically transitioning as soon as I came out. I had wanted to start hormone replacement therapy (testosterone) and have top surgery (removal of breast tissue and contouring to give the chest a 'male' appearance) right away, but I had to wait until I was 18 and legally able to make appointments and decisions, myself.

Two years! To 16-year-old me, that seemed like an eternity. Those were the hardest and darkest years of my life.

Even after turning 18 and graduating from school, my parents and siblings had still not come around. So, I booked my own appointments to the psychiatrist to be assessed for testosterone therapy and top surgery. I paid for the appointments out of my own pocket and counted down the days until I could take my first shot of testosterone. I paid for each shot of testosterone, which I will need four times a year for the rest of my life. I also paid for top surgery all by myself. It cost more than $10,000 so I put off purchasing a car because the surgery was far more important.

By this time, my family had started to come around.

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It took them three years.

For me, it was three years of bearing the “she/her” pronouns when they should have been “he/him”.

It was three years of hearing my old name, instead of Logan.

It was three years of censoring myself, and not correcting people, out of fear and depression.

But after those three years, my parents saw that being true to myself, being Logan, being trans, made me happy.

For my dad, especially, the turnaround took a lot of research, a lot of talks with counsellors and my psychiatrist and it took time. Dad even drove me to hospital so I could have top surgery, just after my 20th birthday.

I was also happy and relieved that Mum arrived before I went into the operating theatre.

After waiting for what seemed like an eternity, my family now accept and support me. I am my parents' son, I am an older brother to my siblings, I am a grandson, I am a nephew, and I am me.

For a long time, telling the story of how I came out as trans brought me to tears, but now it makes me smile.

*Surname withheld

Logan is a guest on SBS' Insight on Tuesday, 28 May at 8.30pm. The episode focuses on transgender teens.

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QLife 1800 184 527

For the past few weeks, I’ve had more than a few people giving me advice on who should be in the NSW side for State of Origin I.

And plenty of advice on who shouldn’t be there. How many people told me that Nathan Cleary shouldn’t be the halfback?

Try everyone.

When we assembled our team at North Bondi Surf Club on Monday morning for the team photo, and I looked at our halves — Nathan and Souths’ Cody Walker — I was more pleased with the way we went.

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It's a big ask but I am confident they will get the job done.

My advisors, Greg Alexander and Danny Buderus, and I have a system where we don’t put anyone’s name in pen until the final round.

If you get really excited about players, you know you are going to get your heart broken because of injury or form. We copped a nice little final jab to the head on Sunday afternoon when Dragons back-rower Tyson Frizell left the field early with concussion.

We started this season with last year’s halves, Nathan and Jimmy Maloney, written in pencil. From there, injury and form guided our thinking.

By last Friday night, I was convinced that Nathan was our halfback.

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He went into the Thursday night match against Parramatta at Bankwest knowing what was on the line. The pressure was on. He’d been verballed all year about his form. I’d also spoken to him in the lead-up to the game. He knew what was at stake.

It was a really tough game for him to shine. There were plenty of dropped balls and mistakes in the greasy conditions — but he stood tall above all the others.

Then, on Friday night, things changed dramatically. As soon as I saw Luke Keary concussed for the Roosters against the Knights, I knew he wouldn’t be playing in a sky-blue jumper at Suncorp Stadium on June 5.

To be honest, it was the least of my concerns. His welfare is everyone’s priority.

I checked in with Roosters coach Trent Robinson and then I went down to the Knights rooms. I wanted to speak to their halfback, Mitchell Pearce.

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“How you going?” I asked.

“Mate, I’ve got a sore groin," Mitchell replied.

That ended that conversation pretty quickly, which is actually good. Mitchell was up front. He wants the best for NSW.

There and then, Jimmy Maloney’s name came back into my head. So did Cody Walker's.

I’ve been watching Cody's defence closely this year and it’s been a lot better. He gets in there, he’s aggressive, and that’s the thing that sells him as our five-eighth.

Everyone knows what he can do with the ball and with his feet. You can see what he can do every time Souths have had the ball this season.

But we look at the defensive side of things as well. We try not to talk about things that players don’t have, so the thing that comes through this year is that his defence has been great. Maybe, in the past, I haven’t felt that way.

There’s no game that stands out for me but there's been no game when I’ve walked away and said: he can’t be our six.

So, for whatever reason, the two healthiest halves became the two best. Cleary and Walker.

When injuries take away competition, it hurts your discussion. We want to foster competition to be in our side. It makes it better. It's healthy.

We always wanted to pick the team from last year and people had to find a reason to get in — or those who did the job last year had to give a reason for us not to pick them.

It’s tough because it’s all so public. That’s what State of Origin is about: it’s a big show.

People will be angry that we've picked Angus Crichton, because he hasn't been going great for the Roosters. They’re under the pump. They’re a bit battered. But that's where loyalty comes in.

I've seen Queensland's side. I don't think about them too much, to be honest. It's a strong team, across the board, as it should be because the majority of them are internationals.

