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You have to feel sorry for John Key that he’s been subjected to so many off-stage alarums and excursions during this, the dirtiest election campaign of my lifetime. It started with Hager’s Dirty Tricks book, dropped close to the campaign, leaving insufficient time to check the details. Hager calculated on our media being sufficiently full of gullible journalists who would …

It was the bomb that was supposed to flip the election on its head. The documents set to unveil a vast conspiracy by the Prime Minister against Kim Dotcom. John Key’s Moment of Truth. What a flop. There was no smoking gun. No game-changing piece of information. Instead, politically charged hearsay recounted as claims about New Zealand’s mass surveillance drew …

Pyne Could Corp, the asset management firm controlled by George Kerr, is seeking the removal of two directors of Equity Partners Infrastructure Company No.1, as it looks to boost its stake to almost half. Pyne Gould wants to raise its stake to 49 percent from the 27 percent of the investment company it already holds, the Guernsey-based company said in a statement. At the …

The New Zealand dollar held gains in local trading after weak US industrial production sapped demand for the greenback, and ahead of an upcoming dairy auction, which will offer a gauge on New Zealand’s biggest commodity export. The local currency traded at 81.62 US cents at 5pm in Wellington from 81.72 cents at 8am, up from 81.26 cents yesterday. The trade-weighted …

New Zealand shares fell, led by Summerset Group Holdings, as the prospect of new rivals weighed on listed retirement village operators. Stocks with regulatory pressure, such as Air New Zealand, Chorus and energy companies fell amid political uncertainty ahead of Saturday’s general election. The NZX 50 Index fell 21.075 points, or 0.4 percent, to 5189.785. Within the index, 31 stocks …

Warehouse Group faces a year of reckoning as investors await evidence that New Zealand’s largest listed retailer will get a return on the hundreds of millions of dollars spent overhauling stores and buying new businesses in the past couple of years. Under chief executive Mark Powell, Warehouse has outlaid $115.8 million in capital expenditure on its iconic ‘red shed’ general merchandise …

Seniors Money International, which sold its ‘home equity release’ mortgage business to Heartland New Zealand for $87 million this year, would sell the 9.4 percent stake it got in the lender as part payment once a 12-month lock-up ends for the shares. Auckland-based Seniors, which counts buyout firm Quadrant Private Equity as its biggest shareholder, got $47.3 million cash and 43 …

Berry company OOB has sealed two deals with Shanghai-based companies to sell its organic ice-cream. The first deal is a one-year, ten-container, contract with retailer Li Feng which has already been trialling the ice-cream product for some stores. It plans to stock the ice-cream in 200 stores across Shanghai. The other deal is with a confectionary gift retailer which has 700 …

Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom presented no evidence to back his claim the Prime Minister was at the centre of a Hollywood plot to have him extradited to the United States to face charges. As I wrote on the New Zealand Herald website last night  “If Kim Dotcom thinks his Moment of Truth will affect the outcome of Saturday’s election, he …