Listed Dunedin manufacturer and exporter Scott Technology - which booked a more than $800,000 full-year loss earlier this week - has had its two-year profit forecasts downgraded by brokers ABN Amro Craigs.
Panic selling in the United States sharemarkets overnight sparked massive Asia-Pacific losses yesterday as cash-hoarding investors propelled the credit drought to crushing dimensions.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand followed the lead of the world's major central banks yesterday, not in cutting its interest-driving official cash rate, but in offering a temporary lending facility to banks which has no ceiling for approved applicants.
Overnight carnage on Wall St for a fifth consecutive day - pummelling indexes to fresh five year lows - has prompted the United State's Federal Reserve central bank to expand its lending programme in a surprise move.
Port Otago subsidiary Chalmers Properties is defending ground-lease increases of up to 200% for some Dunedin building owners.
Asia-Pacific sharemarkets remained cautious yesterday after Monday's global freefall again wiped billions of dollars in value off company values and markets notched up record losses.
Listed Dunedin manufacturer and exporter Scott Technology booked a loss of more than $800,000 for the year's trading to August, as the escalating global credit crunch sparked a downturn in United States appliance manufacturing, Scott's main customer base.
Port Otago intends applying for resource consent from the Otago Regional Council to extend its container wharf a further 140m at a cost of between $5 million and $10 million.
Commodity exchanges have reputedly been around since the 6th century BC, when sheep and goats were traded in southern Mesopotamia, but now encompass exchanges around the world.
The southern business interests of Dunedin businesman Ken Cummings, the largest shareholder in the failed $450 million Kensington Park residential housing project, north of Auckland, are unscathed from receivership proceedings.
A stellar period of gold production was reached in mid March when global demand pushed the price through the $US1000 barrier for the first time to $US1033, but the rot had already set in for many gold explorers and producers whose share prices were plummeting.
The ANZ bank has called for voluntary redundancies from its 2500 staff around the country in what the Finance and Information Workers Union (Finsec) is claiming may prompt a "significant reduction in staff numbers".
Dunedin printer Rogan McIndoe - now in the hands of liquidators - may owe up to $1.38 million to mainly local businesses with up to 90 unsecured creditors unlikely to get as much as 20c in the dollar back, in a best-case scenario.
A cash squeeze could come to bear in the New Zealand banking sector when some of $120 billion of foreign investment in securities is not renewed during the next two to three years as it matures, further depressing the strength of the New Zealand dollar.
Falling interest rates and pending tax cuts have seen an unprecedented recovery in consumer confidence for the quarter to September, with pessimistic respondents falling from 52% to 17%.
Amid increasing calls for the United States Government's $700 billion ($NZ1060 billion) rescue package for the finance sector to be urgently addressed, Asia-Pacific sharemarkets continued to take the lead from New York, trading positively but weakly yesterday.
Reduced demand for automotive parts and increasing Asian competition has prompted six redundancies at 64-year-old Dunedin engineering company DC Ross, during the past week.
Most Asia-Pacific stockmarkets slipped about 1%-2% yesterday after Wall Street resumed Monday trading and unnerved investors continued selling in to the confused market, albeit it one with a $700 billion ($NZ1060 billion) lifeline on hand.
Superannuation funds on both sides of the Tasman will have been undermined by the recent sharemarket turmoil which has wiped billions of dollars from share values around the world.
The New Zealand, Asian and Australian sharemarkets responded positively to the potential turnaround of events in the US markets during the past week.
