Wellington

Standard & Poor's has stripped both South Canterbury Finance and Marac of their investment grade ratings.

Standard & Poor's has stripped both South Canterbury Finance and Marac of their investment grade ratings.

Andrew Johnson, former head of relationship management at AMP Capital, has joined the Russell Investments NZ team.

Kiwibank has challenged its banking peers in the short term lending market and dropped its floating rate 20 basis points to 5.79%.

Unprecedentedly high deposit rates show New Zealand banks are seeking out savers "in a brutally competitive manner", says the first in a new PriceWaterhouseCoopers report on the country's Australian-dominated banking sector.

Nationwide

Tower Investments is expanding its KiwiSaver and managed funds distribution team with the appointment of two more regional business development managers.

Investors, who put $75 million into the first offer of PINs notes have had more bad news delivered to them this week.

After a difficult 18 months KiwiSaver growth funds were the stand out performers in the quarter to June 30, 2009 producing a median return of 7.9% according to Mercer's KiwiSaver Survey.