Serko, the online business travel booking company, has closed the retail portion of its share offer nine days early and said it may scale back public share requests after strong investor demand. The Auckland-based company has closed the public pool component of its public offer, which opened last Wednesday and was supposed to close onJune 19. It expects to list on the main board of the NZX …

The Overseas Investment Office has approved the sale of the New Zealand waste management arm of Transpacific Industries to Beijing Capital Group. Chinese state-owned Beijing Capital spent $950 million on the New Zealand business, buying it from the Queensland-based company in March. At the time of the announcement it said the current management team would remain and operations would continue as normal. …

Leaders in the agri-business sector fear the loss of the traditional political consensus favouring free trade agreements if there’s a change of government, but are equally fearful that a Labour-Greens coalition will see heavier regulation against environmental harm and will start charging farmers to use water and other “natural capital”, says the annual KPMG Agri-Business Agenda publication. While enthusiastic about Labour’s research and development tax …