News round-up

ING investors reach end of timeline
Investors in ING’s two CDO funds have reached the end of the timeline for accepting one of three offers on the table.

ING and joint venture partners ANZ gave investors in the DYF and RIF funds three choices which close today (July 13), in the hopes of staving off further legal action.

The options available to investors are:

• Cash-out under the same terms as previously, ie a unit price of 60c and 62c for the DYF and RIF funds respectively
• A five-year option where investors can sell units at the cash-out price with the proceeds transferred to a no-fees ANZ on-call account with an interest rate of 8.3%
• Hang onto existing units in the hope the underlying investments will improve.

Code Committee due to be announced
The Code Committee for new adviser regulation is to be announced any day now, with the last interviews wrapping up last week.

It is also understood some advisers that applied for one of the seven to 11 part-time positions on the committee have been receiving rejection letters.

The committee, headed by the interim Commissioner of Financial Advisers Annabel Cotton, is due to have its first meeting at the end of this month to kick-start the regulation process.

Call for Marlin to delist
A Marlin Global shareholder is lobbying for the company to be delisted and transformed into an open-ended fund, as a way to lift the value of its units.

Garry Cross placed newspaper advertisements promoting his idea to convert Marlin’s publicly traded shares into units which would change hands at their net asset value.

Marlin, which invests in overseas shares managed by Fisher Funds Management, has seen its shares consistently traded at a discount to NAV (98.3 cents) since its October 2007 IPO.

However, the company did not think the initiative would come to anything.

Slow but steady for insurance industry
Insurance clients are looking to cut costs, but some are increasing coverage for fear of inability to withstand an income shock in the current economic environment, according to the latest BNZ Monthly Confidence Survey.

Many insurance advisers who responded to the survey were noticing more clients taking up risk cover like redundancy, life and income insurance.

“We are finding that there is still strong interest in personal risk products but investments are a lot tougher. People seem to be very aware of risk at the moment and this is making them look at things like life and income insurance and getting the appropriate policies and structures in place,” one respondent commented.

Another trend was seeing clients cutting premiums and deceasing cover, with some advisers commenting their “size of book deteriorating”.

“Existing insurance cover is being relooked at by clients to try and cut down the premium they are paying,” another adviser commented. “Customers VERY careful with their spend but careful to remain insured.”