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...