A review of things you need to know before you go home on Tuesday; Spark borrows at 4.5%, Grant Spencer gets big OECD role, MRP to shut capacity, Payments NZ gets new members

Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today (apart from the cricket result).

TODAY'S MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
AMP Home Loans adjusted their specials down to the Kiwibank levels. Kiwibank funds this program.

TODAY'S DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
There are no TD rate changes to report either.

7 YEARS AT 4.5% PA
Spark NZ has today issued NZ$100 mln of domestic notes to institutional investors. The notes will mature in March 2022 and pay a coupon of 4.5%.

AUCKLAND ICEBERG ?
Auckland resident Johnson Yuejun Li (48) has appeared in the Auckland District Court today charged with a corruption and bribery attempt of an Auckland Council official. The allegation is that he tried to influence a Council resource consents officer in November 2013 when Li was seeking a consent to subdivide a Hillsborough property. It makes you wonder how big the iceberg is.

TIME FOR ANOTHER JOB
RBNZ deputy governor Grant Spencer has been appointed chair of the OECD’s Committee on Financial Markets. The committee's work agenda focuses on "trends and prospects in the international and major domestic financial markets, and structural issues and developments in financial markets and the financial sector".

MIXED SIGNALS
Chinese factory operating conditions deteriorated slightly in March. The closely watched Flash HSBC China Manufacturing PMI has come in at 49.2 in March from 50.7 in February, which is an 11-month low. Of more concern is the bigger drop in Japan. But these factory PMI indexes don't tell it all - the service sector indexes are more important these days. In fact, the Conference Board leading index for China has improved in data released today. Currency markets have ignored todays data.

GROWING ECONOMY, LESS ENERGY
Mighty River Power today confirmed that its gas-fired Southdown power station will close at the end of the year "in response to significant growth in renewable generation". Overall energy demand in New Zealand is stable to falling. Power companies can only stay healthy by retiring high-cost capacity early. That is allowing some impressive gains on the greenhouse gas emissions front.

MARCHING ON
Most international trade transactions are valued in US dollars, even if they are settled more directly in local currencies. One settlement currency making strides is the Chinese renminbi. HSBC research shows that in 2015 15% of Australian transactions used the Chinese currency, up from 9% in 2014. That's an impressive change.

WHOLESALE RATES UP
Wholesale swap rates stayed pretty much unchanged for most of the day but have started to fade late in the day. They are down -2 bp across the curve at 4pm. The 90 day bank bill rate was unchanged at 3.63%.

NZ DOLLAR CLIMBS
Check our real-time charts here.  The NZD climbed a little further today as the day wore on. It is now at 76.3 USc, at 97.3 AUc, and the TWI is at 80.8.

You can now see an animation of this chart. Click on it, or click here.