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Snakk Media, which aggregates publishers’ ad space on mobile devices and matches it to advertisers’ demand, boosted annual sales 83 percent and is on the prowl for investment opportunities with its new $6.5 million war chest. Sales rose to $3.65 million in the 12 months ended March 31 from $1.99 million a year earlier, the Auckland-based company said in a …

A report on New Zealand by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development supports key elements of the Labour and Green parties’ policies for making the economy grow faster and distribute wealth more fairly. Its two-yearly review of the economy recommends a capital gains tax, permanent deposit insurance for banks that are “too big to fail” and raising the age …

The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced, boosted by shares of Merck and Intel, though disappointing manufacturing data kept a lid on gains. Shares of Merck, last up 4.1 percent, bolstered the Dow as one of the company’s new cancer drugs showed promising results in an early study. Shares of Intel also advanced, last up 3.1 percent, after a FBR Capital …

Transpower, the state-owned electricity grid company, has sold its d-cyphaTrade unit to Australian stock market operator ASX for A$55 million. Transpower set up d-cyphaTrade in 2002. It promotes Australian exchange-traded electricity futures and then sells related training and information products. It had income of $10.4 million in 2012, down from $12.7 million a year earlier. “d-cyphaTrade and its future development …

Port of Tauranga chairman John Parker will retire in October after nine years leading the board and 17 as a director of the country’s biggest export port. David Pilkington, a director of the company since 2005, will replace Parker while former Waste Management chief executive Kim Ellis has been appointed an independent director. During Parker’s tenure as a director, the …

The real value of the Future Partners delegation was not so much the tokenism of young faces in the room or additional youthful enthusiasm in the Q&A, but in the real crux of knowledge transfer and succession planning. Being chosen as one of eight under 30 year olds by Fulbright New Zealand and the US NZ Council as a ‘future …

Shares in SLI Systems, a website search operator, rose as much as 20 percent after listing on the NZX this morning, joining a slew of New Zealand companies going public in the face of resurgent demand for the returns available from equities. SLI, which provides online retailers with search tools, rose to NZ$1.80 on listing at 10.30 am, 30 cents …

Turners & Growers, the fruit marketer controlled by Germany’s BayWa Aktiengellschaft, has mopped up the 30 percent in specialist producer exporter Delica it doesn’t already own from managers for $25.8 million. Turners & Growers has been granted a waiver from having to hold a shareholder vote on the transaction after BayWa, with 73 percent and Bartel Holdings with about 12 …

Xero chairman Sam Knowles and chief operating officer Alastair Grigg cashed in some of their shares, which have more than tripled in price in the past 12 months, after a ‘black-out’ period ended when the accounting software-developer reported its annual result last week. Notices lodged with the stock exchange show Knowles, who was the founding chief executive of Kiwibank, sold …

New Zealand’s terms of trade rose for the first time in seven quarters, led by higher export prices for dairy products while a strong kiwi dollar helped constrain import prices. The terms of trade, a measure how much imports can be funded with a fixed amount of exports, rose 4.1 percent in the first quarter from three months earlier, according …