Ben Hunt has been named at hooker but who will play there when he becomes too tired? Moses Mybe or Josh McGuire? Who knows?

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There hasn't been much contact with the outside world since coming into camp because I have a "no phones" policy. That means you get about half an hour when you return to your hotel room late in the day.

When I got back to the room on Monday afternoon, there were 30 missed calls.

But there have been a few text messages back and forth with Jimmy Maloney, who I contacted after the side was named.

It was a difficult decision not to have him here with us.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is aiming to put the government's $158 billion income tax cut to the new Parliament in the first week of July, as he urges his ministers to perform and warns his backbench against complacency.

Mr Morrison set out the timeline at a Coalition meeting on Tuesday morning, where he hailed the government's success at winning seats from Labor and declared his confidence in doing more of the same at the next election.

While the Prime Minister did not set a hard date for the meeting of the 46th Parliament, he told the gathering that he “expected” to see everyone back in Canberra in the first week of July.

The date will depend in part on whether the Australian Electoral Office can complete its count from the May 18 election so the writs can be returned in the last week of June.

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While the opening days of Parliament would be largely ceremonial, with Tuesday, July 2 as one likely date, the rest of the week could be used to pass the tax package through the lower house.

The intention appears to be to sit for one week and then allow a two-week break in the middle of July when school holidays are on in several states and both territories.

The Prime Minister told the MPs there were many other areas of Australia where the Liberals and Nationals could build their vote and secure future victories.

While there were conflicting accounts of whether Mr Morrison named specific seats, those where the Coalition came close to defeating Labor included Cowan in Western Australia, Dobell on the NSW Central Coast and Solomon in the Northern Territory.

The remarks came in a gathering of Liberal and Nationals MPs in Canberra where 28 new members joined the party room, each of them standing to receive applause from their colleagues.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack said "the wind is at our backs" and told the room that Mr Morrison had the potential to be one of the great prime ministers of modern times.

Mr Morrison reprised his message from the election campaign that the government would “burn” for Australian voters, but he also warned his MPs against being too confident after their victory.

He pointedly told the group that 67 members of the Coalition party room did not know what it was to serve in Opposition, and he stressed that they should never wish to be in that “wasteland” where they could not get things done.

In a warning to the ministry, he noted that the party room had many others with the talent to serve on the frontbench and this meant there was “pressure to perform” on everyone.

The chief government whip in the lower house will be Bert van Manen, one of the whips in the last Parliament and a Queensland Liberal who is close to Mr Morrison. He will be supported by two whips, Rowan Ramsey and Nicolle Flint.

The Nationals whips will be Damian Drum and Ken O'Dowd.

The Speaker in the last House of Representatives, Tony Smith, was confirmed as the government's nominee for the position in the next Parliament. This was done at a Liberal Party meeting earlier on Tuesday with nobody standing against him.

Nationals MP Kevin Hogan, who left the party room to sit on the crossbench after the leadership spill that removed Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister last August, appears to have rejoined the joint party room and is his party's nominee for deputy Speaker.

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The president of the Senate, Scott Ryan, is expected to retain the position once the new Senate meets in July, the point at which Coalition senators will agree on their nominee.

Vienna: Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of Austria and his caretaker government were ousted from power on Monday with a no-confidence vote in Parliament, as the ramifications of a secretly filmed video added to the political disarray in a European country normally known for stability.

Kurz launched his re-election campaign just hours later.

After about three hours of debate, a simple majority of lawmakers stood up in a demonstration of their withdrawal of trust from Kurz, 32, making him the first Austrian leader in more than seven decades to be removed from power by his peers in Parliament.

The removal of Kurz, just 17 months after he became chancellor, came despite a gain of 8 percentage points for his conservative People's Party in the European Parliament elections.

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"I am still here," Kurz told a crowd of fans and cheering People's Party officials that were bussed to Vienna.

"They cannot stop the change that we have started," he said.

New elections are planned for September, although that process could now be accelerated, with the country led by a caretaker government appointed by President Alexander van der Bellen in the interim.

Kurz's coalition government with the far-right Freedom Party collapsed after the party's leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, resigned as vice chancellor May 18 after a video emerged that showed him promising government contracts to a woman claiming to be a wealthy Russian in exchange for financial support.

The meeting, which was filmed in 2017 without Strache's knowledge, appears to have been a setup. But it raised questions about the Freedom Party's ethics, given their leader's apparent willingness to trade political favours for Russian black money.

Prosecutors in Vienna said on Monday that they had opened an investigation into who was behind the video.

After Strache resigned, Kurz fired Interior Minister Herbert Kickl, a leading Freedom Party member, prompting the remaining far-right ministers to quit in protest. The chancellor called for a snap election in September and replaced the four ministers with technocrats until a new government could be voted into power.

But opposition leaders accused Kurz of abusing their trust in his government by failing to work with them in organising his interim government and by refusing to apologise for his role in the political uncertainty.

"Mr. Chancellor, you and your government do not enjoy our trust," Pamela Rendi-Wagner, the leader of the Socialist Party, told lawmakers before calling for the no-confidence vote.

