News Round Up

This week's round up sums up what's going on in the savings industry: companies are being merged, names are changing and focus is shifting to the Internet. Plus of course investors are being warned about the dangers of property investment.

Monday, October 16th 2000, 12:30AM

It's goodbye for the Colonial brand in New Zealand.

The merged Sovereign and Colonial insurance companies are going to be run under one brand in New Zealand and that is going to be Sovereign, group managing director Ian Hendry says.

He says that extensive market research showed the Sovereign brand name was favoured by New Zealand distributors and consumers.

Plans to phase out the Colonial brand in New Zealand are being prepared and the change will be begin gradually over the next few months.

The new Sovereign is New Zealand's largest life insurance company with an annual premium income of $460 million, and the second largest fund manager with funds under management of $2.2 billion.

Sovereign's ultimate parent company, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, took over Colonial earlier this year.

Property warning from commission

The Securities Commission as warned investors to carefully scrutinised advertised rates of returns on commercial property before investing.

It says that there are many different ways rates of returns can be calculated, and in some instances the projected returns include the return of capital.

"In short the advertisements may be unrealistic, even false or misleading," it says in the latest Bulletin.

"Investors should look carefully at the way the stated rate of return for commercial property investments is calculated," it warns.

AMPAM goes
AMP Asset Management has changed its name to AMP Henderson Global Investors.

AMP signalled at its interim result in August that all of its global fund management businesses would unite under one brand, Henderson Global Investors Limited.

In New Zealand and Australia the company will trade under the name AMP Henderson Global Investors, recognising the importance of the AMP brand in these markets.

The name change only affects AMP's fund management business. AMP Financial Services, AMP Banking and AMP General Insurance are not affected.

Morningstar gets into shares
Morningstar is looking to roll share research as part of its product offering, managing director Graham Rich says.

The research will cover stocks in the UK, Europe and Asia as well as Australia and New Zealand. The move will bring Morningstar's product range into line with what its US parent offers.

As part of the package separate research will examine the share holdings of managed funds.

Tower Trust streamlines
Tower Trust is streamlining its trans-Tasman operations following the recent acquisition of IOOF Australia Trustees Ltd and the merging of its strongly growing Australian and New Zealand trustee division into a single entity.

While Tower was previously New Zealand's largest corporate trustee company with $27 billion under supervision, the IOOF Trustees acquisition substantially strengthened its position in the large Australian market.

Managing director Colin Baxter says the new trans-Tasman structure was designed to maximise operating efficiencies and to better leverage the skills and opportunities that exist in Australia and New Zealand.

In the merged structure Adelaide based Pat O'Brien will become general manager personal business and Wellington-based Glenn Clark will become general manager corporate business and country manager - New Zealand.

ORC changes focus
Retirement Commissioner Colin Blair has signalled a change in the emphasis of his office’s public education programme in the coming year.

The office will be reducing its focus on general awareness and financial planning education, in favour of a more targeted approach to specific audiences.

"We will continue with our general awareness programme, but we intend to place more emphasis on the delivery of information and knowledge through the workplace and programmes in schools," Blair says.

"We intend to develop our web site to make it more attractive and useful to different segments of the community.

"We see the Internet as a very cost-effective way of distributing current information and providing education through interactive and other interesting techniques."

Also, the office’s research programme will also be expanded in order to gain a greater understanding of savings behaviour and the factors which influence it.

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