Bernard Hickey details the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am in association with Bank of New Zealand, including news much of the lower half of the North Island and the South Island is dusted in snow this morning and the Antarctic blast may drag on for a few days, weather forecasters say.
Stuff reported up to 1,700 dairy farms may be forced to dump their milk today because Fonterra's milk tankers may not be able to get through snow-blocked roads.
However, Federated Farmers has said the storm is unlikely to cause major stock losses because lambing has yet to start in the lower parts of the South Island and because farmers had plenty of warning to move vulnerable stock into sheltered areas. See our article yesterday with details from readers in rural areas.
Meanwhile, the return of merger and acquisition activity has given stock markets a boost overnight.
Google announced it would spend US$12.5 billion of its cash pile to buy Motorola Mobility (it's mobile phone business). See more here at Bloomberg.
Also, Time Warner is spending US$3 billion to buy Insight and TD Bank is buying Bank of America's cards business for US$8.6 billion.
All this activity boosted hopes that cashed up corporates will start deploying their cashpiles to buy and invest, boost share values and economic activity.
The Dow rose 1.9% and the S&P 500 rose 2.1%. See more here at Bloomberg.
European markets were also more stable overnight on hopes a meeting of German and French leaders may agree on a solution to common Euro bond issuance, which some believe may solve Europe's sovereign debt crisis. See a preview of the meeting from Reuters.
Also, the Swiss franc fell on fresh talk its central bank may set a target or peg for the currency. The Yen also fell on talk of Bank of Japan intervention to stop the Japanese currency from rising further against the US dollar.
Both the franc and yen are seen as safe havens amid financial market turmoil and expectations of further money printing in both Europe and the United States. See more here at Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, some better news from Japan. GDP contracted by 1.3% on annnualised basis in the June quarter, which was half what economists expected. See more here at BBC.
The New Zealand dollar was broadly unchanged around 83.2 USc in morning trade.
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