iBankers have to be real estate agents

Apparently, I read in the Independent Financial Review last week, people that receive a success fee for helping a company sell are required under NZ law to be licenced real estate agents. The “investment bank” that helped Trade Me sell was specifically mentioned as a candidate for this law.

1: Trade Me had no formal investment bank advising it on the sale (just me), and nor did Fairfax – something both parties are justifiably proud of.

2: What a stupid law. Apparently the REINZ can go after anybody that receives success fees and claim them. Great way to throttle the incoming private equity money and to slow the sale of companies.

3: There are no links so far on this blog entry as AFR’ website is a front page only, and you are referred to a strange site called knowledge-basket (the name of which is derived from a legend involving Täne.) Pricing to search IFR archives is $1 per search so you had better get those keywords correct (imagine paying $1 per google search). This may work for organisations that have an umbrella agreement, but not for individuals blogging from home…

4: While there are courses to become MRIENZ, extremely little of the content is relevant to a investment banker. I wonder whether I can apply cross credits from any of these (relevant) courses from Yale University?

5: Even worse REINZ says that once you have passed the real estate sales person exams then you have 3 years to work in the real estate industry, or else you must resit the course. Someone involved in helping businesses to sell but not active in the real estate game would therefore have to keep re-sitting.

Scoopit!