Bernard Hickey reviews the day's business news with Duncan Garner at RadioLive, Monday during drive-time, October 31, 2016.
You can hear their discussion here.
The NZX 50 is closing down 6 points in line with the weaker close on Wall St on Friday night after the Clinton email investigation shock unnerved those in the market worried about a President Donald Trump.
The Commerce Commission has a spanner in the works of the Sky-Vodafone merger, delaying a decision date indefinitely and asking some pointed formal questions about how the deal would lessen competition. Sky TV shares fell 20c or 4% to NZ$4.60, which is well below the NZ$5.40/share takeover offer from Vodafone.
We don't often give administrators and receivers credit for doing a good job when winding up a failed company. But the people working to sell off Solid Energy's mines have done a decent job. They announced a series of deals that will raise around NZ$200 million to repay about half of the creditors' lost money, and they've done it by selling the mines as going concerns, which means keeping plenty of jobs.
Mortgage borrowers and savers should keep an eye on ratings agency Standard and Poor's. Today it warned there was a one in three chance it would downgrade the credit ratings of the big four Australian banks. That would cascade down to New Zealand's ratings and would likely slightly increase interest rates.
Xero has announced some major staff changes as it grapples with trying to grow in America. It has let yet another US division boss go and recruited another one. Xero will also move its US HQ from San Francisco to Denver. High flying Kiwi marketing exec Andy Lark is also leaving Xero as part of a restructure.
There's a lot of Government hope that extra housing supply will solve the housing affordability problems you've been talking about today by comparing Auckland house prices with those in Brisbane. Statistics New Zealand has reported Auckland building consents fell to 753 in September from 970 in August, and annual consents were still just under 10,000. Auckland needs to be building at least 15,000 just to keep up with population growth, let alone whittle away the shortage that has now built up to 40,000 houses.
This content was first released by RadioLive, and is here with permission.
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