The Electoral Commission has referred National’s New Plymouth MP David MacLeod to Police over a failure to report $178,394 of candidate donations.
MacLeod’s original candidate return for the 2023 general election was filed on February 13, 2024. The total donations disclosed were $29,268 from seven separate donors. On May 20, 2024, the Commission received an amended return. The total donations disclosed in the amended return were $207,662 from 24 separate donors.
The Commission said it would not comment further while the matter was before the Police. It did note though that it does not normally name individuals referred to Police, but did so in this case because MacLeod had already spoken publicly about the matter.
Last month, National Party leader Christopher Luxon said MacLeod had failed to meet the high standards the party expected of its MPs, and he was standing him down from the Environment Select Committee, which MacLeod had chaired, and the Finance and Expenditure Committee.
The Guardians of NZ Superannuation, which manages the $75 billion New Zealand Superannuation Fund, has appointed Alex Bacchus as acting chief investment officer, as current CIO Stephen Gilmore leaves this month to become CIO at CalPERS, the largest pension plan in the United States.
Bacchus joined the Guardians in 2009, and has held various roles in the Risk and Asset Allocation teams. Since 2014, he has led the Super Fund’s strategic tilting programme, a mean reversion investment strategy that has made a significant contribution to the Fund’s returns.
Prior to joining the Guardians, Bacchus worked for Goldman Sachs JBWere (NZ) as director of derivatives and as a vice president at Merrill Lynch in London, with a focus on structured credit derivatives.
Guardians CEO Jo Townsend said recruitment for a permanent CIO would begin shortly.
Electricity generator Mercury has confirmed it will go ahead with a $486 million expansion of its Kaiwera Downs wind farm near Gore.
The decision follows a long-term power supply agreement with major customer NZ Aluminium Smelters signed in May.
Construction of the 155MW scheme will begin in June this year with generation due to begin in 2026. Once complete, Kaiwera Downs will have a total capacity of 198MW.
ANZ forecasts “meaningful” inflation progress this year and now expects the RBNZ to cut the official cash rate in February next year.
That compared with its earlier forecast of a cut in May.
ANZ chief economist Sharon Zollner reckons meaningful progress was around the corner to bring domestic-driven inflation downwards.
“The real economy is very weak and given the vibe of ‘soft data’, we are now more confident in the weak economic outlook enshrined in our most recent Quarterly Economic Outlook.
“We currently see the risks as balanced around our updated February forecast, but we fully expect markets to continue to front run easing as the labour market deteriorates.”
Overnight, the European Central Bank cut its main interest rate from an all-time high of 4% to 3.75%, as widely expected.
That followed Canada's decision to cut its interest rate this week.
Kiwifruit growers have harvested their largest crop, aided by ‘ideal weather’ before and during the harvest on many orchards and sufficient labour.
With only small volumes left to be picked, 193 million trays have been submitted for the 2024 harvest, up from 133 million trays exported last year.
On average, each tray has about 30 pieces of kiwifruit.
New Zealand supply is forecast to increase to 208 million trays by 2028.
Kiwifruit marketer Zespri will now see what prices it can attract in overseas markets for the fruit.
Despite gaining strong per-tray returns over the past two years, poor yield has hurt growers financially. The low orchard yields, combined with increasing orchard costs, has meant that many growers are under the pump to keep their businesses afloat.
Casino operator SkyCity has been granted leave to appeal a South Australian court ruling on casino duty involving about A$13 million ($14m) of additional duty payments on revenue at its Adelaide casino.
In a statement to the NZX late on Thursday, SkyCity said the appeal of the court’s February ruling on the treatment of loyalty points converted to pokie machine play would take place later this year.
Separately, the issue of whether SkyCity must pay penalty interest on outstanding duty is subject to a later decision of the South Australian Supreme Court.
SkyCity said it could be subject to penalty payments of about A$22.8m if the court rejected its position. If SkyCity was successful the penalty would fall to about A$2.4m.
On a conference call on Thursday SkyCity CFO Julie Amey said the ongoing cost of the loyalty points decision could be A$2-$2.5m a year.