Category: Business

Source: Radio New Zealand

Australian media giant Nine Entertainment has acquired MediaWorks’ parent, QMS Media, for AU$850 million (NZ$986m).

Nine also announced the sale of its Australian commercial radio assets to a private buyer for AU$56m.

However, QMS’ New Zealand operations appeared to be unaffected.

MediaWorks is a major player in the country’s commercial radio market with stations such as The Breeze, The Rock and More FM, and has a significant presence in outdoor advertising.

In an email to staff, MediaWorks chief executive Wendy Palmer said it was “business as usual” and its ownership remained the same.

“This change in ownership of QMS simply gives us more clarity and focus on what we do best at MediaWorks – deliver an amazing suite of radio brands, audio products and digital offerings to our partners and audiences alike,” she told staff.

Palmer said the company saw strong financial results in 2025 and was in “great shape”.

Nine Group chief executive Matt Stanton said it was a “critical milestone” in its transformation plans.

“The acquisition of this high-growth digital outdoor media company, QMS, further diversifies Nine’s revenue streams and adds scale to our advertiser and agency relationships,” he said.

“QMS is a highly complementary media platform, offering Nine the opportunity to drive significant value by leveraging our premium content on QMS screens and creating an unparalleled advertising proposition that spans from ‘sofa to street’.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

One of the things former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham’s son Brooklyn made headlines for this week was sharing “the world’s most expensive” wine with his wife, Nicola Peltz.

The details turned out to be a little murkier than that.

Media reported that it was actually unclear which wine they were drinking, but the restaurant in Montecito had a 1811 Château d’Yquem in its cellar, which last sold at auction in 2012 for about £75,000 (NZ$170,000).

This may have prompted questions from readers – including (but probably not limited to) how does a wine become worth such a lot of money? And might my bottle of Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc in my wine rack reach such lofty heights?

University of Auckland senior lecturer in finance Gertjan Verdickt studies wine investment and is also on the board of WineFi, a syndicate that lets people invest in a portfolio of wines.

He said there were a few reasons why wine could be a good investment.

For investment-grade wine, there was a fixed supply, he said, and increasing demand.

“Interestingly, if the Beckhams drink these expensive wines, the supply drops – while the demand generally does not. In economics, we also call this a Veblen good: as products become more exclusive, prices go up.”

He said there was also a convenience yield of about 2 to 3 percent a year that came from having investments that were real and tangible. This could also apply to art investments and things like handbags.

There was also a social aspect to wine investing, he said.

“You can show off the bottles you have to people. The most expensive one is called DRC, it’s about €20,000 (NZ$45,500) per bottle. The fact that you can say that you own this gives pleasure, and people are willing to pay for this.”

He said over the last 100 years the return on investment-grade wine had been about 6 to 7 percent.

“Over the short-term – the last 20 years – wine’s return is around 8 percent. On a risk-adjusted basis, it outperforms other asset classes, such as bonds. It produces a return just below equities, but with interesting correlations from a diversification perspective. In other words: adding it to your overall portfolio can decrease the risk of your overall portfolio.”

But he said there could be issues with it. Selling wine could be a slow process compared to selling shares on the share market.

“As such, investors ask for compensation – a liquidity risk premium – which drives up prices. So this means that wine investment should be a long-term investment.

“As such, investment-grade wine is wine that is more liquid than others: buying wine is easy, selling is the name of the game. In my dataset of 6 million observations, I have 175 labels that I consider sufficiently liquid to include in this category.”

He said people could invest in wine in a few ways. The auction house Webbs buys and sells a lot of wine.

“They generally focus on New Zealand labels, but also have some important French ones – mainly Bordeaux and Burgundy, some Champagne.”

In Australia, he said, Langton’s was probably the most active wine auction house in the world.

“They have everything, although the home bias is also very large there.”

People who bought their own wine to invest could store it at home or in a bonded warehouse, he said, but there would be some costs associated with that.

He said the average investment grade bottle of wine was about NZ$500, so people would need some capital to get started.

“In the fund space, it is depending on the kind of fund. You have private equity structures, where you need NZ$250,000, or WineFi, where you need, depending on the product, between £3000-£5000 (NZ$6800-NZ$11,300).

“Now, I see wine investing is on the rise, if someone creates a tokenised version of this, this will be the next big thing. Then you don’t need to buy the DRC anymore, but you buy a part of it. If you want to sell, you sell your token, not the bottle. So liquidity goes up, storage/insurance costs go dow,… I see lots of advantages.”

And as for that bottle of wine in your wine rack? Verdickt said whether it was likely to improve in value would depend on how cheap it was.

