A review of things you need to know before you go home on Wednesday; more rate cuts, housing slowdown, but not mortgages, good China and Japan data, swap rates rise, NZD recovers

Here are the key things you need to know before you leave work today.

TODAY'S MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
The Nelson Building Society cut both its floating and fixed rates.

TODAY'S DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
The first change today was from FE Investment who cut rates. Asset Finance and Bank of India then followed. TSB Bank also cut some savings rates. It is also worth us noting that we had the Kiwibank NoticeSaver rate wrong in our tables, and this is now corrected.

LOWER AND SLOWER ...
Lower asking prices and number of listings on Realestate.co.nz show the winter slowdown has arrived. Average inventory levels are still at 20 weeks at the current sales levels. In Auckland they are at 9.6 weeks.

... BUT NOT FOR MORTGAGES
But you don't see much softness in the latest mortgage approval data. We have previously noted a 'winter slowdown' but last week's volumes and values shot back up to levels normally associated with March and April. The average value being lent was also high at $221,000.

GOING SOFT
Australian building consents are starting to go soft. Although they are up +17.6% year-on-year, they were slightly lower in May that April on a seasonally adjusted basis.

DECENT DATA FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
China's official PMI was out today, coming in at a small expansion as expected. The final HSBC China version of smaller firms showed contraction. But the Services sector in China is much less equivocal - it showed a fairly strong expansion with a reading of 53.8 and up from a 6 year low the previous month. Even China is more than just its factories. And Japan's business sentiment numbers were out today and generally quite good.

EY EXPANDS IN HEALTH CONSULTING
EY says it's acquiring the business and assets of health consulting company, Health Partners Consulting Group in a deal it says makes EY one of NZ's biggest health care advisors. Health Partners’ managing partner Stephen McKernan, NZ’s Director-General of Health from 2006 to 2010, is joining EY Oceania’s health advisory team as a partner, while partners Chris Mules and Rana Wong join EY as directors. Health Partners’ employees and clinical associates will also join EY.

EX-FONTERRA CFO JOINS WESTPAC NZ BOARD
Jonathan Mason, formerly chief financial officer of Fonterra, has joined Westpac NZ's board as an independent director.  Mason joins the board that's now chaired by Jan Dawson following the retirement from it of ex-BNZ managing director Peter Thodey. Mason is also a director of Air New Zealand, Vector and Zespri.

WHOLESALE RATES RISE
Swap rates rose today in a steepening bias. The rises were +1 to +5 bps following US trends. The 90 day bank bill rate gave up -2 bps which is means it is back 3.24%.

NZ DOLLAR RECOVERS
The NZ dollar basically held its levels today, following a substantial fall overnight. It has risen as today wore on back to where it was this time yesterday at 68.0 USc, at 88.1 AUc, and 61.1 euro cents. The TWI is at 71.7. Check our real-time charts here.

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