Labour leader David Shearer on Monday signalled Labour's intentions to make changes to the electricity sector to stem the ongoing rise in power bills and to ease future pressures on prices.
But he did not elaborate on how Labour would do that. Today, Mr Shearer and Green Party co-leader Russel Norman will hold a briefing on policies they say will bring down power prices.
Mr Curtayne, of Auckland, said any pricing mechanism change for electricity would depend on a change of government.
Even the threat of the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter closing was unlikely to dampen demand for the Mighty River shares.
Contact Energy was yesterday trading at $5.80, a price not reached since November 2011.
''I don't think many people will treat the pricing talk as substantial. Any kind of pricing adjustment would have to come from regulation, I imagine.''
Demand for shares from ''mum and dad'', or retail investors, would come at the top end of the $2.35 to $2.80 a share range set by the Government, Mr Curtayne said. Institutions would be interested at the bottom end but would decide on their bids for shares closer to the May 10 listing date.
With the Fonterra listing of units, institutions originally bid at the lower end but increased their bids as the demand became apparent. Demand was likely to come from people looking for income as their term deposits rolled off at banks. Around $110 billion was in term deposits at banks.
Also, there was about $1 billion in bonds due to come off. The bond had been paying up to 7% return but investors could only get between 3% and 4% return on reinvestment, he said.
Some of those people would take Mighty River shares as their first exposure to the equity markets, prepared to take the risk to get the returns.
''The generation-retailers are not without risk as they are exposed to the economy. They are higher risk than, say, Vector, which is a lines company. There are good returns available as long as they remember the first rule of investing - diversification.
''Those who are looking at Mighty River should also look at Contact,'' Mr Curtayne said.
The general offer for Mighty River shares opened on Monday and closes on May 3. The minimum application is $1000 and New Zealanders are guaranteed to get the first $2000 they apply for, whether or not they pre-registered.
About 440,000 investors pre-registered but Prime Minister John Key said securities law prevented him providing an updated figure.
''We have been warned that providing application numbers [could be] seen as speculating on demand or trying to talk up demand,'' he said.
The Government has launched a $1 million advertising campaign to entice domestic investors to apply for the shares. The campaign is on top of a $1.1 million spend on advertising the pre-registration.
A spokeswoman for State-owned Enterprises Minister Tony Ryall told The New Zealand Herald the advertising costs were not expected to exceed 2% of the estimated proceeds from the float and was standard for initial public offers. The share float was expected to raise about $1.6 billion.