“Do you consider €150 (NZ$295) for a bottle a lot? Given that there are many stocks worth more, I don’t consider them expensive, although I don’t drink them on the regular.

“Tignanello, which is an Italian supertuscan, is priced at around €100-€150 (NZ$197-$NZ295) for a new bottle. This is also something I consider to be of investment-grade level. So yes, that will also improve in value.”

He said Felton Road had multiple wines that resold on the secondary market, although not often. “That’s why I don’t consider them of investment-grade level… Other wines you see often on Langton’s are Cloudy Bay and Ata Rangi… Again, I wouldn’t call them expensive from an investment perspective.”

He said it was not just about what you might like but also what would improve.

“I won’t go too deep into wine biology, but wine generally needs alcohol, tannins, acidity, body and taste to age well. That’s why you generally see more red wines on the market than white. So, if what you like ticks all of these boxes and will likely improve with age, then it can be an investment.

“Most wines, however, are consume-now wines – drink within two years – so that’s not very appealing. Also, most wines are mass consumption, which are also not very appealing. That’s why you don’t see a lot of non-vintage sparkling wines on the secondary market, but only vintage, because of that supply argument.”

He said Australia and New Zealand were lagging other markets when it came to wine. Eighty five percent of wines at auction were French.

He said the drinking window was important when determining how a wine’s value would change. Wines at the cheaper end of the investment scale tended to offer a higher investment return on average than the most expensive investment wines, he said.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Auckland Council has sold the city’s biggest film studio to a private company.

Dozens of major films, including Minecraft and Predator Badlands, were filmed at the long running Auckland Film Studios.

Auckland’s mayor Wayne Brown confirmed Xytech, an Auckland lighting supplier turned major industry player, had bought the studios for an undisclosed price.

“This is a win for our region’s outstanding screen production industry. Paired with Auckland’s stunning scenery it will increase the appeal of Auckland to a global screen industry,” he said in a statement.

“This is a good move that also delivers for ratepayers. We’ll be handing this over to a seasoned operator, and that’s where it should be.”

The sale, which will be settled on 27 February, came after the central government invested $30 million in the studio to build a pair of new sound stages in 2022.

In a statement, the council said it couldn’t confirm the sale price, but said the government’s $30m contribution would come back to the council to be held in a fund to reinvest in further screen infrastructure.

The terms of the sale would also require the site to remain a film studio for at least 10 years.

Auckland-based Xytech has grown into a major supplier of lighting and other film equipment for productions in the southern hemisphere since its founding in 1997, and opened its own X3 Studios in Wiri in 2020.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

• Consumer confidence lifts to 107.2 points from 101.5 in January
• A net 1 percent of households think it is a good time to make a major purchase
• Wellingtonians the most positive
• Mortgage holders remain more cautious
• A net 29 percent expect to be better off this time next year, up 7 points to the highest level since April 2021

The ANZ-Roy Morgan consumer confidence index is up nearly six points this month to 107.2, with anything over 100 considered to be a positive outlook.

ANZ chief economist Sharon Zollner said mortgaged households were still cautious, though Aucklanders were much more positive, with Wellingtonians the most upbeat at 109 points.

“Consumer confidence has lifted again and is at its highest level in four years. In a long-term historical comparison it’s still pretty average, but that’s positive compared to where confidence has been in recent years.”

She said the number of households thinking it was a good time to buy a major purchase was finally back in the black after lingering in negative territory for nearly four years.

“The housing market is going nowhere fast, but the steady improvement in consumer confidence seen in recent months will offer retailers hope that the pickup seen at the end of last year will persist.”

The current conditions index rose sharply to 97.7 from 90.4, the highest since December 2021.

“Lifts in activity indicators suggest the economic recovery in the second half of last year came more quickly than expected, but with the low-hanging fruit now picked, rapid growth gets mathematically harder,” Zollner said.

Perceptions of current personal financial situations rose 12 points to a negative 6 percent.

Still, a net 29 percent of respondents expected to be better off this time next year, the highest level in nearly five years.

The future conditions index made up of forward-looking questions rose to 113.5 points from 108.9, to the highest level since May 2021.

“There is a mix of headwinds and tailwinds facing the economy that in our view will add up to par growth this year,” Zollner said.

“Headwinds include rising interest rates, a stronger NZ dollar, high inflation in necessities, and uncertainty from the election and ongoing global turbulence.

“These are going up against tailwinds: interest rates are still estimated to be at stimulatory levels, private sector balance sheets are generally sound, and business confidence and investment and employment intentions are much stronger.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A global insurance giant has been warned by the Financial Markets Authority for failing to apply multi-policy discounts in New Zealand.

