Weekly briefs

NZRPT says no to distributions, Pyramid scheme stopped, Colonial enjoys Asian, Norwich history.

Monday, September 28th 1998, 12:00AM

Unit holders in the New Zealand Rural Property Trust will not be getting any distributions for the time being.
The manager has considered this issue and concluded there is a commercial disadvantage in making a fully imputed distribution.
"The trust would have to pay tax in advance to generate imputation credits to attach to distributions and cash operating surpluses are modest after the forest contribution is removed," the annual report says.
"The manager has determined that the trust does not make a distribution at this time. The retained earnings from this year's income are reflected in the unit price."

Pyramid scheme stopped
An Auckland man has admitted to running an illegal pyramid selling scheme, the Commerce Commission says.
The scheme, known both as Perpetual Income Trust and Lifetime Income Trust, had 3000 people each paying $47 a month to participate.
The commission has reached an out-of-court settlement with the scheme's promoter Trevor Smith-Holley. In the settlement Smith-Holley included a written admission that the initiative was an illegal pyramid selling scheme. The commission plans to take no further action.
Smith-Holley had also agreed to stop the scheme and notify participants that it was illegal.

Colonial buys in Asia
Colonial's Asian subsidiary, CMG Asia has acquired the Hong Kong pension and life insurance business of Guardian Assurance. CMG is expected to pay $HK90 million ($A20 million) for the purchase.
The merged business will be ranked fifth in the Hong Kong pensions administration market, with a 5 per cent share of this market sector. The acquisition aims to capitalise on synergies between the two organisations.

Norwich Union disappears
Norwich Union officially disappears from the New Zealand market in September, following Royal & SunAlliance's (Royal) purchase, earlier this year, of the insurance and funds management business.
The purchase of this business has led Royal to revamp its product range. It has a new critical illness policy which is modelled on the Norwich Union one. The features and benefits of the Royal policy have not changed, however there have been some minor modifications to policy definitions and marketing terminology.
Royal has also retained, in tact, Norwich's flagship supernnuation fund, the Retirement Savings Plan.
During the integration process Royal has made no changes to the Norwich Union intermediary agreements (except for name).

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