News Round Up

Equitable tidies up structure, Positive property revaluations for investor. Drive by shootings in the industry and Moves afoot at Broadbase.

Monday, June 18th 2007, 7:30AM

Equitable is tidying up its corporate structure to make it more efficient to run and easier for investors and advisers.

It is consolidating its three mortgage pools into one, $340 million, group investment fund which means there will be just one investment statement. Also investors will have the backing of a far larger pool of mortgages, thus enhancing their investment.

Chief operating officer Ross Aitken says there are a number of new product features as well. The changes take place on July 2.

Positive property revaluations for St Laurence

St Laurence Property & Finance has seen its property valuations rise more than 9.5% in the year ending March 31.

Valuation increases resulted in unrealised revaluation gains of $26.7 million in the year. SLPF’s investment property portfolio increased from $244.5 million to $306.0 million during the period through a combination of acquisition and valuation growth.

The continued increase in asset values is a reflection of strong demand for property assets in the commercial and industrial space. Prices have been driven higher by further local and international demand for New Zealand property overall, combined with robust underlying economic conditions.

St Laurence Property & Finance’s primary focus in 2008 is to continue to progress with the value-add opportunities already identified within the investment property portfolio.

Comment 1: Drive by shootings in the industry
Last week’s story about a compliant against Instant Finance’s advertising raises a couple of issues. We headlined it as Instant Finance dodging a bullet. There is no doubt that is true, it did dodge a bullet fired at it. The question is should the bullet have been allowed to have been fired in the first place? [MORE]

Comment 2: Moves afoot at Broadbase
It seems things are moving along at Broadbase with the retirement of founder Marshall Garrett. Broadbase is one of the longer standing advisory firms in New Zealand and also one of the bigger medium sized firms. Because of these factors and its success it has been a group many of the fund managers have wanted to get their hands on. AXA has sniffed around the business and about 18 months ASB nearly bought the business. [MORE]

Deposit Rates newsbriefs
Keep informed with the latest changes in the finance company and term deposit sector at www.depositrates.co.nz. Today we have a news round which includes the latest Provincial Finance payout news, Strong support for Strategic's pref share offer, General Finance's results, the listing of BNZ's $300 million note issue, news on PPCS's bonds and what's happening with money flows into bank TDs. Go to depositrates.co.nz

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