The FMA said Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance’s (AIOI) failure led to more than 5000 customers being overcharged almost $700,000.

The company self-reported the issue in May 2024, and the policies affected were sold through various car dealerships and online.

“Manual processes used to identify customers with more than one policy failed and customers eligible for discounts were not identified,” FMA executive director of response and enforcement Louise Unger said.

“We expect financial institutions to invest in quality systems and controls that enable them to deliver on advertised promises and to also identify issues and be capable of resolving those issues effectively and quickly.”

Unger said customers “should rightly expect” that promises would be honoured.

“In this case, AIOI acted responsibly in notifying FMA at its earliest opportunity, self-reporting the matter three days after it became aware of the issue.”

The FMA said AIOI took proactive steps to identify all affected policyholders, notify them and make remediation payments.

The company also took steps to prevent a repeat of the issue.

Over the past year, major insurers have stopped offering multi-policy discounts amid regulatory action.

In December 2025, Tower insurance was penalised $7 million for more than a decade of overcharging customers as it did not properly apply multi-policy discounts.

IAG was penalised a record $19.5m in October last year for overcharging nearly 240,000 customers by not giving them promised discounts and benefits.

AA Insurance was ordered to pay $6.2m in 2024 for failing to apply multi-policy and membership discounts, as well as guaranteed no-claims bonuses.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Another big name is leaving Newmarket, but the local business association says things are looking up for the Auckland shopping district.

Retailer Twenty-Seven Names told customers this week it had decided not to renew the lease on its Newmarket shop.

“Yes, it’s sad and yes, we’re a little emo about it. But we’re not in a position to renew the lease, and we’re choosing to honour the decade we had in that beautiful space rather than stretch it beyond what feels right,” it said in an email.

A number of shops in Newmarket have closed in recent years, including Smith & Caughey, Sportscraft and Route 66.

Retail consultant Chris Wilkinson said shopping areas in Auckland had been jostling for position in recent years.

“Newmarket has faced increasing competition as Sylvia Park continues to add new anchor attractors, while Commercial Bay’s retail and hospitality offer and the luxury quarter on Queen Street have won back shoppers who were being wooed by Westfield Newmarket,” he said.

But he said there were positive signs for the area, including university developments and public transport connectivity that would benefit from the City Rail Link.

“That will unlock new audiences and increased convenience which are key to driving growth in an otherwise fairly flat spending environment. Chemist Warehouse have secured the former Smith and Caughey site, and that will reinvigorate this prime retail strip significantly.

“Challenges have been around the suitability of spaces, with many older and smaller sites no longer being suitable for the needs of today’s tenants. A number of major occupiers moved from the retail strip into Westfield when the refurbished centre opened, and it’s taken time to backfill these sites.

“However, the fundamentals of Newmarket are strong, with significant spending power within its core catchment area and good connectivity. Newmarket is a favourite spot for boutiques to locate and hip brands like Nature Baby, although the decision by Twenty-Seven Names is really just reflective of the evolution of these brands in the way they connect with their markets.”

Newmarket Business Association chief executive Mark Knoff-Thomas said there had been a prolonged period of disruption as the area dealt with Covid and then the economic downturn.

“The last sort of six months, leasing activity has ramped up again. It’s very sad about Twenty-Seven Names closing, but that site has already been leased to another retailer coming in.”

He said there had been renewal in some of the areas that had been empty for a while.

“You’ll see in places like Broadway a lot of activity, a lot of fit-outs happening. Other examples like Nuffield St, over the back of Broadway, that’s almost completely full again with leasing.

“By mid-year we should be back up and getting towards where we were before Covid.”

He said times were still tough for retail, but the end of the year had been respectable.

“New Zealand’s been though a pretty tough time and I think there’s some really good reasons to be optimistic about the year ahead for all of us – not just Newmarket, but across the board.

“Every economic downturn has a tragic side of it but also has an opportune side of it as well, where new people come in and things get regenerated. I think we’re probably at that phase of the cycle now where new things are starting to happen.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

2026 could be a year in which the New Zealand share market shakes off the underperformance that has weighed it down since Covid hit, investment experts say.

For the decade until 2020, the NZX was one of the best performing share markets globally. But since 2020, it has lagged.

Mark Lister, investment director at Craigs Investment Partners, said it was well positioned for change.

“Last year we were up about 3 percent and many other markets were up much more than that, between 10 percent and 30 percent depending which market you’re looking at.

“We’ve been a major laggard and it wasn’t just last year, either. Since Covid, we’ve been flatlining which is in part due to our economy being in recession for a fair degree of that time while other parts of the world have not been in recession and have been ticking over nicely.

