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Why doesn’t Tower Investment’s Sam Stubbs round up a few institutional investors in Fisher & Paykel Appliances and go pay a call on Haier at its China HQ and say they want to stay in with the company for the long haul? How hard would it be for the mercurial Stubbs to muster a coalition of the usual suspects and …

Blowing in the wind … John Key grapples with the problems of ownership. Photo / Mark Mitchell Mr Speaker, I rise today in this House to introduce legislation to vest all natural resources – water, geothermal steam, airwaves, aquifers and, for the avoidance of doubt, all minerals, ironsands, magma, rare earth deposits, coal, lignite, methane and uranium in this country …

New Zealand has proposed a special agricultural co-operation chapter should be injected into the free trade agreement (FTA) with the Russian-led customs union to help overcome fears by Russian farmers. Trade Minister Tim Groser dispatched New Zealand’s chief negotiator Vangelis Vitalis to Moscow this week to make progress on issues blocking the successful completion of the FTA with Russia and …

Vladimir Putin is famously late. He stood-up the Ukraine president for four hours while he stopped off for a catch-up with Russian bikers called the “night wolves”. He’s even reported to have kept the Queen and the Pope waiting. Last week he kept influential international investors – including a big Chinese delegation – cooling their heels at the Apec chief …

Trade Minister Tim Groser will throw his hat into the ring for the top international trade job – director-general of the World Trade Organisation. Groser has yet to formally announce his candidacy for the leading role in international trade diplomacy. He was due to leave New Zealand today for trade talks in Cambodia and Vladivostock, but has confirmed to the …

Bill English has sent a clear message to China that New Zealand is open for business. New Zealand needs direct foreign investment and China should be at the table was the upshot of the Finance Minister’s speech to the Victoria University-Peking University Conference on Contemporary China in Wellington this week. Not only does the Government need to sell its bonds …

The Court of Appeal emphatically threw out the Sir Michael Fay-led challenge to Shanghai Pengxin's bid for the 16 Crafar farms and with it, hopefully, one of the most xenophobically charged episodes of commercial behaviour in New Zealand.

It was hard to suppress the image of a black-singleted John Clarke singing, “If it weren’t for your gumboots, where would ya be?” when I took part in a Federated Farmers debate on foreign ownership. The proposition that “if foreigners want to own dairy farms in New Zealand, they should put on their gumboots and come and live here”, got …

Fonterra’s top brass emerged from their Monday board meeting claiming a clear mandate to proceed with the controversial trading among farmers (TAF) scheme. It’s going to take a lot of work to rebuild trust between the Fonterra board and management, and many of their farmer shareholders if TAF is to be bedded down without more public brawling. A week before …

The Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum (ANZLF) is a business-led initiative designed to further develop the Australian and New Zealand bilateral relationship as well as joint relations in the region. The ANZLF brings together ministers and leaders of business, government and academia to create an independent public platform for consideration of the whole Australia New Zealand relationship. The inaugural forum …