GLOBAL MARKETS:  Our London colleagues report that it was a quiet day in Europe . Most of the day’s focus was on the negative Italian headlines.  The weekend’s Italian political bombshell, along with some very weak industrial production data out of France and Italy , weighed on European equities, EUR and Italian sovereign bonds in early trading. However, most markets …

Environment Minister Amy Adams will today kick-off the next stage of the Government’s plan to reform the Resource Management Act. This afternoon, the Resource Management Amendment Bill 2012 will have its first reading in Parliament. The bill introduces a streamlined process for Auckland’s first unitary plan, a six-month time limit for processing consents for medium-sized projects and easier direct referral …

Some 379 buildings have been identified around New Zealand as being built in a similar engineering “genre” to the CTV Building, whose collapse in the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake claimed 115 of the 183 lives lost. At a press conference for the release of Volumes Five to Seven of the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Canterbury …