Weekly Wrap: Big noises, big words and a big litigation fund

Some of the bigger stories of the week related to people and appointments. On Monday we wrote about the new chief at AIG Life (formerly AIA) and his plans for the company in New Zealand.

Friday, November 16th 2007, 3:30PM

Today we have some significant changes at various St Laurence companies with two new senior management appointments and the departure of a key Property and Finance person. All the details are in People.

The third big change, is that Mike Pero Mortgages has a new chief executive.

We had some server problems this morning so you might have missed today's story. The piece is about the Securities Commission considering taking action against some of the finance companies which have collapsed, and the people behind those companies. There are also some useful comments regarding the commission taking action against advisers.

You may have missed our story mid-week about decumulation. It's not exactly a word which rolls off the tongue or is particularly attractive, but it is an ignored issue. What it's all about is how people spend their savings.

Russell Investment's big wig from the UK was in New Zealand this week talking about it. You can see what he said here. Related to this subject is Home Equity Release schemes. If this is an area you are interested in then read the Mortgage Centre News and the NZ Mortgage mag, as both will be expanding their coverage in this area.

As usual the finance company sector generated quite a bit of news during the week. Yesterday Fisher and Paykel Appliances said it is considering selling its finance company. F&P Finance is one of the bigger consumer lending books and is, by all accounts, pretty well run.

In addition to that Allied Nationwide said it was in the process of getting an S&P rating, while South Canterbury Finance is on a capital raising mission.

KiwiSaver is getting more and more attention at the moment, and that is understandable considering around a quarter of a million Kiwis have signed up for it. There has always been talk that adding insurance into the mix was one option. It seems, from this report, that some are pushing for changes to the tax of insurance products which may make it easier to add life cover to KiwiSaver.

Our main feature this week is written by London-based economist Andrew Hunt. In this piece he discusses liquidity in the global markets. A topic of immense interest at the moment.

The home loan sector continues to see rate increases however these have quietened down this week. One graph we showed readers of our regular home loan newsletter this week was what has happened to two-year fixed rates recently. Click on this link and have a look. It shows the increases and how, although competition seems muted, BNZ and Kiwibank, were being pretty aggressive in the market.