China Investment Corp – is in talks with New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra Co-Operative Group about investing in its shareholder fund  – according to the Wall St Journal. The WSJ reported today that CIC, which manages a chunk of China’s massive foreign-exchange reserves, is considering investing in the Fonterra non-voting units later this month with its initial investment expected to …

New Zealand’s manufacturing sector returned to a minor level of expansion in October, although the sector remains in a flat state, according to the latest BNZ – BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI). The seasonally adjusted PMI for October was 50.5 (a PMI reading above 50.0 indicates that manufacturing is generally expanding; below 50.0 that it is declining).  This was 2.0 …

IBM has announced Christchurch has won an IBM Smarter Cities Challenge grant – one of 31 cities globally for 2013. The grant provides Christchurch with access to some of IBM’s top experts to analyse and provide recommendations to drive economic development and sustained growth for the city. Launched in 2011, the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge is a three-year, 100-city, US$50-million competitive grant program …