HALLELUJAH! Praise the lord! Telstra has agreed to hand its fixed-line monopoly to the National Broadband Network in an $11 billion deal. All our internet woes are over; fast connections will be coming to a terminal near you soon. If everything goes to plan, that is.

Unfortunately, the market was betting last week that it wouldn't, or that the deal was too expensive for Telstra (it will cost it $2 billion), or maybe they didn't like the colour of chief executive David Thodey's tie. Telstra's shares had their biggest one-day fall since February after the announcement. Shares in the government may not be as quantifiable but aren't doing very well either.

Fosters is an Australian icon, albeit an emotive one. Credit:Reuters

Three of our share racers held Telstra as the announcement was made. But it hasn't hurt them too much. Doreen and Craig are in equal second place and Annabelle moved from sixth to fifth. Our biggest loser last week was Kairiki Energy. It ended up at $1628. Here at shares race headquarters we can't remember anything losing that much value in three weeks - not even during the GFC. But we may just have short memories.

It appears Kairiki's problem is the Gindara-1 well in the Philippines - a joint venture between Kairiki, Nido and Shell.

It was targeting a 634-million-barrel prospect but was found to be ''water bearing'' and will now be plugged and abandoned. That would explain such a dramatic drop.

Foster's is our best-performing stock for the week. It received an ''unsolicited, incomplete, non-binding and conditional proposal'' from SABMiller plc to acquire all of the shares via a scheme of arrangement of $4.90 a share in cash. It didn't accept it, and why should it? Its shares are trading well ahead of that at $5.20.