Weekly Wrap:

The Weekly Wrap is a round up of all news and events during the past week.

Friday, August 3rd 2007, 1:17PM

The big bombshell this week was the receivers' report on the state of Bridgecorp. The mainstream media have run some high level stories on the state of the company and likely recovery levels.

Depositrates.co.nz has more in-depth coverage of the report and there are some comments and thoughts here.

While the collapse of a finance company tends to dominate the news, there is perhaps a bigger story developing – that is around what is happening in international credit markets and the impact on CDO-backed funds.

It is unclear how much New Zealanders have invested in this sector, but our research estimates it could possibly be north of $1 billion.

Retail investors have jumped into CDO-backed funds more readily than on other markets, and some of these people may have been doing so to diversify away fro finance companies. Our story today is about one of the smaller offerings, Fortress Notes, which could see its asset-backing fall by a quarter.

Also in the news this week Goldridge shares with readers some insights into how advisers think about value in their businesses. This info comes from a survey it ran at conference last week.

Savings and Loans Kauri Notes
Currently the company is doing a series of roadshows around the country providing more information on the offer, which is being done in conjunction with Merrill Lynch. Details are in the Diary. Details of other offer can be found in our Special Reports section.

Kauri Notes are an interest bearing debt security designed to provide investors with a regular coupon rate of 9.50% per annum return paid quarterly. To find out more click here.

We have a number of KiwiSaver stories this week too including John Key musing about changes to taxation on superannuation investments, the Greens on ethical KiwiSaver funds and a war over KiwiSaver fees.

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

New appointments this week include Tower's insurance general manager moving on and the appointment of a chief executive at the AGRI Private Capital Fund.

Speaking of Tower and insurance, Tower Health and Life has made some changes to its premium levels. You can read about the changes here.

Within Good Returns we have a few tweaks going on with the site. The first is that Phil's Blog has moved to a new platform which allows you to comment on posts and discuss other comments. This function is already being used and it's worth checking out what people think about various issues, such as Bridgecorp.

Secondly, depositrates.co.nz is going through some changes including improved presentation of rate tables, a souped up calculator which allows you to sort rates on more fields, plus an expanded table of Special Rates.

Besides two stories on the Bridgecorp receivers report we also have Mates Rates from Instant Finance.

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Sovereign takes regulation bull by the horns »

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