Weekly Wrap: Concerns all week

Friday, July 20th 2007, 1:00PM

The theme in this week's main new stories on Good Returns has been about concerns in the investment market.

We have AMP Capital saying the NZ sharemarket is overvalued, but they are too scared to be out of it, we have concerns in the CDO market with Basis Capital (a manager who had done some promotion in New Zealand) getting into trouble, and other managers such as ING and Absolute Capital reassuring investors.

Also FundSource has commented how the high New Zealand dollar is hurting international share funds.

To cap it all off we have on-going stories about the Bridgecorp collapse. Not exactly pretty reading.

On the other side though, Good Returns has a Special Report and News story on a new capital protected product from Savings and Loans, and also notes that the latest Liontamer offer, Global 3, is due to close next Friday.

In addition to this Belgrave Finance is launching a more conservative income product for investors. It says this isn't a reaction to Bridgecorp, rather it is something they have been working on for some time.

Continuous disclosure required
The Bridgecorp collapse continues to dominate the news and so it should too.
If there is one thing to come from this collapse it has to be around disclosure. I believe it is imperative the finance companies move to some form of continuous disclosure regime. [more]

While there is plenty for investment people to be thinking about, mortgage brokers are facing, arguably bigger changes. Good Returns Mortgage Centre has news today that three of the mainstream banks are making significant cuts to the upfront commissions paid to brokers. This story is here.

Also there is much debate over what the Reserve Bank will do with Interest rates at its OCR announcement due next Thursday. Some are now arguing for cuts rather than increases.

Risk advisers will be interested to see our Insurance News story that has an important update on the tax treatment of income protection policy premiums. This has been a highly contentious issue for the industry for years. No doubt there will be more to come.

For those attending the IFA conference in Rotorua (the Home of Good Returns!) I can tell you it is very wet today - but hopefully all the rubbish weather will be out the way by then. (Yeah right). The long range forecast suggests the end of next week will be fine and dry.

Again lots of new appointments including a new managing director for WRF (watch out of the WRF Blues Brothers at the IFA Conference) and heaps of changes at Sovereign. As usual all the details are in the People section of the site.