ASB Securities Morning Brief for Tuesday, 31 January 2012

NZ Market Report. The New Zealand share market rose for a fourth session as investors took advantage of the lull in activity due to Auckland Anniversary Day to snap up oversold and higher yielding stocks. Cavalier Corp led gainers, while Rakon ranked as the biggest decliner on the day... Read more

Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard says he will not seek a third term.... Read more

Alan Bollard's announcement that he will not seek a third term as Reserve Bank governor will trigger speculation both about who might succeed him and about possible changes to the policy targets agreement between Government and governor... Read more

Arthur Grimes or Murray Sherwin could be strong contenders to replace governor Alan Bollard.... Read more

Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe is tipped by industry insiders to announce his resignation before the end of February, possibly to head a major British carrier... Read more

Chinese farmers could come to New Zealand to learn dairying at Crafar Farms if the controversial $200 million sale of Crafar's 16 North Island farms to Shanghai Pengxin proceeds, Landcorp chief executive Chris Kelly says... Read more

Landcorp has lost its last chance to own the Crafar Farms after its board yesterday signed a deal to run the 8000 hectares of dairy farming land for a Chinese conglomerate... Read more

Hi-tech component maker Rakon has reassured the NZX it is playing by the disclosure rules after NZX sent a "please explain" letter querying a 42 per cent share-price spike... Read more

Sanitarium NZ is to meet workers at its Christchurch manufacturing centre this week to update them on the status of the earthquake-hit operation... Read more

The New Zealand dollar reversed its gains against the greenback as investors took advantage of the kiwi's four-month high to book profits... Read more

Airline Jetstar is on the hunt for 40 new cabin crew to be based in Christchurch to increase the total staff base employed in the city from an existing 200 or so... Read more

A British air traffic control training company plans to set up an academy in Wellington to attract foreign students... Read more

New Zealand's apple and pear exports are on track to match last year's levels despite bad frosts and lower European export levels, according to Pipfruit New Zealand... Read more

Bathurst Resources, the coalminer wanting to start opencast mining on the West Coast, says its Buller Coal project is closer to production, after signing a lease deal with Port Taranaki... Read more

Retail vacancies in Auckland's central business district are falling, rents are rising, and a new luxury shopping hub is beginning to emerge... Read more

The New Zealand Malt Whisky Company expects to decide by the end of the year where to build a $1.7 million distillery... Read more

Christchurch snack-food company Cookie Time has joined forces with Sanitarium to launch its One Square Meal bar in Australia.... Read more

Christchurch International Airport has appointed South Island tourism operator Dave Hawkey to head up a new tourism project for the airport company.... Read more

A new government irrigation fund will help finance a feasibility study into a water storage dam in Hawke's Bay.... Read more

Australian Market Report. Stocks closed lower as investors took profits ahead of local supermarkets reporting their results and an EU summit... Read more

Ratings agency Fitch has warned it could cut the credit rating of the big four banks largely as a result of their heavy reliance on offshore borrowing... Read more

Australian banks are among the most profitable in the world and Treasurer Wayne Swan says he won't let global financial turmoil stop him talking about interest rates.... Read more

With corporate reporting season soon to kick off, analysts are concerned that investors will not like what they hear as the strong dollar weighs on Australia's patchwork economy... Read more

Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan hopes a major speech by the Opposition Leader will be more like the one he gave in London, where he spoke of Australia's "enviable" position, rather than his relentless "trash-talking" of the economy... Read more

Many of Australia's top listed companies have no plans to increase staff numbers in the next year, according to a survey of financial controllers... Read more

Australian miner at the centre of deadly protests in Indonesia last year is reassessing its options after its local partner's license was revoked... Read more

A superannuation round table has been announced as a follow-up to the Government's tax summit held in October last year... Read more

Transurban's chief executive Chris Lynch will leave the toll-road operator in July after he decided the 'time was right' to make way for a successor... Read more

Home prices will continue to weaken - but only because of subdued sentiment by buyers rather than fundamental market problems, ANZ says... Read more

OneSteel will receive a $64 million advance of federal assistance... Read more

Global reinsurers are expected to try to extract a further round of hefty price rises from Australian property insurers this year, following the near $28 billion in losses the sector has taken since the start of 2010 from payouts for floods and hailstorms and New Zealand's earthquakes... Read more

Telstra Corporation has warned that the National Broadband Network (NBN) Co pricing strategy could result in unnecessarily high prices for high speed internet services, according to a report by The Australian... Read more

The deadline is looming for Tasmanian timber company Gunns to repay its $340 million debt facility with the ANZ bank... Read more

Three years after 60,000 investors lost more than $1 billion in the collapse of a string of tax-driven agribusiness schemes, the corporate regulator has issued new disclosure guidelines it hopes will stop it from happening again.... Read more

Woolworths has added some much-needed retail experience to its board before what is expected to be another challenging quarterly sales announcement today. Analysts are forecasting its rival Coles will report stronger comparable food and liquor sales growth for the December quarter... Read more

The mood is anything but urgent on the ASX's list of upcoming floats, where a loose ''TBA'' is supplied as the listing date for 20 of the 26 companies named... Read more

"Buyer beware" is expected to be the name of the game as a new national Personal Property Securities Register begins life today.... Read more

Customer service is expected to be the dominant battlefront for Australian businesses this decade, according to a global survey of business leaders... Read more

BKI Investment Co has posted a 5.2% lift in first half profit and expects more pensioners and retirees to snap up its shares for the strong yield... Read more

Oil and gas producer ROC Oil lifted production in the December quarter, but for the year it was down... Read more

