By Fiona Rotherham March 11 (BusinessDesk) – Chinese consumer reaction to the threat to contaminate New Zealand infant formula with 1080 poison has been muted so far, but the Taiwanese have been more strident, said Massey University marketing specialist Associate Professor Henry Chung. Chung, who has studied the Chinese market for more than 20 years, is currently in Taiwan and monitoring …

SBS Bank, New Zealand’s largest building society, has agreed to buy 50 percent of Staples Rodway Asset Management (SRAM)  as part of a strategy to build scale in wealth management and lift its presence in the North Island. Financial details of the transaction are confidential, said Wayne Evans, chief executive of SBS Group, which owns SBS Bank. The deal will add to SBS’s growth …

State-owned coal miner Solid Energy is preparing for more redundancies at its Stockton mine, near Westport, as slumping global prices for coking coal threaten its long term viability and force it anew into talks with its banks to restructure its borrowing. Plans under way to stem those losses were in preparation and “reductions will be inevitable on the basis of those …