News Round Up

ING credit funds down again; EUFA asks court to stop Hanover meeting; Lower OCR plus for commercial property; Unlisted turns five.

Monday, December 8th 2008, 5:54AM

The news for investors in ING’s frozen credit funds has become worse. It says that the Diversified Yield Fund (DYF) and Regular Income Fund (RIF) values were down 25.16% and 27.97% respectively in November.

Added to that unit prices declined another 6.22% and 6.34% in the first three days of December.

Unit prices at December 3 where 41c for DYF and 34c for RIF.

The company says it is difficult to determine a fair value for the assets of the funds in this market.

It attributes the falls to “unprecedented levels of risk aversion” and liquidity issues in structured credit markets.

EUFA to ask court to stop Hanover meeting

EUFA is heading off to the High Court in Auckland today in an attempt to stop tomorrow’s meeting of Hanover investors.

The meeting is where investors will vote on the company’s debt restructuring plan.

EUFA is seeking an injunction on the grounds that “investors need more time and independent information and advice before voting on such an important issue in their lives.”

The group is also continuing its appeals to the Minister of Commerce to put Hanover into statutory management.

Lower OCR good for comm property: Tower
Tower Investments believes the cut in the official cash rate is good news for the commercial property market.

Tower’s head of property, Brent Buchanan, says the sector’s performance will improve against cash, the most defensive asset class.

“For some time now cash has provided better relative performance than commercial property, which is not the normal situation,” Buchanan says.

“Lower returns investors can expect from cash, in addition to currently overweight cash holdings, should stimulate investment into other asset classes, including commercial property.”

Unlisted turns five
Unlisted, the alternative stock exchange, has marked its first five years in business. Since launching in 2003 it has completed 7,366 trades worth $125 million, and averages 125 trades worth $2.2 million each month.

It now quotes 26 securities for 23 issuers and has nine participating broker firms.

Besides the trades is has raised $164 mill in new capital. Unlisted has a combined issuer market capitalisation (excluding its new Private Market issuer DNZ Property Fund) of $950 mill.

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