Golden State Foods, the biggest US supplier of ingredients to fast-food giant McDonald’s, has bought Wellington-based Groenz Group, adding sauces and condiments to a range that includes the original Big Mac sauce. No price or financials were disclosed in the statement from Irvine, California-based Golden State, which services more than 25,000 fast-food outlets around the world for some 50 companies. …

Capital + Merchant Finance directors Robert Sutherland and Colin Ryan have both pleaded guilty to charges of making untrue statements in offer documents and will be sentenced in Auckland next month. The Australia-based pair admitted two charges of making an untrue statement in a registered prospectus and one charge of distributing advertisements which included an untrue statement, market watchdog the …

Auckland real estate firm Barfoot & Thompson’s new listings more than doubled in January from December while the average sale price fell, suggesting the city’s overheated property market is luring more sellers. Auckland’s biggest real estate firm listed 1,440 properties in January, the highest for that month in five years and up 40 percent from January 2012. The firm had …

Cash market trades on the NZX jumped by 33 percent in January from the same month last year, driven by share transactions. Total trades rose to 69,281 and the value of trading rose 66 percent to $2.3 billion, NZX said in its monthly shareholder metrics. The average daily value of trading rose 51 percent to $106 million. The NZX 50 …

New Zealand labour costs rose in line with expectations in the final three months of 2012 as the gathering pace of Canterbury’s reconstruction effort saw the building and construction sector underpin gains. Private sector salary and ordinary time wages rose 0.5 percent in the three months ended Dec. 31, as expected, and maintaining the same pace of growth from a …

The New Zealand dollar rose against the euro as European political reports renewed concerns about the region’s debt crisis and pushed the common currency down from a two-year high against the greenback. The New Zealand dollar rose to 62.49 euro cents from 62.03 cents at 5pm in Wellington yesterday. It traded at 84.46 US cents from 84.55 cents. The euro …

Stocks on both sides of the Atlantic dropped as concern about Europe’s political and financial instability returned, and Wall Street’s five-year highs left investors with vertigo in the absence of signs to justify current valuations. The latest American economic report also disappointed. Orders to US factories advanced 1.8 percent in December after a revised 0.3 percent slide the prior month, …

New Zealand shares rose, pushing the NZX 50 Index back toward its five-year highs, led by PGG Wrightson and NZ Oil & Gas as commodity prices rose and investors continued to be drawn to the relatively attractive dividend yields. The NZX 50 gained 0.46 points, or 0.01 percent, to 4246.40, edging back to the five-year high 4252.65 reached on Jan. …

The New Zealand dollar rose to a 2 ½-year high against the Australian dollar before the Reserve Bank of Australia’s monetary policy review tomorrow, while largely ignoring Prime Minister John Key’s comment that the kiwi is overvalued against the greenback. The kiwi rose as high as 81.39 Australian cents, the highest since July 2010, and traded at 81.10 Australian cents …

Kiwifruit growers Satara Cooperative Group and EastPack are set to resume merger plans shelved after the outbreak of the Psa vine bacteria two years ago. The deal will see Satara grower shareholders receive one EastPack share for each dollar paid-up of the transactor or investor share, and receive a 5 cent fully imputed special dividend, valuing the deal at 65 …