Dawn chorus Tuesday Oct 27
An extra interest-free year for $1.7b small business loan scheme; Billy Te Kahika quits Advance; Harmoney details A$350m float on ASX; Samsung patriarch dies
News in the political economy in the last day or two
Labour is beginning to indicate which policies it will roll out once it is in Government with more unfettered power. There will be more talks with the Greens later today I’ll keep an eye on.
That programme includes extending the interest-free period on the $1.7b Small Business Cashflow Scheme from one to two years, and extending the overall scheme from two years to three years (2023). Here’s Tom Pullar Strecker’s report at Stuff.
Andrew Little also announced Labour would finally repeal the ‘three strikes’ law. Its attempt during the first term was blocked by NZ First. (Stuff)
Billy Te Kahika quit as co-leader of the Advance Party yesterday after the party he formed with Jami-Lee Ross got just 0.9% of the vote. (Stuff) One great thing about the election was how little traction these conspiracy theorists got. Luckily for New Zealand, we don’t have News Corp and Fox News here to fan the flames.
The NZX continues to struggle to keep interesting new Kiwi companies from floating on the Australian Stock Exchange. The AFR reported on Saturday that Harmoney, the online lending platform, plans to raise A$92.5m through an initial public offering at A$3.50 a share, which would value the firm at A$350m.
Some bits and bobs of news
The patriarch of the Samsung empire, Lee Kun-hee, died on Sunday at the age of 78. This Reuters obit makes his seem like a Steve Jobs-type character.
Lee, who died aged 78 after being hospitalised for a heart attack in 2014, was driven by a constant sense of crisis, which he instilled in his leadership teams to drive change and fight complacency. In the mid-1990s, Lee personally recalled around $50 million worth of poor quality mobile phones and fax machines, and set fire to them. (Reuters)
James Shipton, the chair of Australia's ASIC, announced on Friday he would step aside after it was revealed the corporate watchdog paid more than A$118,000 for his personal tax advice. (Guardian Australia)
Links worthy of your time
Andrea Vance’s dissection on Sunday of National’s electoral implosion includes a fair amount of off-the-record quotes from current and former National MPs and staffers. Andrea then goes inside the shift of pro-gun voters from New Zealand First to ACT and then ‘Labour Connect’, the data tool Labour used to help win with a landslide. (Stuff)
Matt Nippert goes deep into the rise and fall of Eric Watson. Plenty of schadenfreude from me because I covered the operation and then implosion of Hanover Finance in depth when I was at Interest.co.nz. It was owned and run by Watson and Mark Hotchin. (NZ Herald)
I wrote critically of Hanover before it collapsed, saying people were taking more risk than it appeared. Hotchin later paid Cameron Slater to attack me personally via his blog.
Coming up…
Today - Stats NZ to release overseas merchandise trade for September at 10.45 am
Today – RBNZ to release September residential mortgage lending figures at 3pm.
Thursday – ANZ Group annual results due
Friday - Electoral Commission to release preliminary results of NZ referendums
Friday - Talks between Labour and Greens expected to be completed.
Friday – RBNZ to release overall bank lending figures for September.
Friday – Port of Tauranga and Tourism Holding annual meetings due
November 3 - US Presidential elections (Oct 4 NZ Time)
November 6 - Official final NZ election and referendum results announced after counting of special votes.
November 11 - Reserve Bank quarterly Monetary Policy Statement (MPS) and news conference at 2pm
November 21 - National Party AGM due to vote on re-election of President Peter Goodfellow.
November 25 - Reserve Bank six monthly Financial Stability Report (FSR) scheduled for release
Ngā Mihi
Bernard