Two big events before Xmas

It may be the day before Christmas but that doesn't there isn't things happening out in the market at the moment. In fact there are two important events which are meant to happen before tomorrow, but signs aren't promising.

Monday, December 24th 2012, 9:34AM

Pyne Gould said earlier that it expects to have the sale of its financial advisory business, Perpetual Trust, and the sale of its stake in research house finalised before Christmas. We understand the sale won't be made to local firms like SBS and Kiwibank, rather they will go to some other party.

The other deal which was meant to be sorted by Christmas was the the sale of Mike Pero Mortgages to Liberty Financial. Joint venture partner NZF said it had agreed to sell the stake and it required shareholder approval. It won't look like it will happen although NZF released its interim results on Friday and said in the commentary that a shareholder meeting was due before Christmas.

Something else which didn't happen on Friday was the Good Returns Weekly Wrap (too busy thanking our staff for the year), hence this Monday version. Although many businesses close up over the next couple of weeks we will continue to update the site with news and events. Also our publisher Philip Macalister has written a number of pieces exploring the key themes from the year.

One of the interesting stories in the past week has been the article Call for more prescriptive adviser regulation. It has generated a lot of debate around asset allocations and there so far there are 41 comments and still counting. It's great to see the debate and the vies, even though two of the protagonists are unlikely to agree on the subject.

In many ways the subject may well become one we hear lots of over the next year.

In a similar vein the FMA released its first survey of AFAs and it is little surprise to see there are some grizzles out there. This year we are producing a December/January issue of ASSET Magazine which will be posted around January 10. In this issue we talk to advisers who have had a knock on the door from the FMA to see how they found it,

One wonders if there will be more of these knocks following the Ross Asset Management disaster. One of the only way these things can be stopped is if the FMA did visits to all AFAs each year. Clearly they don't have the resource to do this but that is an issue which is bound to get airtime over the next year.

Speaking of RAM and the FMA it was interesting to see that some Ross Asset Management investors are claiming that the FMA had a conflict of interest with this event and they have written to the Solicitor General saying as much. The odds of this going anywhere are slim, but it does illustrate that the FMA will come under great scrutiny about how it executes its role.

The end of the year, also marks the end of Diana Crossan's role as Retirement Commissioner. One subject the incoming commissioner may like to tackle is the one of how to get financial advice to the masses. Currently AFAs are only really interested in clients who have something like $75,000 to $100,000 of investable funds - not a big part of the market.

As we report here it is a live issue and one that needs addressing, particularly as KiwiSaver membership and average balances swell.

On the site we have a number of new appointments in the People page and in the Mortgage Centre we review forecasts for interest rates in 2013.

From all the team at Tarawera Publishing we would like to wish you a safe and happy Christmas and New Year.

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