“Part of it is also the strength in the tech sector and so forth overseas, we don’t really have a tech sector so we’re never going to be able to ride that wave.”

Over the last five years, the NZX50 was up 1.69 percent, compared to 82.53 percent for the Nasdaq and 87.87 percent for the S&P500.

“Would I go as far as saying we will do better than some of those international markets over the next couple of years? Probably not, but I do strongly believe we will at least close that performance gap with other international peers. We’ll have a much better year in my opinion than we have had for the last four or five years.”

But he said markets were cyclical and the NZX could outperform again.

“You look at the 10 years leading up to the start of 2020, we, the New Zealand market, outperformed international shares in seven out of 10 years. So if you and I were having the same conversation on the 1st of January 2020, and we wouldn’t know that Covid was about to hit at that point, but if we were having this conversation then, we would be talking about how the New Zealand market has been so much better than international markets, and is there any point investing overseas? That was the story for the whole decade.

“When I cast my mind back to those years it was actually quite hard to get investors to have more international stocks because they were like but New Zealand’s been doing really well, why should I bother?”

He said if the tech sector hit trouble, New Zealand might look like a good alternative.

“We’re not as hyped up and frothy as other markets. I still think in a long-term sense, international markets look more inviting because they’re bigger, they’re more innovative, there’s more happening and the growth from outside New Zealand is probably stronger than it is here.

“But I think our market looks interesting to me at the moment and dividend yields are attractive. with term deposit rates and the OCR [official cash rate] lower than it has been for some time. So, and our market is a very tax efficient place to invest.”

Mike Taylor, founder of Pie Funds, said it made sense to expect more from the NZ market.

“But markets trade on sentiment as much as earnings. The election later this year may have an impact. I’d like to think a turn in the NZD is a signal that things are improving for NZ Inc, albeit off a very low base.”

At Generate, investment specialist Greg Smith said there were now signs of “genuine green shoots” coming through in the economy.

“As activity begins to turn, parts of the local share market could also start to perform better in the year ahead. It won’t be uniform, but the backdrop is gradually becoming more supportive than it was a year ago.”

Dean Anderson, founder of Kernel, said there were already bright spots in investment markets.

“The Emerging Opportunities Index, which is looking at smaller companies outside the large top 20 listed on the index and how they’ve performed, is actually up 17 percent in the past 12 months versus the S&P 500 in New Zealand dollar terms … which is up 9.2 percent.

“So what was driving that, though, and what’s been really interesting is that there have been a lot of smaller companies on the NZX over the past year that often fly under the radar of analysts, too small for the very large KiwiSavers who are so big they’re forced to basically only invest into the big names. And these companies have existed and they’ve had quite attractive ratios and look comparatively cheap. And what we’ve seen is they’ve now started to come on the radar of others for acquisition targets.”

That could generate very strong returns for investors in those companies, he said.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Can you still make money buying a property and doing it up to resell?

As data from Trade Me shows that buyers are moving away from ‘doer-uppers’, property experts are divided on how much value people can hope to add by renovating a home.

Trade Me said its survey of 2200 people found 49 percent of active buyers were looking for a house that already felt new or updated and 16 percent wanted a new build.

“The DIY dream appears to be fading. Only 6 percent of buyers are now explicitly looking for a fixer-upper, while just 15 percent are interested in original-condition properties. In a market with fluctuating building costs, many buyers would rather pay more for a finished product than face the uncertainty of a renovation,” Trade Me Property spokesperson Casey Wylde said.

Nick Goodall, head of research at Cotality, formerly Corelogic, said its data indicated that, at a high level, materially increasing the quality of a property would lift the value by 4 percent to 5 percent.

He said that would need to be more than just a new coat of paint.

“That figure is really looking at a full renovation. You’re probably talking about double-glazing the windows, modernising core areas like bathroom and kitchen.”

But he said some first-home buyers who did want to buy an older house and do it up might be doing it so they could enjoy it, rather than to make money.

“The improved value doesn’t necessarily matter if you’re going to be living in it for a decent period of time, and you get to enjoy the benefit of that improved quality, rather than doing it purely based on ‘if I spend $10,000, it’s going to increase the property value by $20,000’.”

He said most owner-occupiers would not be doing up a property purely with the idea of financial gain. “The data sort of proves that you need a pretty full-scale renovation to even get a 5 percent lift … you don’t do it for that reason, you do it to live in yourself.”

Investors would be looking at ways to improve the rents that could be charged, he said. “In which case they need to be pretty efficient with their renovation so they’re not overcapitalising on it.

