Dec 20, 2017  - Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Ltd said on Monday it had signed a contract for Leighs Construction Ltd to construct the fourth building on its 42ha Auckland campus at Maurice Paykel Place, East Tamaki. The new building will have a gross floor area of 35,700m² and consist of a mix of research & development, pilot manufacturing and warehousing areas. Groundworks have been substantially completed and construction will start in late January, with an expected operational date of 2020. 2300 employees – over half Fisher & Paykel Healthcare’s global workforce of 4100 – work at the campus’s existing…

Dec 20, 2017 - NZX will change the price structure of the local stock market in the second half of next year as part of a new strategy aimed at reinvigorating the domestic capital market. The Wellington-based company will bring its trading and clearing pricing model into line with global practice, which will give participants greater price transparency when negotiating brokerage and services, and stoke on-market liquidity, it said in a statement. NZX will provide details of the move when reporting its 2017 annual result in February and have the new model in place in the second half of 2018.…

Dec 20, 2017  -  SBN’s work on New Zealand’s transition to a circular economy has received a vital boost. Fuji Xerox, 3R Group and Auckland Council have become Foundation Partners of the newly launched Circular Economy Accelerator.  The announcement represents a significant investment in scaling and accelerating New Zealand’s transition to a circular economy. SBN has been working in this area for the last few years. A circular economy is where the lifecycle of materials is maximised, usage optimised and end of life materials reutilised to create a continuous flow. The new Circular Economy Accelerator launches today. It brings together…

Dec 19, 2017  -  Japanese-listed Itoham Yonekyu Holdings has received Overseas Investment Office approval to increase its shareholding of Anzco Foods to 100 percent, from the 65 percent it already owned.  Anzco was New Zealand's second-largest meat company and fifth-largest exporter in 2016, with turnover of $1.5 billion and 3,000 employees. It was already 83.3 percent overseas owned, with 16.8 percent of the company held by Japanese marine products company Nippon Suisan Kaisha, known as Nissui, and the remaining 18.2 percent owned by the company's chair Graeme Harrison and management. Harrison will step down at the company's next annual meeting…

Dec 19, 2017  - The Reserve Bank today released a Bulletin article by Dr Chris Hunt, ‘Independence with accountability: financial system regulation and the Reserve Bank’. This article discusses the main reasons for delegating certain financial system-related functions and objectives to an agency that sits at arm’s length from government. The article outlines the Reserve Bank’s role as New Zealand’s single integrated prudential regulator and supervisor, and the important accountability arrangements that sit alongside the tasks delegated by Parliament to the Reserve Bank. Read the article: Independence with accountability: financial system regulation and the Reserve Bank. | A RBNZ release …

Dec 19, 2017  - Bartercard NZ chief executive John Scott has just been appointed CEO across both New Zealand and Australia. He takes up his new dual role immediately and will split his time across both countries, while retaining Auckland as his home base. "Bartercard International undertook a detailed review of its operations earlier this year and made the logical decision to combine the trans-Tasman operations into one business unit", says Scott, who has been with the company five years after a long career in business finance and data. Scott joined Bartercard New Zealand as CEO five years ago and,…

Dec 19, 2017  -  The High Court has rejected NZME and Fairfax New Zealand's attempt to overturn a Commerce Commission ruling against a proposed merger of the country's dominant newspaper publishers and upheld the regulator's right to rely on the shrinking number of voices in the market. Justice Robert Dobson and lay member Professor Martin Richardson yesterday dismissed the appeal, finding the regulator was entitled to place significant weight on the loss of media plurality if the merger went ahead, a key point of contention raised by the publishers. The court issued a media release today summarising the decision with…

Dec 18, 2017  - New Zealanders’ wealth rose at its fastest pace in a decade, mainly driven by rising property values, Stats NZ said today.  New Zealanders’ net worth rose $136 billion to $1.5 trillion in the year to 31 March 2016. The total net worth is equal to about $330,000 per person, mainly reflecting the value of property ownership. “Net worth is the balance of what New Zealanders own over what they owe, and this is the biggest increase experienced in the last 10 years,” national accounts senior manager Gary Dunnet said. Data used in this release comes from…

Dec 18, 2017  -  The boss of New Zealand’s census is confident Stats NZ's IT system is up to the job. But internal emails from October paint a shambolic picture of the $121 million project, with contractors pulled in to fix bugs in a key system, delays to crucial testing and blown budgets for individual projects. David Williams reports. On October 20, a day after Winston Peters announced New Zealand First would form a government with Labour, the head of New Zealand’s 2018 census, Denise McGregor, emailed her staff the management team’s newly drafted list of cultural principles. “We are…

Dec 18, 2017  -  A major report released today shows that New Zealand has a significant and growing digital skills shortage, primarily due to the speed and scale of the increase in demand for tech skills.  The report, commissioned by the New Zealand Digital Skills Forum, should sound a warning bell to industry, government and the education sector, the Forum’s chair Victoria MacLennan says. More than 120,000 people were employed in the tech sector last year and about 14,000 new jobs were created. However, only 5,090 tech students graduated in 2015, and 5,500 tech visas were granted in same period,…

Dec 18, 2017  -  T&G Global chief executive Alastair Hulbert has resigned after four years in charge of the fruit marketer. The Auckland-based company has called in long-term BayWa collaborator Thomas Bargetzi to act as interim CEO while it looks for a new boss, T&G said in a statement. Chair Klaus Lutz acknowledged Hulbert's "significant contribution" to the wider group during his tenure. Hulbert was promoted to chief executive in 2013, having run the company on a temporary basis with then-chief financial officer Harald Hamster-Egerer after former head Geoff Hipkins departed suddenly amid media reports of a breakdown in his…