[Weekly Wrap] Slings, arrows and a bit of outrageous fortune

Some weeks it's hard to know what's the biggest story. This week is one of those. One of the biggest has to be news late yesterday that Standard and Poor's has downgraded Marac and South Canterbury Finance to sub-investment grade.

Friday, August 14th 2009, 4:33PM

The move is bound to have some flow on effects in the market for both businesses.

One consequence is that they will now have to offer investors higher interest rates for their investments. The other is that both are covered under the government's deposit guarantee scheme which should give some level of comfort to investors.

The other industry story which has had strong interest with readers is the slow gestation of a new dealer group in New Zealand. As Good Returns reported yesterday the "surprise factor" was that former ING managing director Paul Fyfe is involved.

There is no doubt many in the industry see ING's distribution force under attack following the DYF and RIF product issues. This is a clear sign it's a no-holds barred battle. Also I understand Fyfe has just finished his term as consultant to ING.

Another story that grabbed attention, and was picked up by other media, is news that Kiwibank is going to dump Mercer as its KiwiSaver manager and start using AMP.

This is a major blow for Mercer and one wonders whether it will have any impact on its position as a default provider. While neither organisation has formally confirmed the change we expect an announcement next week.

If these tussles weren't enough we have also had battles going on with home loans and term deposits. Several of the banks made changes to their term deposit rates and positioning in the past week.

As an aside, we have a story quoting PWC on the torrid battle for deposits here.

Over in the home loan market we have seen major upward shifts in medium and long term rates, but also saw the short end of the curve come down a little yesterday when Kiwibank took 20 basis points off its floating rate, bringing it down to what it calls an historical low.

For those poor investors in the PINs funds there was some more bad news this week. It seems ABN Amro has had a credit downgrade which flows through to the principal protection of the PINs notes.

After many months of few new appointments we have had a new one nearly every day for the past week. You can see many of the changes here, covering people at AMP, Russell Investments, Tower and Pyne Gould's new funds management business.

Have a great weekend.
Philip

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