News Round Up

Polson Higgs joins up with Plan B, Chinks appearing in housing market, Two funds extended, Deemed rate of return set.

Monday, July 30th 2007, 7:23AM

Plan B Group has created a new business alliance with the New Zealand based Polson Higgs Business Advisors.

Polson Higgs Wealth Management has become an "Affinity Partner" and Plan B subsidiary, Partnership Financial Services, and will provide wealth management advice to their client base utilising the operational processes and systems that PFS provides.

Plan B says this is the first step in its organic growth strategy.

"Plan B is now embarking on the next phase of geographic growth by targeting acquisition of or alliance with suitable wealth management businesses in Australia and New Zealand," Plan B managing director Denys Pearce says.

Chinks appearing in housing market

The latest ASB housing confidence survey is showing the first chinks in a still buoyant property market.

The survey, for the three month period to July, shows that there has been a significant turnaround in price expectations and, whether or not it is a good time to buy. Full story and graphs

ASB chief economist Nick Tuffley says expectations that house prices will rise retreated over this three month period, after rising steadily over the preceding year.

Two funds extended
Liontamer has extended the closing date for its GLOBAL Series 3 fund to Friday August 3. Savings and Loans has also extended the closing date for its Kauri Notes offer. The company is running some seminars for advisers this week in conjunction with Merrill Lynch. Details will be in the Good Returns diary later today.

Deemed rate of return set
The deemed rate of return for taxing foreign investment fund interests has been set at 10.27%, for the 2006-07 income year, up from 9.82% last year, Revenue Minister Peter Dunne says.

"The deemed rate of return is set annually and is based on an average of five-year government stock, to which a 4 percent margin is added," Dunne said.

"It is one of the methods that can be used to calculate income from foreign investment fund interests," he said.

Comment; Bridgecorp and advisers
While talking to advisers at the IFA Conference last week it started to dawn on me one of the reasons why Bridgecorp fell over.

The picture that began forming after the first day is that it was the advisers themselves which triggered the collapse. [Read On].

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