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Fonterra Cooperative Group hasn’t seen any signs of customers reducing their business and says it is too soon to say whether the costs of dealing with the contamination will result in a charge against earnings. Chief executive Theo Spierings told a conference call today that with listed units on the NZX, Fonterra has obligations to disclose any significant financial impact. …

Vector, the electricity and gas lines company, is likely to beat its guidance in 2013 with a modest uplift in operating earnings but 2014 results will fall as regulated price cuts bite and it sells less cheap Kapuni gas. The Auckland-based company said in February with the release of its first-half results that full-year earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and …

Bathurst Resources says it’s received notice from the Environment Court that it will approve the company’s long-delayed and environmentally controversial application to do open-cast mining for coking coal on the Denniston Plateau. Bathurst had been in trading halt since yesterday afternoon. The shares did not move from the last traded price of 20 cents immediately following this morning’s announcement. Managing …

Shares in Diligent Board Member Services, the governance app maker hit by a slew of administrative mis-steps, surged after brokerage Craigs Investment Partners upgraded its recommendation to ‘buy’ from ‘hold’, saying a slump in the share price was overdone. Shares in New York-based Diligent jumped 11 percent to $6, making it the best performer on the New Zealand stock exchange …

Chorus’s board will probably have to cut its return to shareholders with promising signs in a government review of telecommunications law still likely to leave a hole in the network operator’s earnings, according to a broker’s report. While viewing the prospect of direct intervention in copper line pricing as a positive Craigs Investment Partners has cut its recommendation on Chorus …

Meridian Energy has had to give up previously negotiated price increases and the government has chipped in with a $30 million “incentive payment” to keep the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter open until at least January 2017. Meridian chief executive Mark Binns announced the deal in a statement to the NZX, saying the renegotiated contract would “see a reduction in the …

ASX-listed fund manager Perpetual has used Fonterra Cooperative Group’s food scare to trawl for cheap units in the dairy exporter’s listed fund. Funds managed by Perpetual bought about 1.26 million units, or 1.17 percent, of Fonterra Shareholders’ Fund for some A$7.32 million on Aug. 5, when the price plunged in the first trading day after the dairy company said some …

The New Zealand dollar advanced as investors increased their holdings of the local currency following a sell off earlier in the week on concern about the impact of a food contamination scare on the New Zealand economy. The kiwi rose to 79.56 US cents at 8am in Wellington from 78.94 cents yesterday. The trade-weighted index gained to 75 from 74.66. …

Wall Street slid for a third day amid comments from Cleveland Fed President Sandra Pianalto that the US jobs market had shown “meaningful improvement”. In late afternoon trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.37 percent, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropped 0.42 percent and the Nasdaq Composite Index shed 0.40 percent. Shares of Home Depot, …

Fonterra Cooperative Group, the world’s biggest dairy exporter, has launched an investigation into a food contamination scare after accounting for the potentially tainted product. Chief executive Theo Spierings told a briefing in Auckland all affected whey protein and its derivatives had been contained internationally, and he was satisfied the contamination scare had stabilised. The dairy company has launched an investigation …