A proposal by Australian mining billionaire Nathan Tinkler to build a A$2.5 billion ($2.7 billion) coal export terminal on the nation's east coast has been rejected by the New South Wales government.... Read more

Bianca Hope Rinehart, the last of Gina Rinehart's three children suing their mother, has officially left the board of the family's iron ore flagship... Read more

Chevron has booked its first reserves for the Wheatstone LNG project and reinforced expectations that it will begin initial engineering work on a fourth-train expansion of its Gorgon project this year... Read more

In such bearish times, Matthew Stephens laughs off suggestions that his team at Yulleba Resources has been overly courageous in pushing ahead with plans to float their mining play within weeks... Read more

Monadelphous says it has won water and transmission pipeline construction contracts with Rio Tinto and Chevron worth $180 million.... Read more

Leighton subsidiary Thiess has won a $260 million contract in consortium with Belgium's BESIX to build the breakwater and materials offloading facility for Chevron's Wheatstone LNG project... Read more

A former Perth company director is facing a jail term after he was found guilty of stealing from investors to help pay his mortgage and his wife's credit card bills... Read more

Adele Ferguson. The next phase in the overhaul of the $8 billion tax-avoidance industry that spawned operators such as Great Southern Plantations and Timbercorp fell into place yesterday when the corporate regulator issued a set of guidelines designed to improve transparency in one of the riskiest investment products on offer... Read more

Ian McIlwraith. Holidays are over, school is back and re-suited chief executives return to their desks pondering (queue music) ''What's it all about, Alfie?''... Read more

Stephen Bartholomeusz. While Facebook has an impressive balance sheet, its highly anticipated IPO will test the faith of investors, with some large question marks remaining over its long-term growth prospects... Read more

Michael West. Compass Resources poses some awkward questions about the degree of oversight of the corporate regulator, ASIC... Read more

Nathan Bell. Engineering firm WorleyParsons has much going for it in the middle of mining boom. Longer term, though, the prospects may not be so rosy... Read more

Robert Gottliebsen. As mining revenue swiftly transforms the wealth of some Aboriginal communities, it will raise the question of whether past strategies can be effective in the future... Read more

Ian Verrender. Bad news for banks - Australian consumers and businesses are saving rather than borrowing... Read more

Matt O'Sullivan. Catastrophic floods, high fuel prices, ash clouds, fraught industrial relations on the waterfront and in the air, and consumers tightening their belts. By any stretch, last year was tough for the transport sector... Read more

World Market Report. An updated report of the worlds' latest market movements... Read more

US Market Report. Stocks extended losses on Monday, with all three major indexes falling more than 1 percent... Read more

The eurozone crisis dominates an EU summit as leaders seek ways to revive growth and the austerity strategy comes under fire... Read more

European leaders struggled to reconcile austerity with growth on Monday at a summit due to approve a permanent rescue fund for the euro zone and put finishing touches to a German-driven pact for stricter budget discipline... Read more

Greece's finance minister angrily rejected a German plan for the eurozone to impose a budget overseer onto Athens in return for a new €130bn bail-out, saying it would improperly force his country to choose between "financial assistance" and "national dignity"... Read more

France cuts its growth forecast for this year to 0.5% from 1% to "take into account the deterioration of the economic situation"... Read more

The Spanish economy shrank by 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2011, amid expectations that Spain will fall into recession this year... Read more

A trader accused of fraud over a $2.3 billion loss in unauthorized trading reported by Swiss banking giant UBS pleads not guilty in a London court. The trial of the trader, Kwaku Adoboli, is due to begin September 3... Read more

The UK government will not block bonuses due to other RBS executives, after chief executive Stephen Hester waived his near-£1m award... Read more

US consumer spending was flat in December as households took advantage of the largest rise in income in nine months to boost their savings, setting the tone for a slowdown in demand early in 2012... Read more

The EU's embargo on Iranian oil exports will add upward pressure to oil prices, OPEC's secretary general said on Monday, even though there is no shortage of oil on the market... Read more

Carnival Corp on Monday said it would take a $155 million to $175 million hit against net income in fiscal 2012, blaming the Costa Concordia cruise ship catastrophe... Read more

Citigroup's chairman, Richard Parsons, is considering giving up the position to focus on other interests, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the situation... Read more

Starbucks Corp will open its first coffee shops in India in August or September, a year later than originally planned, and aims to have 50 outlets by year-end through a tie-up with the Tata group, the country's biggest business house... Read more

Swiss engineering group ABB has agreed to buy U.S. electrical components maker Thomas & Betts for $3.9 billion to ramp up its presence in the world's largest market for low-voltage products... Read more

Athens shopping streets may be busy, but thousands of stores are going out of business in the sector's worst crisis in decades... Read more

Republicans portray President Obama as the tax-hiker-in-chief. Obama portrays himself as a tax cutter for the masses but not the rich. The truth isn't so cut and dry.... Read more

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry. We're all awaiting with bated breath for the Facebook S-1 to drop this week. According to various leaks, Facebook's operating profit was around $1.5 billion in 2011 and its revenues were something like $4 billion. We'll know soon enough whether that's true, but if so, it makes Facebook's reported $85-100 billion valuation sound insane. Is it?... Read more

Phillip Inman. Nervous investors are willing the euro crisis to solve itself. They talk cheerily of successful bond auctions and rising share prices... Read more

Rob Go. In some weird ways, Facebook makes me think a bit of Yahoo. Not the Yahoo of today, but the Yahoo of the past. And I wonder if Facebook will see a similar decline over the next 10 years... Read more