“[They might be] going to be making a more significant change, such as adding that extra bathroom so that the capacity of the property increases and you can charge a higher total rent as well.”

He said there was also less of a difference in price with new builds at the moment than there had been at some points in the past, which meant more people could afford to buy new.

“The cost to build has slowed down, the growth in the cost to build has slowed down. So that gap’s closed up. And certainly for many people, new builds will still be an option because, the lending restrictions allow for more people to go into new builds.

“You don’t have to adhere to the LVR [Loan to Value ratio] restrictions. For example, if you’re buying new, DTI [Debt-to-Income ratio] is also exempted too. So I think there’s a few extra incentives to go and build new, which means that your demand might stay there.

“It means you’re probably going to be getting a smaller house … looking at a townhouse, for example, but at least it’s new and modern and won’t require any work. And the good news from that perspective from a first home buyer’s view is that there is plenty of them, particularly in Auckland, but also around the country. And I think that’s part of the reason we’ve seen continued high first home buyer activity is because those entry-level townhouses, particularly in Auckland, have been so prevalent that the options are there and they’ve not taken advantage of that.”

But investors said it should be possible to generate higher returns from renovations.

Property investment coach Steve Goodey said he had found that structural work such as replacing roofs or piling did not increase the value of a property because people assumed a house would have those things.

But he said cosmetic work could be cost-effective.

“If you buy well and get a discount when you purchase, maybe 10 percent, then you add 5 percent or 10 percent in value to it, that added 20 percent should allow the property to recycle and you can buy another property, too, which is always the way I have looked at it.”

Ed McKnight, economist at Opes Partners, said 5 percent seemed low.

“A standard rule of thumb is that is you spend $1 on a renovation, you want the value of the property to increase by at least $2. So for instance, if there was a $600,000 property and the investor spent $80,000 on a renovation, then a good investor would want the property to increase by at least $160,000 to $760,000. That’s a 27 percent increase in this example.

“Often those improvements would be reasonably extensive, including bathroom and kitchen upgrades, repainting and potentially repurposing an old dining room into a bedroom.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

About 200 pensioners have had the amount they receive in NZ Super affected this week because of a problem with the Ministry of Social Development’s IT system.

One man who contacted RNZ said he had been receiving NZ Super for more than 10 years, as well as a small proportion from Canada because he had worked there briefly.

But his NZ Super payment did not arrive on Monday.

When he called to ask what had happened, he was told there was a system error and everyone receiving Canadian or Netherlands pensions had their NZ Super suspended.

Paula Ratahi-O’Neill, the ministry’s general manger of centralised services, said it was working urgently to fix a fault that affected people receiving overseas pensions.

“The fault was in the IT system that updates overseas pension rates. It has caused a small group of people to have their NZ Super payments incorrectly assessed.

“This has led to some payments being suspended, and in other cases incorrect payments being made.

“We estimate that around 200 clients receiving overseas pensions have been affected. We will continue to monitor numbers.

“We are working with urgency to fix these payments and will be paying amounts owing to people by Friday. We apologise to those impacted by this fault.”

She said the ministry’s technical team was working “at speed” to stop other payments being affected and a data fix should be released by Monday.

Some overseas pensions that are deemed to be similar to New Zealand’s system offset NZ Super.

For every dollar people get from an overseas pension, their New Zealand payment is reduced by one dollar.

According to the government’s website, to count as a pension that offsets NZ Super, the pension needs to be part of a programme providing pensions or benefits, cover something that NZ pensions and benefits cover, such as old age or disability, and be administered by or on behalf of a country’s government.

Voluntary savings schemes generally were not included.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

• Business confidence retreats 10 points from a 30-year high but still seen as strong
• Businesses own expectations drop 9 points, but still historically high at 52 percent
• Wage pressures start to lift modestly with inflation expectations the highest in 15 months.
• More firms expect to raise prices over the next in two years

January’s business confidence is down 10 points from December’s 30-year high but is still considered to be extremely strong.

ANZ Bank’s business outlook’s headline confidence indicates a net 64 percent expected better economic conditions.

While businesses’ own expectations fell by 9 points to 52 percent, that reading was also historically high.

“The economy has clearly turned higher,” ANZ chief economist Sharon Zollner said.

“Reported past employment is also rising and is back in the black for all sectors. That hasn’t been the case since late 2022,” she said.

She said reported past activity, which was the best indicator of GDP, rose 3 points to 26 — the second highest reading since August 2021.

“The less-good news is re-emerging signs of inflation pressure.”

Inflation indicators rose to the highest reading in nearly three years (March 2023) with prices expected to rise by 2.1 percent, with wage pressures also expected to increase.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand