News Round Up

Don't rush KiwiSaver investment decisions, Tower switches raters, Local manager's new hedge fund, and all the latest finance company news.

Monday, July 2nd 2007, 5:18AM

The NZX is suggesting people don't have to rush into making KiwiSaver decisions straight away. Although KiwiSaver kicks off today investors have until October 1 to decide where they want their KiwiSaver investments to be made.

"People are feeling pushed into making a decision before the end of this month," said NZX Head of Products Geoff Brown.

"However, whilst employees wishing to opt in to KiwiSaver should do so from July 1, they have three months to make a decision on their KiwiSaver fund provider. During this time their investment will sit with the IRD, so they should not feel pushed into making that decision until they've taken time to do their own research and decide what's best for them."

Tower switches raters

Tower Life has been rated A- by global rating agency AM Best. This replaces its A- rating by Standard & Poor's.

Following the separation of the Australian business in November 2006, TOWER Limited has elected to have all its ratings provided by AM Best, which has rated the New Zealand general insurance entity for some years.

The Standard & Poor's rating lapses at the end of June 2006.

Local managers new hedge fund
A New Zealand hedge fund manager, 36 South Investment Managers, is to launch a fund designed to provide protection for institutional fund portfolios in significant risk aversion periods.

The Black Swan fund will be built using a proprietary asset allocation process based on the 36 South Global Implied Volatility Indices and will hold only "bought" option positions around five years in maturity.

It will be a composite diversified portfolio with a long volatility exposure to a mix of equities, interest rates, currencies and commodities.

Latest finance company news
For all the latest Deposit Rates news visit depositrates.co.nz. In today's round up of events we have: Bridgecorp in default talks. Strategic's share offer closed and oversubscribed, PropertyfinanceSecurites to offer high yield retail bond fund, Geneva Finance gets extra $20 million in funding and to round things off a comment piece: Pricing risk or buying market share? You choose.

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