Weekly Wrap: Finance company news dominates headlines

Morningstar has started rolling out its qualitative research on managers, releasing reports on international share funds from ING and AXA/Alliance. The reports are useful reads written in an easy to read style. For the record, both funds get a good wrap from the researcher.

This week we also had the latest household savings indicators. As we know the property market and house price increases are largely driving New Zealanders' increased wealth. Some may think that a slowing housing market may make people have second thoughts before entering the property market. Arcus chief economist Rozanna Wozniak takes a different view.

For readers interested in the property market I would recommend you visit Landlords.co.nz. This site has lots of information, also it has a statistics section which has all the latest house price sales data and rental information, plus you can do graphs comparing data.

Finance companies
Of all the stories in this space, two stand out this week. One is the government's decision to put non-bank deposit takers under a new regulatory regime, and the other is the coverage of Geneva Finance.

The mini frenzy over Geneva Finance is something I am sure the company hasn't liked. It all started when S&P put the company onto its creditwatch negative status, meaning that it was under review and likely to get downgraded.

Geneva, which is a mid-sized company, has had a disproportionately large amount of coverage in the papers with one running a big item in the general news sector. No doubt this sort of coverage will further undermine investors' confidence.

To its credit Geneva appears to be well-run, it has a wholesale bank funding line, and it has responded well to the publicity being open about the status of the business.

The regulatory changes, on the face of it, look good. This is a story we will look into a little bit more for readers.

Recently we ran a survey of advisers asking about their attitudes to fixed interest investments and finance companies. Results of this survey will be on the site very soon.