As the flames die and the smoke clears on the roof of the unfinished New Zealand International Convention Centre roof, questions from this sorry episode spin out in many directions.There are the simple questions: how did it start? Whose individual incompetence, error or negligenc...

New Zealand's four major banks may be feeling battered as they await the Reserve Bank's final decisions on how much extra capital they're going to have to hold, but they should thank their lucky stars they're not as exposed to ritual bashings as their Australian parents.Still gra...

Council of Trade Unions president Richard Wagstaff was kept waiting by the Workplace Relations Minister, Iain Lees-Galloway, at the CTU's biennial conference in Wellington on Wednesday. It was either prophetic or to be expected. Wagstaff had to improvise while he waited for the m...

By Jenny Ruth Sept. 23 (BusinessDesk) - If New Zealand's construction industry is to thrive, the bottom line is that clients, particularly government ones, are going to have to pay more for buildings. Steve Killeen, chief executive of Downer's New Zealand operations, spelle...

By Jenny Ruth Sept. 19 (BusinessDesk) - Is the liability companies and directors face for breaches of NZX's continuous disclosure rules preventing people from becoming directors? Is the continuous disclosure regime dissuading a significant number of companies from listing o...

By Jenny Ruth Sept. 16 (BusinessDesk) - Could the lack of new listings on NZX be as simple as New Zealand not having enough traditional stock-broking and merchant banking firms? The capital markets review's report mentions the issue: "Each of the five primary retail NZX fir...

By Jenny Ruth Sept. 11 (BusinessDesk) - One glaring omission in the capital markets review committee's report this week is the point of view of retail shareholders which is largely missing in action. Perhaps that was inevitable, given the committee’s make-up: chair Martin S...

By Jenny Ruth Sept. 2 (BusinessDesk) - Investors were mightily relieved when Vital Healthcare Property Trust’s manager announced in May that Vital wouldn’t be party to buying Healthscope properties for A$1.25 billion. Trading in Vital speaks volumes: the unit price jumped f...

By Pattrick SmellieAug. 22 (BusinessDesk) - In business, as in life, it sometimes pays to ask whether you want to be right, or be happy.The ANZ Bank appears to have decided it wants to be right.Hence its staggering insistence today that it disagrees with the Financial Markets Aut...

By Jenny Ruth Aug. 22 (BusinessDesk) - Xero has a fraught history of trying to suss out success in North America with what has sometimes had all the hallmarks of an executive revolving door. The company’s slow progress in the US has also long been a disappointment to analys...

By Jenny Ruth July 31 (BusinessDesk) - Abano Healthcare continues to do it tough in Australia where, even though it’s the second-largest corporate player, it has less than 2 percent of the market. Its annual sales across the Tasman haven’t grown since 2012 and appear to be...

By Jenny Ruth July 24 (BusinessDesk) - Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it, goes the famous saying attributed to Winston Churchill and philosopher George Santayana. Fletcher Building’s near $1 billion in construction losses in New Zealand over 18...

By Jenny Ruth July 18 (BusinessDesk) - Motherhood and apple pie top most people’s lists of things that are unquestionably good. We don’t normally question the cost – many mothers would say, far too much! – but if the pie cost $5, that would look fair enough. But what if...

By Jenny Ruth June 24 (BusinessDesk) - Vista Group has mightily rewarded investors since its November 2014 float, the share price having risen more than fivefold. And unlike so many technology companies, Vista was already profitable before it listed and has grown revenue at...

By Jenny Ruth June 13 (BusinessDesk) - Vital Healthcare Property Trust’s investors would be well-advised to keep in mind that, as the old adage goes, turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, when they come to vote on the proposed changes to the manager’s fee structure. The manager...

By Jenny Ruth June 10 (BusinessDesk) - Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr says the prudential part of his organisation, the part that oversees the banking system, is under-resourced. “We need more resource. We’ve said that very often. That was, in part, one of the outcomes of...

By Jenny Ruth May 15 (BusinessDesk) - Disclosure lies at the heart of New Zealand’s corporate regulatory systems but the regulators themselves have greatly undermined that principle more than once. The beauty of enforced disclosure is that it’s nice and cheap, and a strong...

(Corrects details of Humphry Rolleston's sale of his company to Southbury in par 13) By Jenny Ruth May 6 (BusinessDesk) - Government officials wrongly decided after a flying visit to his Timaru headquarters that financier Allan Hubbard had stolen money from Aorangi Securiti...