Commerce Commission to sit on ING decision for another month

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The Commerce Commission will sit on its decision on whether promotion of the frozen ING Diversified Yield and Regular Income funds breached the Fair Trading Act for another month.

Friday, April 16th 2010, 5:53AM 1 Comment

by Paul McBeth

The regulator confirmed it has made a decision over ANZ New Zealand's promotion of the two funds, which Good Returns understands will entail a fine, but is in ongoing discussions with the bank and will not make an announcement for at least a month.

"Until that's concluded we won't be making any comment," said a commission spokeswoman.

Commission chairman Mark Berry pushed out the decision until the first fortnight of April due to a clash with the regulator's work priorities, after earlier indicating it would be forthcoming in March.

The regulator investigated whether ANZ breached the Fair Trading Act in its promotion of the two funds, which collected some $700 million from 14,000 investors before being frozen two years ago.

Last year, about 98.5% of investors in the ING funds waived their right to pursue legal action and accepted an offer that gave them 60 cents in the dollar for investments in the diversified yield fund, and 62 cents for investments in the regular income fund.

The regulator defended the length of the investigation during a Select Committee hearing last month, saying it commandeered staff from other units to help wade through some 23,000 documents and 300,000 pages of evidence.

Last year, ANZ Banking Group bought the 49% of ING in Australia and New Zealand that it didn't already own, and the bank's New Zealand subsidiary has provided some $121 million for ING NZ's settlement with local investors in its 2008/09 earnings.

Paul is a staff writer for Good Returns based in Wellington.

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