Weekly Wrap: Blame game heats up

There has been plenty of talk this week about people looking to take action against advisers who put their clients' money into some of the now failed finance firms.

Friday, October 12th 2007, 3:56PM

It started when I spotted an ad in the Herald last week where a lawyer was advertising and it has snowballed into something bigger today, where we have news of a public meeting for investors being held in Auckland later this month to look at action.

It will be fascinating to see how this pans out, are these lawyers vultures or eagles and is this a public meeting or a lynch mob? I have talked about it some more in today's Blog and would love to hear what advisers think of all these developments. Either drop a line here or post a comment in the Blog.

Vultures or eagles circling? You decide
So the legal eagles, or should they be called vultures, are now circling the decaying remains of collapsed finance companies looking for options to take legal action. [more]

Also, as we flagged earlier, PINs, has "postponed" its quarterly interest payments due to the credit market turmoil.

The other story which caught my attention this week was Standard and Poor's downgrade of finance company Geneva. It seems to me the rating company has given Geneva a rough deal here, and I intend to comment on it some more next week.

The new PIE tax regime is a hot topic at the moment and we have a useful piece in the Features section which explains the changes.

The home loan market is at a fascinating point currently with some rates going up, others down, and of course some terms not moving. Good Returns' Mortgage Centre has a comprehensive up-to-date report on what is happening and where things are going.

The past week has had good news for those looking to put money on deposit. We have a full report at depositrates.co.nz, which includes the rate set for Rabo's perpetual notes, a 12% offer from a finance company and another firm offering existing customers an extra 85 basis points.

New appointments have been thin on the ground this week. The main one we report on is the new additions to Fisher Funds. These two new appointments are the investment managers for the companies new global share fund, Marlin.