Dene Mackenzie

Dunedin health manager Michael Woodhouse looks assured to enter Parliament as a National Party list MP judging from the party's full list released yesterday.

Standard and Poor's Rating Services has retained its AA- long-term and A-1+ short-term local currency ratings on Dunedin City Council and Dunedin City Treasury.

The announcement that Hanover Finance owners will put tens of millions of dollars into the company's recovery plan could be welcome news for investors meeting in Christchurch tomorrow.

The uncertainty surrounding the forthcoming general election was not the ideal environment for making dynamic business decisions, Otago-Southland Employers Association chief executive Duncan Simpson said yesterday.

National Party leader John Key would not be drawn yesterday on how his party intends funding tax cuts, which he told a Dunedin audience would be larger than Labour's.

An assured National Party leader John Key kept to the party message during a visit to Dunedin yesterday.

The National Party benefit policy was about "the richest people attacking the poorest people" in New Zealand, Prime Minister Helen Clark said in an interview yesterday.

National Party leader John Key has returned to his party's roots by targeting the unemployed in a benefits policy he says will have an unrelenting focus on getting beneficiaries back to work.

The recent announcements by several mortgage and property trusts freezing or suspending repayments or redemptions from mortgage and property trusts has raised questions in the minds of investors. Business Editor Dene Mackenzie investigates.

Telecom's shares took a pounding in early trading on the NZX-50 yesterday as investors reacted to the reduced profit for the year ended June of New Zealand's largest listed company.

Corporate raider and strategic investment company Guinness Peat Group PLC is selling its stake in Tower Australia Group Ltd to one of Japan's largest life insurers, Dai-ichi Mutual Life Insurance Company.

An estimated 20,000 jobs were expected to be lost in the year ended June 2009, pushing unemployment up to 5%, Bank of New Zealand research economist Stephen Toplis said yesterday.

The unguarded comments of National MPs, taped at the party's annual conference last weekend, are embarrassing for the party.

Dunedin-based NZ Mortgage Income Trust is reassuring investors that is in a "sound condition" and while not immune to current market conditions, it is adequately protected.