2014's top stories

We look back on a big, successful year and reveal our most popular stories; announce expanded coverage for 2015

22nd Dec 14, 9:30am by David Chaston

In 2014 we have delivered more than 4,000 original stories from our team of journalists and contributors. That is a record for us.

We were visited by more than 1.5 million "unique readers" who dialled up more than 4.5 million sessions reading more than 11.25 million pages of content.

Actually our 'unique reader' data is by IP address so it probably double counts readers who access our content using multiple devices.

But it is still a good proportion of New Zealand's online population and is a remarkable 25% increase over 2013.

We appreciate the support from all our readers for our live-and-free service, and we wish everyone Happy Holidays and good weather where ever you are.

Although most of our staff will be taking a break as well, we will have daily updates and some unique content in our regular style.

International financial markets may get 'interesting' in January and we will be covering that and what it means for New Zealand.

And we will be back in 2015 with an expanded team of full-time journalists, two more in fact. We will be welcoming back David Hargreaves, and be joined by Jenée Tibshraeny.

2015 will be an even bigger one for us with expanded coverage of everything that can help you make a financial decision.

Here are our top fifteen stories of 2014:

#15. Craig Simpson's March story assessing KiwiSaver returns using our unique regular savings based approach
https://www.interest.co.nz/kiwisaver/70082/summary-regular-savings-retu…

#14. Our July story introducing our political party policy comparison pages for the Septmeber election
https://www.interest.co.nz/news/70796/compare-policies-parliamentary-pa…

#13. Simon Swallow's assessment of the implications of upcoming IRD changes for NZ resident UK pension holders
https://www.interest.co.nz/personal-finance/66928/new-ird-tax-proposals…

#12. Gareth Vaughan's March report of ANZ's mortgage floating rate hike
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/68951/anz-increase-floating-mortgag…

#11. Gareth Vaughan's January interview of Brian Gaynor
https://www.interest.co.nz/personal-finance/68231/milford-asset-managem…

#10. Alistair Helm's January analysis of the Auckland housing market
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/67945/alistair-helm-analyses-remark…

#9. Matthew Gilligan's December defence of residential property investment
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/73140/accountant-matthew-gilligan-c…

#8. Bernard Hickey's news report of the April rise in the OCR
https://www.interest.co.nz/news/69597/rbnz-lifts-ocr-25-bps-3-expected-…

#7. Roger J Kerr's April story warning of a fall in dairy prices and the NZD
https://www.interest.co.nz/currencies/69618/roger-j-kerr-says-both-upco…

#6. The October version of Bernards fix-or-float story
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/72537/bernard-hickey-looks-how-think…

#5. Olly Newland's May warning that the Auckland property market will get the speed wobbles
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/70022/olly-newland-gives-seven-reas…-

#4. Bernard Hickey's six reasons in April why we should take Jesse Colombo's warnings seriously
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/69557/bernard-hickey-gives-6-reasons…

#3. Bernard Hickey's assessment of the January RBNZ rate review
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/68263/bernard-hickey-looks-what-rese…

#2. David Hargeaves January preview of what was in store for 2014
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/68186/rising-interest-rates-will-be-…

#1. The April version of Bernards fix-or-float story which was read by 12,500 people
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/69080/bernard-hickey-looks-how-think…

Interestingly our #1 story for 2014 was only our 50th most popular page. It was well below the 543,000 people who used our mortgage rate page over the year; and the total views were much more than that of course because readers kept coming back for updates.

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6 Comments

by dtcarter | 22nd Dec 14, 10:18am 1419196719

"Actually our 'unique reader' data is by IP address so it probably double counts readers who access our content using multiple devices."

It will also undercount all your readers who access the site behind coroprate firewalls

by iconoclast | 22nd Dec 14, 2:50pm 1419213048

Dear Mr Chaston

Personally I found Andrew Hooker's articles the most thought provoking of the lot

They were factual, informative and most valuable

The fact they weren't provocative resulted in few subsequent comments

Nothing to argue about or disagree with

Don't know what the eye-ball click traffic was like

Would like to see him here more often

by cowboy | 22nd Dec 14, 3:41pm 1419216093

I find the mortgage rate page quite helpful as many banks no longer list their interest schedules in easy to see places.

by iconoclast | 28th Dec 14, 4:19pm 1419736763

Things a bit slow at the moment

Living in energy poverty

Here is my favourite shit-stirring business investigating scribe with his latest look-see on Electricity gold-plating and the robertson story: rising prices, rising consultants

Worth the read

http://www.smh.com.au/business/australians-now-live-in-energy-poverty-2…

Because

You won't see any of his type of work appearing in the NZ Media - haven't seen anyone come close

Follow him on twitter at Michael West ‏@MichaelWestBiz

He comes up with some beauts - just sit back and wait for them

much of his work is relevant to the new zealand business scene

By comparison, he makes our big-fella beehive.org scribe seem like a fop doing the bidding of the cognoscenti

The NZ media is terrified

by Stephen Hulme | 29th Dec 14, 9:15am 1419797757

You won't see any of his type of work appearing in the NZ Media - haven't seen anyone come close

I drew the committee’s attention to more than $10 billion of asset revaluations that the generator/retailers had credited to their books.

That sum, which had risen to $12 billion by 2012, represents the present value of the amount by which those companies’ profits are above what would have been needed to give them a fair return on all the money they have paid out, both to acquire their generation assets back in the late 1990s, and to install new assets since then.

I pointed out that if one of the standard models of regulation used overseas had been applied here at the time ECNZ was broken up in the 1990s, most of those asset revaluations would have been prevented, because the industry’s ability to price-gouge its captive customers and capitalise the resulting profits as “fair value” would have been blocked. Read more

The arrangement is beneficial to Powerco's owners - Brookfield and Queensland Investment Corporation - because more than a third of the company's debt is related party, allowing owners to extract profits from the business as interest while paying no tax.

There are tax rules designed to limit the ability of overseas owners to do this, known as thin capitalisation rules, but Chalkie reckons they have been as useful as a fart in a fishtank.

For example, Powerco's debt at the time fell well within the allowable ratio of debt to total assets of 75 per cent, but that did not seem to hinder its ability to create large tax losses.

Another overseas-owned lines company, Wellington Electricity Distribution, has an even higher proportion of related-party debt than Powerco and in Chalkie's reading of its accounts has paid no company tax at all since its sale by Auckland-based Vector in 2008.

The tax losses came despite healthy profits at ebit level of close to $50m a year.

Wellington Electricity Distribution, incidentally, is owned by Hong Kong-based Cheung Kong Infrastructure through a holding company in the Bahamas.

From last month the thin capitalisation threshold has fallen to 60 per cent. Read more

Did the citizens vote with their wallets in mind? No. So they should expect more of the same.

by cowboy | 29th Dec 14, 2:01pm 1419814869

said as much at the time.

But remember all those over-inflated assets can be depreciated as a cash rich tax dodge for the life time of the organisation, until the "Railways" level of failure when the NZ taxpayer will be forced to rebuy the assets at their original price (or large portion there of)