Several of New Zealand’s largest retail businesses have been convicted of breaches of the Fair Trading act within the last five years. Some were smart enough to settle with the Commerce Commission before being convicted, but most admitted a breach of the act. Telecom was convicted and fined $500,000 in 2009, pleading guilty to 17 charges …
Category Archives: NZ Business
Let’s start paying GST on everything
I paid no GST when I purchased Lorde’s Pure Heroine album from Apple’s NZ iTunes store in September, but I did pay GST when I purchased a MacBook Air from Apple’s NZ online store. And while I do pay tax when I rent or purchase movies from the US iTunes store, but that’s a US …
Punakaiki Fund – The end for now
We sent the below to investors on Friday. Thanks are due not just to investors, but also to everyone who supported us. In particular though are our suppliers. We were amazed at the excellent support in particular we received from Buddle Findlay (Sacha Judd), Lee Ter Wal Design (Baruch Ter Wal), Pursuit PR (Paul O’Leary) …
Taxpayers Union: Teaparty wingnuts or rational economists?
Today saw the launch of the strangely named Taxpayer’s Union, a lobby group aimed at “giving taxpayers a voice in the corridors of power.” Given the taxpayers, that’s all of us, already have a voice each three years and through various processes, the Taxpayer’s Union deserves a bit more scrutiny. Are they rational economists looking …
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Doing Business well, but we still do it better
The World Bank Group’s Doing Business report for 2013 is out, and New Zealand is again ranked at number 3. I’ve highlighted on our report, below, the areas where we are clearly behind. However even in the areas where we do well, such as opening a business, we can do a lot better. It’s not …
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The not so free coffee
For now I have to focus on activities that will earn back some of the lost earnings and investment in trying to get Punakaiki Fund off the ground. One intent of Punakaiki Fund was to fund my time spent helping companies to grow, an activity which I really enjoy. Meanwhile a byproduct of the fund …
Innovation and Failure – IITP speech
On Friday afternoon, just as Punakaiki Fund was closing well short of the $5 million minimum, I gave a speech (video) to close out the IITP annual conference. I was asked to talk about innovation and to be inspiring as the conference ended. It was a tough call as the spectre of a public failure hovered …
The product lifecycle – as explained by Apple
Tomorrow is the latest Apple event, apparently focussed on iPads. It’s time to dredge out my predictor from 2011. Black are the original predictions, red the results to date and I’ve put green boxes around potential releases this year. Missing is the rumoured iPad mini retina display. The predictions are showing their age now. In general …
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Hiding The Harbour
Just launched by Curative and 96Black funded by gambling money from Lotto is The Harbour, a site for those affected by harmful sexual behaviour. It’s very well done (aside from some initial paragraph spacing issues and missing links.) The content does not take long to read, and it’s good for all of us to get …
Better By Design CEO Summit 2013
I’m really quite sad to be missing this year’s CEO Summit, but Punakaiki Fund has to take preference. The summits are aimed at CEOs of medium- and larger-sized NZ companies, and combine an audience from the design profession with the CEOS, management teams and a host of high quality local and international speakers. They are …
Insure the weather
Monsanto just purchased Climate Corp for US$960 million. Climate Corp is a company that is really good at predicting weather in a small area (like a farming region) and provides insurance against poor weather conditions like drought to farmers. It was started by two ex Googlers. Do we have anything like this here? We certainly …
Hire good people and pay them well
Wal*Mart thought it could save money by shifting towards a higher percentage of part time temporary staff, who had to reapply every 180 days. They also increased the number of hours required to qualify for healthcare from 24 to 30. These to me were signs that senior management was lowering its commitment to putting customers …
What not to invest in?
Two things not to invest in: 1: Nobel prize winner Robert Shiller says housing is a lousy investment. 2: FMP Medical Services Limited, who just made history by being the first company to have a prospectus cancelled by the FMA. The point with the first is that all of your cash is tied up in …
The Economics Nobel – asset pricing
A simple summary of today’s “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2013”, or the Economic Nobel Prize as everyone incorrectly calls it: Eugene Fama: You cannot really predict the price of a stock in the short run. Robert Shiller: The ratio of stock prices to dividends (P/E) trends to …
One more step towards Xero as a mainstream US stock
With another $180 million raised and $230 million on hand, Xero has proved once again that’s it’s smart to raise money well before you need it. But what’s interesting is that the type of investors that Xero is attracting are changing. Don’t focus on Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, but instead on Matrix Capital Management and …
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Lance Wiggs 