Residential building consents dropped a seasonally adjusted 21.3 percent in March to 2,659, the steepest decline since October 2008 when the global financial crisis set in.Stats NZ said the covid-19 pandemic and lockdown made it hard for some councils to process consents, and two...

Kathmandu said it is slowly re-opening in Australia, with the majority of its Rip Curl and Kathmandu outlets to be open by the end of the week.However back in New Zealand a head office restructure that is expected to save the company $15 million a year has included 34 redundancie...

More than 20,000 credit accounts have been flagged as being under “financial hardship”, more than doubling in the past month and up a third during the past week alone, according to credit bureau Centrix.The number of Kiwis opting for repayment “holidays” since the covid-19 lockdo...

Mercer Group’s newest substantial shareholder – Colin Neal – has joined the company’s board.Neal bought a 19.8 percent stake in Mercer in March from the company’s cornerstone investor, Humphry Rolleston. He joins chair Trevor Burt, Paul Smart, Richard Rookes and George Rolleston...

QEX Logistics plans to raise up to $4 million at a 28.6 percent discount to help fund its growth plans, such as beefing up its Australian operations.The logistics company wants to raise $3 million in a share purchase plan to existing investors, with scope to accept another $1 mil...

Smartpay shares dropped 23.5 percent to 39 cents after the payments processor said its agreement with Verifone to buy its New Zealand assets for $70 million fell over. The deal was contingent on receiving Commerce Commission approval by April 30, which didn’t happen, and Smartpay...

Bathurst Resources will take its fight with L&M Coal over a US$40 million bill to the Supreme Court.The coal miner has sought leave to overturn a Court of Appeal ruling that it had to make a performance payment on coal produced at its mothballed Buller operations. Bathurst bought...

Chris Steedman, operations director at Australian defence equipment manufacturer Thales, will jump the ditch to start a new role as chief operating officer at Scott Technology from June 1.Steedman, who had been with Thales – initially in South Africa – for 10 years, will work alo...

The government intends to enact a permanent version of the loss carry-back tax scheme introduced in response to the covid-19 impact on firms’ profitability.Legislation to introduce a temporary version of the scheme was introduced to Parliament today.A permanent scheme is envisage...

Former Vodafone New Zealand chief financial officer Kate Jorgensen will join telco Chorus’ board in July as an independent director.Jorgensen has held senior leadership positions in the telecommunications, infrastructure and construction industries. She has also held CFO at KiwiR...

Weak business confidence may “have found a floor, albeit a damp, cold basement,” said ANZ New Zealand chief economist Sharon Zollner.The final reading for the April ANZ Business Outlook survey was, while dire, a slight improvement on the preliminary reading in early-April results...

Alliance Group is investing $4 million to lift its beef processing capacity in the South Island.The company will invest in its 18-month-old venison plant at Lorneville near Invercargill to enable the facility to also process cull cows during peak season.Chief executive David Surv...

High trading volumes and a fee increase has seen NZX Limited’s 2020 first quarter revenue rise 18 percent to $18.5 million from $15.7 million the year before.  This was led by a 45.9 percent increase in revenue from secondary markets, climbing $1.6 million to a total of $5.1 mill...

Auckland International Airport’s $200 million share purchase plan was oversubscribed, receiving about $489 million of applications.The airport received 32,619 applications at an average of $15,000. NZX data showed it had 50,965 shareholders at April 17.The offer will be scaled in...

The New Zealand Bankers’ Association said it has discovered that banks have lent $1 billion less than it had previously reported to businesses since the nation's lockdown to combat the spread of the coronavirus.NZBA began publishing data on bank lending on its website, update...

The annual rate of inflation in the construction sector slowed to a 3.6 percent pace in the March quarter, from 3.9 percent for the prior quarter, according to the latest Cordell Housing Price Index.While this was well down from the cyclical peak of 6.9 percent in the last quarte...

Foreign Minister Winston Peters tasked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to consider how foreign policy can support the domestic economic and trade recoveries.Peters asked the ministry to consider post-covid policy priorities three weeks ago, he said in a speech today. Pe...

Exports hit a new high in March 2020, driven by sales of kiwifruit, dairy, and meat, even as the covid-19 pandemic spread around the world, Stats NZ said.The value of total exported goods rose 3.8 percent to $5.8 billion in March from a year earlier. This was a record for any mon...

Beijing Holdings BAIC has continued to lift its stake in PGG Wrightson, buying another 755,000 shares for $1.9 million, an average price of $2.57 a share.The Hong Kong investment company, which is ultimately controlled by Beijing Capital Agribusiness and Foods Group, now owns 10...

OceanaGold has resumed mining and exploration activities at both its Macraes and Waihi gold mines. The gold miner also reaffirmed its production guidance for 2020, saying it expects to produce between 360,000 and 380,000 ounces of gold this year at an estimated all-in-sustaini...

Eroad said growth continued in the fourth quarter with many of its customers providing essential services, and its expectations for the 2020 financial year are unchanged.The transport tech services company added 3,951 units in the three months to March 31, bringing annualised gro...