Weekly Wrap: Are the gloves off?

A summary of all the top news stories of the week.

Friday, February 23rd 2007, 2:41PM
The big story of the week has to be the developing stouch between two associations representing advisers. The Institute of Financial Advisers has come out with some pretty strong, and emotive comments, about the Professional Advisers Association’s plans to prepare for regulation. You can read the story here and there is comment in Phil’s Blog too. Every adviser should be following this story and watching what happens.

Getting our minds around tax changes continues to be an on-going theme of stories at the moment. This week we have two stories on the impacts of the new fair dividend rate.

One is that managers like AMP are expecting to move money from passive to active management. This is unsurprising as passive, under the old rules, enjoyed a significant tax advantage over active management. For AMP it is a significant issue as it has a huge amount of money in WiNZ. One point we will explore later is that passive management isn’t dead – it still has a place in a portfolio.

The other tax related one is based on comments from ABN Amro Craig suggesting not all ASX-listed shares are equal (under FDR). Rather the only ASX company shares to be treated as “local” are ones belonging to specified indices. Read about this here.

Blog

Adviser associations happily co-operating. Yeah right
The idea that all the associations representing advisers can happily work together in the future is, I suspect, more of an inspirational goal than a reality. [more]

Other news stories this week include plans by Deutsche Bank’s property arm to enter the New Zealand market attracted by KiwiSaver and investment tax changes.

Also Fidelity Life has an IPO in the market place at the moment which has had its size increased by 50% due to demand. There is a news story here and also a Special Report on its unlisted version of the fund.

In our News Round Up section the battle for control of the St John property fund heats up with St Laurence’s takeover offer being countered by parties associated with the fund. Also in the Round Up is news on the success of the first infrastructure bond tender and a comment piece (related to our top story). Did the PAA challenge other associations?

On the new product front we have a report on Asteron’s latest developments with its insurance policies. These include a new line of key person insurance, as well as add-ons to its existing SmartLife and SmartLiving products – and a premium increase.

KiwiSaver is attracting more attention. Our SuperTalk site, brought to you by AXA, has several pieces including comments from the National Party’s Bill English which puts some useful context around the view that KiwiSaver will be turned into a compulsory super scheme.

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Advertisement The Big Shake Up!
If you want to Sell more, Sell better, Live longer and happier lives and Make your business more valuable then go to the PAA Conference in Napier next month. Conference details.

If you are in the home loan market the news isn’t so good. Rates keep rising with banks making further increases today. Two-year fixed rates are now sitting around the 8.20% mark in some cases. For all the latest rate info go to the Mortgage Centre.

No newsletter is complete without an update on New Appointments. We have former AXA ceo Vaughan Underwood resurfacing, BT’s Murray Harris moving on and a number of other appointments. All these are in the People section of the site.

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