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Trade Minister Tim Groser will be focused on Plan B: Getting TPP in place after his disappointment in being dropped from the race for the director-general’s role at the World Trade Organisation. Impeccable sources confirmed to www.newzealandinc.com that Groser has been told he will not go through to the final selection round for the WTO top job. The WTO selection …

The next head of the World Trade Organization will be either Mexico’s Herminio Blanco or Brazil’s Roberto Azevedo, guaranteeing a Latin American nation will hold the top job at the global trade body for the first time – according to Reuters. While the Reuters report is so far unconfirmed by official WTO sources, Inside US Trade is running the same …

SAO PAULO–The European Union threw its support this week behind Brazil’s Roberto Azevedo and Mexico’s Herminio Blanco to take over as head of the World Trade Organization after Director General Pascal Lamy steps down later this year, U.K. Business Secretary Vince Cable said Wednesday. Azevedo, the current Brazil representative at the WTO, “was one of two nominees put forward by …

Fonterra Cooperative Group’s managing director of the Asia Pacific/Middle East/Africa (APMEA) unit Mark Wilson will leave at the end of the month to attend to “family health matters” after overseeing a management restructure of the regional business. Chief executive Theo Spierings said Wilson had overseen the creation of the new APMEA unit in November when the Australia and New Zealand …

Warehouse Group, New Zealand’s biggest listed retailer, will reap a pretax gain of between $14 million and $15 million from the sale of Silverdale Centre in Auckland after developing the shopping complex on land it had owned for almost two decades. Listed property investors DNZ Property Fund agreed to buy the fully-leased property for $78 million in a move that …

APN News & Media, the publisher of the New Zealand Herald newspaper has shaken up its management structure, leaving out head of digital Matt Crockett, who was reportedly in the running for the top job. The Sydney-based media group has made chief development officer Crockett, a former head of Telecom New Zealand’s wholesale unit, redundant and replaced regional media division …

Air New Zealand’s shares jumped 5.6 percent after the national carrier flagged its annual earnings will more than double this year. The Auckland-based airline expects normalised annual pre-tax earnings, which strips outs unrealised movements in derivatives used to hedge its exposures, to be between $235 million and $260 million in the 12 months ended June 30. That compares to the …

Reserve Bank governor Graeme Wheeler kept the official cash rate at 2.5 percent, talking down the threat of soft inflation in recent months and reiterating his view the New Zealand dollar is “overvalued”. The kiwi jumped after the statement. “The high New Zealand dollar continues to be a significant headwind for the tradables sector, restricting export earnings and encouraging demand …

Infratil, the Wellington-based investment group managed by Morrison & Co, says its sale of up to $100 million of June 2022 bonds won’t open as planned today because it needs to amend the prospectus for the Labour Party-Greens power plan. “Although the prospectus discloses changes in the regulatory environment as one of the principal risks of an investment in infrastructure …

The New Zealand dollar rose against the euro after German manufacturing and euro-zone services weakened and edged up against the greenback ahead of the reserve Bank’s interest rate review. The kiwi dollar rose to 64.61 euro cents from 64.33 cents at 5pm in Wellington yesterday. It gained to 84.04 US cents from 83.94 cents. A survey of purchasing managers in …