Uncategorized

Friday’s May US payrolls report appears to have quieted, but not put to rest, the main focus of investors: when will the US Federal Reserve begin to temper its monthly bond-buying program? Initially this week, the focus has shifted to Asia where there were signs of deepening weakness in China, fuelling concern about the slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy …

Reserve Bank governor Graeme Wheeler faces the same tensions between a high kiwi dollar and a heated housing market that have informed his monetary policy decisions all year and no change is likely at next week’s review as inflation stays low. Wheeler will keep the official cash rate at 2.5 percent when he releases the monetary policy statement on June …

Dorchester Pacific has raised $4.1 million in a placement to institutions, with two major shareholders taking up an offer to sell down their own holdings in a secondary pool. At total of 35 million shares were sold at 25 cents apiece to institutional investors, the financial services company said in a statement. That was made up of 16.3 million of …

Air New Zealand, the national carrier, agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle a long-running dispute with the antitrust regulator on alleged agreements with other airlines on fuel and security surcharges on air cargo. The Auckland-based airline is the last of 11 carriers to settle with the Commerce Commission on the air cargo cartel case, and faces the biggest penalty …

TeamTalk, the owner of the CityLink fibre-optic broadband service, cut earnings guidance for a second time and is reviewing its management structure to try to bed in its Farmside Group acquisition. The Wellington-based company expects second-half earnings before interest, tax depreciation and amortisation a “little lower” than $5.14 million, having previously flagged a “modest lift,” it said in a statement. …

Cooks Food Group, a shell company whose shares haven’t traded the past four months, agreed to buy the franchise rights for Esquires Coffee Houses in many parts of the world. Cooks, which aims to become a global retail and supply chain business aligned with Esquires, agreed to pay Esquires founders Stuart and Lewis Deeks $300,000 in cash and an undisclosed …

Livestock Improvement Corp, which helped China’s Agria take control of PGG Wrightson in 2011 with a $10 million loan, is now providing its chief executive to run the New Zealand rural services company. Wrightson today named LIC’s Mark Dewdney as chief executive after George Gould resigned. He will take up the position starting on July 1. He ran LIC, a …

The official May US jobs report tomorrow is the key focus for Wall Street as the guessing game about the timing of a potential downward adjustment to the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program remains centre stage. With the next two-day Federal Open Market Committee meeting starting on June 18, tomorrow’s government payrolls data is expected to provide direction to the …

Air New Zealand has agreed to lift its holding in Virgin Australia to about 23 percent from 19.99 percent in a series of off-market transactions and indicated it may seek to hold as much as 26 percent. New Zealand’s state-controlled airline paid about A$72 million for the shares, with the largest purchase being for 77.4 million shares at 47.68 Australian …

Auckland house price growth stalled for a second month in May as buyers baulked at rising prices, according to Barfoot & Thompson, the city’s biggest realtor. The average sale price edged up 0.3 percent to $644,737 in May, following a 0.5 percent drop in April, the firm said. The median price advanced 0.7 percent to $570,000. “The Auckland property market …