News Round Up

The Bank of New Zealand has launched a new term deposit investment which has its returns linked to the performance of the S&P500 index for three years.

Investors who buy these bonds receive fixed interest on a quarterly basis for a three year term. There is also what BNZ calls a 'bonus return' which is the sum of the quarterly performance of the S&P 500 over the 12 quarters of the investment.

Each quarter performance has a cap of 3% and a floor of -4%.

BNZ general manager of personal financial services, Chris Black, says investors could be paid a bonus of up to 36%.

He says the investment combines the certainty of a traditional term deposit with the potential to earn higher returns.

As a result of this decision the fund will also resume distributions to unitholders later this year.

Earlier the fund stopped its harvest as prices were too low.

Perpetual Trust general manager managed funds, Ian Taylor, says sales for the next three months have already been arranged.

No fee offer
JB Were has waived the entry fee on its Trans Tasman Equity fund for the next two months.

The fund, which is managed out of Auckland by Paul Harrison, is an absolute return fund which invests in shares in Australia and New Zealand.

Over the past three years it has achieved an annual compound return of just under 14% annually.

Harrison believes that the absolute return focus allows a greater amount of flexibility and active trading when constructing the portfolio relative to many competing New Zealand and Australian unit trusts.

Find out more about this fund in Good Returns later this month when we speak to Harrison.

Tower's manager recognised
Tower's global bond manager, US-based Pimco, has been named 'Risk Manager of the Year' in the asset management category by Risk magazine - one of the most widely read trade publications among derivative specialists.

Risk said Pimco consistently beat its benchmarks thanks to its 'complex, rigorous' analysis of various economic and risk factors.

Pimco has developed a proprietary system which each day checks the firm’s investment strategies against dozens of analytic tools and measurements for liquidity and credit risk.

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