Kurz had defended his recent actions as necessary and said they had been made in consultation with van der Bellen.

New York Times, DPA

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Fast food giant Domino's Pizza's shares have slumped to an almost four-year low over fears that slowing growth in sales and store rollouts will see it deliver lower than expected profits over the next two years.

Morgan Stanley analyst Thomas Kierath on Tuesday cut his price target for the ASX-listed company's shares from $50 to $41 on Tuesday, and sliced his recommendation to investors from over-weight to equal weight.

Domino's shares had fallen 6 per cent to $38.26 by 11.30am, which is the lowest they have traded since September 2015. The shares were trading as high as $80 in 2016.

Mr Keirath said that after 10 years of strong double digit growth, Domino's Australian and New Zealand business was slowing.

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He said that was "driven by the law of large numbers (finally), competitors catching up with online capabilities, moderating same store sales growth and new product innovation that lacks the punch of that in prior periods".

"Same store sales growth has slowed significantly in recent periods, reflecting very strong growth in prior periods and it reaching its potential market share in Australia and New Zealand," Mr Keirath said in a note to clients.

Morgan Stanley found that Domino's had added few stores to its network in the past five months, while data showed an 11 per cent fall in Google impressions, which suggested sales were slowing.

Domino's said in February it was heading towards the lower end of its guidance for earnings and sales growth.

But Mr Keirath said that Domino's was like to miss its guidance for earnings to grow between 10 and 20 per cent this year entirely. He cut his earnings per share forecast for 2019 to 2021 by between 4 and 9 per cent.

The slowing in sales and store growth in Australia, New Zealand and Europe would be partially offset by higher earnings in Japan, helped by the weakened Australian dollar.

Domino's is the 25th most shorted stock on the ASX, with 8.7 per cent of its shares held in short positions, according to shortman.com.

The company said it did not comment on day-today share price movements and would provide a trading update on the day of its full-year result, on August 21.

More to come 

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Two young women walk out of the World’s End pub and disappear into the cold Edinburgh night. The next time anyone sees them, they are dead.

Christine Eadie’s body will be found first, dumped on the sand dunes of Gosford Bay, just outside the Scottish capital. Helen Scott’s body is found later, a few kilometres away, dumped in a just-harvested cornfield.

It would take 37 years, one failed trial and an Australian mathematician to finally put one of Scotland’s most notorious serial killers behind bars.

The 1977 World’s End murders quickly gained international attention. But despite a huge manhunt by local police it took 30 years for a man to be charged.

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Forensic scientists managed to pull tiny, damaged strands of DNA from the clothing used to bind the women’s wrists. They discovered the genetic code matched those of a man already behind bars.

Angus Sinclair, a Glasgow-born painter, had already been found guilty of the murder of 17-year-old Mary Gallacher and, before that, Catherine Reehill – his childhood neighbour.

But when he came before court for the murders of Helen and Christine in 2007, DNA science was not as developed as it is today.

There were no eyewitnesses to the slayings. The case was circumstantial.

The scientists testified that the DNA was most likely Sinclair’s.

But they couldn’t be sure. They gave the judge a probability, and it wasn't a high one.

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“DNA, it’s now black and white. But it wasn’t early on,” Professor David Balding says.

The professor now leads a lab at Melbourne University, but back then he was a scientist working with London Metropolitan Police's forensic team. He remembers watching the judge hand down his ruling: no case to answer.

With nothing else to support it, the DNA evidence simply wasn’t convincing enough.

Sinclair wasn't convicted.

So Professor Balding got to work.

Professor Balding specialises in a type of DNA work called mathematical computational genetics. Rather than extracting the DNA in a lab, he writes mathematical models that can help translate the lab work into real-world answers.

His job: use the math models to weigh up how strong the evidence against Sinclair was.

It was a particularly difficult task for two reasons.

First, almost 40 years of storage had left the DNA badly degraded. The long strands had broken down into small sections, like a frayed rope.

Second, each sample possibly contained DNA from four people: Sinclair, his brother-in-law who also was accused of committing the murders, and the two girls.

Three billion bits of DNA from each person, broken down into tiny strands and mixed together, and almost 40 years old.

Professor Balding's mathematical model had to take all that into account, plus factor in likely degradation of the DNA, contamination, and experimental noise.

Amazingly, Professor Balding was able to come up with a new estimate of the odds it was somebody else's DNA in several of the samples: one in a billion.

It meant there was virtually no chance that the DNA belonged to anyone but Sinclair.

“It was pretty overwhelming,” he says.

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In 2014, Balding spent a day in court under forensic cross-examination, defending the findings of his models. The maths held.

Finally, on November 14, 2014, more than 37 years after Christine Eadie and Helen Scott died, Angus Sinclair was found guilty of their murder, and sentenced to 37 years’ jail.

For his contributions to genetic and forensic science, Balding was on Monday elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, along with 21 other notable scientists.

These days Balding works on integrative genomics: testing what DNA can tell us about "everything – our appearance, our health, how every little bit works in the body".

"Hopefully, that makes the world better," he says.