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 …

The Inland Revenue Department is happy with lead provider Accenture to overhaul its 30-year-old information technology system in a major transformation of its business which so far is running under budget and on time. IRD commissioner Naomi Ferguson told Parliament’s finance and expenditure committee the government’s tax gatherer has spent $83 million to date on its business transformation programme, and …