Bernard Hickey details the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am in association with Bank of New Zealand, including news of a new completely different Chinese bid for the Crafar Farms.
The receivers for Crafar Farms have accepted a bid from Shanghai property company Pengxin, which will now be considered by the Overseas Investment Office.
Pengxin is owned by Chinese rich lister Jiang Zhaobai, who is worth US$550 million. His is a serious bid and much less easy to dismiss than the opportunistic and flawed bid by May Wang and Natural Dairy. See more detail in our article here.
Elsewhere, notorious Christchurch businessman Bernard Whimp must be celebrating today after his low ball offer to Contact shareholders was accepted by more than 300 very uninformed shareholders. See more here at TVNZ.
Also, profit warnings and share price slumps yesterday from Hallenstein Glasson and Pumpkin Patch show how difficult the retailing scene is in New Zealand as households tighten their belts and instead look to repay debt. See more here at TV3.
Overseas, Standard and Poor's downgraded Japan's sovereign credit rating by one notch to AA- overnight, arguing Japan did not have a coherent strategy to reduce its massive public debts. The yen weakened against most currencies, including the New Zealand dollar, which rose to 64 yen from 63.5 yen overnight. See more here at Bloomberg.
In Australia, the government announced plans to cut spending and increase taxes to pay for A$5.6 billion of repairs after the Queensland government.
This includes a one year income levy (tax) of 0.5% on those earning A$50,000 to A$100,000 and a 1% levy on those earning over A$100,000. See more here at SMH.com.
In the Middle East, Egypt was forced to shut its stock market temporarily after violent protests against the government of long time leader Hosni Mubarek triggered a collapse in share prices. See more here at Bloomberg.
20 Comments
FYI, Fletcher Building expected to lift the cash component of its Crane offer, taking the full offer to about A$10 a share, to get an agreed deal - http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/fletcher-building-lifts-its-of…
And the AFR says Crane managing director Greg Sedgwick, who was paid A$4.48 million last year, is in line for a payout equivalent to two times his annual remuneration if his employment is terminated.
China is planning to create the world's biggest mega city by merging nine cities to create a metropolis twice the size of Wales with a population of 42 million.
So no - wonder why the Chinese like to buy our land/ businesses.
As a general observation on the media's coverage of crafar farms, including but not limited to interest.co.nz, I would note that I find it annoying and kinda sad really that the articles are about the fact that a 'chinese' buyer wants to buy crafar, the story is about the chinese, rather than about the asset who has a new lead purchaser, who incidently is HQed in China.
Agree. It looks like Winston Peters is behind all these media coverage of the Crafar farm sale.
So given Chinas habit of aquiring other countries assets/land, NZers have nothing to be concerned about?
There will be a huge voter backlash if this goes through,
John should just nock them back now and not waste the time and money with any investigation.
Its an election year and the Govt now has the ability to vito overseas purchase of land, Unless National want to loose or are aragent enough to think they cant loose this will never happen.
There will be a huge voter backlash if this goes through,
John should just nock them back now and not waste the time and money with any investigation.
Its an election year and the Govt now has the ability to vito overseas purchase of land, Unless National want to loose or are aragent enough to think they cant loose this will never happen.
There will be a huge voter backlash if this goes through,
John should just nock them back now and not waste the time and money with any investigation.
Its an election year and the Govt now has the ability to vito overseas purchase of land, Unless National want to loose or are aragent enough to think they cant loose this will never happen.
There will be a huge voter backlash if this goes through,
John should just nock them back now and not waste the time and money with any investigation.
Its an election year and the Govt now has the ability to vito overseas purchase of land, Unless National want to loose or are aragent enough to think they cant loose this will never happen.
I think it will go through as the Maori party is quite supportive of this. Act is always supportive of selling assets.
The farmers will be pushing for this to go thru too. Anything to maintain farm values at ridiculous levels, to be sure they keep getting their tax-free capital gains.
The hopeful next generation of young Kiwi farmers can get stuffed, as far as they are concerned.
Cheers
What is it exactly that you fear that Chinese owners of NZ land would do to it, that a NZ owner wouldn't?
There is also Dairy Holdings and Graeme Hart's Carter Holt Harvey dairy farms on the block. Unless the NZ Super Fund stumps up our money, the most likely buyers there are probably overseas ones too...
again, what is it that you fear will happen as a result of foreign ownership that would not happen if the farms remained in NZ ownership?
The Aussie irony is that they'll re-start the coal mines, to pay for the floods.....
Talk about raining on your own parade.
When the Chinese bought my old company Rover they sent over loads of container ships and stripped all the factories of its steel and sent it all back to China, maybe here they will take all the dirt back to China and leave us with lakes!!!
FYI, Hubbard case gets weirder and weirder - http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/4593183/Hubbard-quiet-on-MRI-claim
Crystal ball time...it's 2035 and the Greenabour Party has taken power dressed in green and red after the National mob had ruled since 2008 ( frightening thought for Goofy Klinger and Cunny). Greenabour has won on a policy aimed at putting right the mistakes, after all it's the putting right that counts...the platform of promises points to a spanking new state owned nuclear power plant on the eastern side of Great Barrier...out of sight and out of mind....with guaranteed cheaper power for every Auck...much cheaper power.
Has anyone looked at the GST angle on farms, or commercial property in general?
If I am correct then every time a property attracting GST sells for less than the vendor purchased it for, then he will pay less GST back on the sale then originally received when purchased.
Is the impact of property sales on GST revenue significant?
It's so good to see so much money wasted on producing over 600 pages of shite.
"In its report, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission blames a range of obvious culprits: Banks that made reckless bets. Credit rating agencies that endorsed risky mortgage bonds. Government regulators who overlooked danger signs until they threatened the global financial system.
It concludes that the crisis might have been prevented if banks had been more careful and regulators had asked tougher questions.
Those views have long since become mainstream in the more than two years since the crisis peaked. Yet among panel members, they sowed dissension. In the end, the commission's six Democratic appointees embraced its conclusions. The four named by Republicans did not; they offered their own reasons for the crisis - and three complained that the majority's conclusions were too broad."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10702681
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