[Weekly Wrap] Fisher and ING highlight of short week

It might have been a short week, but there have certainly been some big stories. The two stand outs being more changes at the NZ Super Fund with the dumping of Fisher Funds as a manager and the growing discussion on how ING's credit funds have been sold.

Friday, March 28th 2008, 3:55PM

Firstly, Fisher. One of the questions that crossed my mind when former CIO Warren Couillault left the firm was what happens to the NZ Super Fund mandate, which is around $100 million?

We did ask the fund, but as you can guess it was wasn't saying anything…until suddenly this week it announced it had ended its investment relationship with Fisher. Could we add one and one and get two on this? The fund said no, and Carmel Fisher put up a pretty convincing argument when we spoke to her about the decision and the fund's spokesman gave a clear "non" to the suggestion the move was done because of the CIO change.

Fisher said it is something she wanted and that Fisher Funds was a retail house, not an institutional one. Some may think its good spin, in reality though the decision has some logic, as if Fisher can replace the Super Fund money with retail money, then her margins will be much bigger.

The challenge is raising money. What may be a useful gauge is the level of response Fisher gets from warrant holders in her NZX-listed fund Kingfish. Most of the warrants which were issued with the IPO remain unexercised and the last chance to convert them to shares is Monday. It will be interesting to see how many are converted to shares considering the exercise price is $1 each and the share price is just over $1 (although NTA is much higher).

The lighter side of the credit crunch
The credit crunch is pretty horrible and sad (especially if you or your clients are exposed to it), but you can have a laugh too. [more]

Now to credit funds. There continues to be talk about how the ING funds were sold, particularly through ANZ branches. This week we asked the bank about this and they backed their advice and even said they will compensate investors who were wrongly advised. Good on them.

We have run a couple of investment stories this week including the launch of Westpac's cash PIE, and the rate for BNZ Income Securities share offer.

In Depositrates.co.nz you will find a good piece which describes the differences between the BNZIS offer and the ANZ bond offer which is currently in the market. While both looked to have rates over the 10% mark it now looks like they will not be quite so high.

Also Fisher and Paykel Appliances is keeping its finance company. This is no surprise really as I doubt anyone would be wanting to pay a premium for a finance company at the moment – even a good one like this.

In the People section this week Tower appoints a managing director and AIG adds another sales manager. Next week we report on a couple of changes at Hanover.