Welcome to interest.co.nz's morning briefing of what's news here and around the world. Everything you need to start the day in 90 seconds at 9'oclock.... Starting nowFirstly, we have news the government decided last night to block the sale of Auckland Airport to foreign investors permanently.Finance Minister Michael Cullen announced that the government had set a new rule allowing the Overseas Investment Commission to ban the sale of strategically important infrastructure on sensitive land. This is a major new widening of the government's powers to block foreign ownership of key assets.This will no doubt cause the Auckland Airport share price to collapse. It may also cause other foreign investors to consider their holdings in New Zealand assets or avoid expensive takeover battles that might trigger this new clause. It's a surprising decision given that New Zealand is running a current account deficit of close to 15 billion dollars.Elsewhere, there's more bad news out of the US economy that is giving global financial market the jitters.US Manufacturing contracted at its fastest pace in 5 years in February. This unnerved Asian and European markets who are worried about a recession in the US and the potential for big new credit crunch losses.Also overseas, later today we're expecting the Reserve Bank of Australia to buck the global trend and increase official interest rates by 25 basis points to 7.25% to try to control inflation. Our Reserve Bank makes its decision on Thursday and has said it is watching Australia closely.That was 90 seconds at 9 o'clock. I'm Bernard Hickey for interest.co.nz. Tune in after midday for a deeper look at this foreign investment block and at the latest bank customer satisfaction ratings.
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Added: Mar 10, 2008 |
| Category: News |
Author: ofInterestNZ |
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