A review of things you need to know before you go home Tuesday; Resimac goes low, TD rates tweaked, The Hawk loses in court, pay equity funded for 55,000, good dairy signal, who owns Govt debt, swaps firm and steepen

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

MORTGAGE RATE CHANGES
Resimac launched a new, lower rate offer for <60% LVR lending, taking the floating rate down to 5.00% and with a two year fixed rate of 4.75%. Compared with bank offers, it is very competitive.

DEPOSIT RATE CHANGES
Kiwibank cut their 3.70% 200 days rate to 3.30%. But they hiked their nine month rate from 3.35% to 3.75%. BNZ cut their eight month rate from 3.65% to 3.00%.

FACING ALL THE CHARGES
The Commerce Commission has successfully appealed to overturn a District Court judgment that saw Budget Loans and Evolution Finance (both with Allan Hawkins as sole director) escape facing 19 charges. Budget Loans Limited and Evolution Finance Limited have been found guilty in the Auckland District Court on 106 charges under the Fair Trading Act 1986. The companies were found guilty of representations made to 18 borrowers while enforcing loan contracts. the Commission filed 125 charges against Budget Loans and Evolution Finance. The District Court ruled that 19 charges should be dismissed. On appeal the High Court has found that the companies have a case to answer on these charges and they have been remitted to the District Court for consideration. The High Court has also dismissed the companies appeal against its conviction on the other 106 charges.

A GOOD ONE COMING?
By our calculations, it looks like the dairy dervatives markets are signaling a +6% rise in WMP prices tomorrow's Global Dairy Trade auction. If that turns out to be the case, it will be the best rise since early November 2016 but take prices back to where they were in February.

SHOEBOX ► NANO ► ??
High prices make it hard to live in a reasonably sized apartment. A shoebox apartment in Auckland would be under 30 m² (and would probably have two bedrooms!). But we are not in the league of Hong Kong where nano apartments have become the norm in some areas - and they are under 18.5 m². Is that in store for us? 6x3 as a dwelling? That's what happens when you 'win' the title of the least affordable housing market. The Hong Kong government is forecasting at half of all dwellings in the city this year will be 37 m² or less.

'ALL OWNED BY FOREIGNERS'? NOT QUITE
The Government has $82 bln in debt securities on issue as at the end of March. Of that, $78.3 bln is tradable secondary markets. How much of that is held by foreigners? Ask most people and they would likely say 80%+. The actual answer is 56.3%, and that is down from 62% four years ago, but up from 48% ten years ago.

BIG PAY EQUITY WIN
The Government has agreed a $2 bln pay equity settlement for 55,000 health care workers. The wage boost follows the TerraNova pay equity claim brought by E tū (previously the Service and Food Workers Union) on behalf of care worker Kristine Bartlett. From July 1 this predominantly female workforce who are mostly on or around minimum wage will receive a pay rise between around +15% and +50% depending on their qualifications and or experience. For the 20,000 workers currently on the minimum wage of $15.75 per hour, it means on July 1 they will move to at least $19 per hour, a +21% pay rise. For a full-time worker, this means they will be taking home around an extra $100 a week, which is over $5,000 a year. The Governmnet has agreed to fund wage increase of between $19 to $27 per hour over five years.

WHOLESALE RATES FIRM, STEEPEN
Swap rates are marginally higher today, up +2 bps for to years, up +3 bps for five years and up +4 bps for ten years. The 90 day bank bill is up +1 bp at 1.97%

NZ DOLLAR HOLDS FIRM
The NZD is no doing much today and is currently at 70.1 USc. Against the AUD, the NZD is holding at 92.6 AUc. Against the EUR we are trading at 65.8 euro cents level. The TWI-5 is at 75.1.

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