More than 100,000 New Zealanders had pre-registered for shares in Mighty River Power at the latest count yesterday and brokers said interest remained high in the partial sale of the state-owned asset.
The Otago Daily Times canvassed brokers to find if they were automatically enrolling custodial clients, thereby inflating numbers. Those spoken to said although they had sent emails out to clients calling for expressions of interests in the pre-registration, the numbers provided by State Owned Minister Tony Ryall were physical pre-registrations through the website.
It was against the law for brokers to pre-register custodial clients without their consent, a broker said.
Mr Ryall said the response to the 49% sell down of the energy company had been ''huge''.
The 100,000 registrations in a day was large when compared with the 10 days it took for pre-registration to reach the 100,000 mark with the Contact Energy share offer in 1999.
''There is plenty of time before pre-registration ends on March 22 and there is no advantage in pre-registering earlier.''
New Zealanders who pre-registered would receive an offer document as soon as it was ready and might be allocated up to 25% more shares than people who did not pre-register, if demand for shares exceeded shares available, he said.
The pre-registration website is www.mightyrivershares.govt.nz.
In response to a news story yesterday about a possible privacy leak, Milestone Financial Services said it was not receiving any leads or information for the share offer from any third party and that included the website.
The Christchurch Milestone office sent an email out to clients providing details on how to pre-register interest on the website.
The email did not provide any advice on the offer and advised only on the process for pre-registering and what to place in the relevant boxes.
No Milestone adviser had been proactively ringing clients about Mighty River Power, as there was insufficient information to provide any advice on the topic at this stage, a spokesman said.
