Dec 14,  2017  -  Alliance Group is exceeding its target for achieving gains from its business strategy and forging ahead with plans to further lift the co-operative’s performance, farmer shareholders were told at the co-operative’s Annual Meeting in Te Anau today. Murray Taggart, chair of Alliance Group, said the co-operative’s ongoing programme of strategy projects captured $48.8 million in value this year.“The value captured from our strategy projects is a major factor driving our ability to offer competitive farm gate pricing and invest in the company.“Alliance’s improved profitability means we will be distributing $11.4 million in pool payments to our farmers’ bank accounts this week“Once again, this demonstrates the fundamental benefit of a co-operative, where every dollar we make is either reinvested for the future or returned to farmers.”The company experienced a more positive trading environment during 2017, said Mr Taggart.“Although market volatility and weather events remain a constant threat, the level of supply and demand for our farmers’ produce look set to underpin strong pricing, particularly for sheepmeat and venison.“However, we are acutely aware of the impact the drier conditions are having on our farmers’ businesses and we’ve responded by bringing on additional processing capacity across our plant network.”Alliance Group Chief Executive David Surveyor said the co-operative is moving steadily in the right direction, but the company would not be resting on its laurels. “We have successfully navigated the first phase of transforming the business and we are now focused on stage two to ensure this transformation is sustainable.“We recognise there is a lot of hard work ahead of us to lift the performance of the co-operative to the level our shareholders expect. The good news is there are a number of exciting and innovative initiatives in the pipeline.”The key priorities next year would be growing the value add part of the business and capturing more value from the co-operative’s global markets, said Mr Surveyor.Alliance Group has already invested in developing a food service business in the UK and purchased the Goldkiwi Asia business in Singapore, now known as Alliance Asia.“Strengthening Alliance’s in-market presence is vital if we are to capture greater value and these investments are only the first steps down this path.”Alliance is also exploring opportunities to capture more revenue from co-products.“Our $800,000 investment in a new blood processing facility at our Mataura plant is just the start. We have a number of other exciting value capture projects underway.”The pool distribution payments will be paid into farmer shareholder’s accounts on Friday 15 December. The distribution will be as follows: Lambs: $1.80/headSheep: $1.00/headCattle: $10.00/headDeer: $7.50/headCalves: $1.00/head Directors Dawn Sangster and Russell Drummond were re-appointed to the Board unopposed in October.

| An alliance Group release  ||  December 14, 2017   |||

Dec  13, 2017  -  Earlier this year, we committed to placing 55 billion XRP in a cryptographically-secured escrow account to create certainty of XRP supply at any given time. As promised, today we completed the lockup.  By securing the lion’s share of XRP in escrow, people can now mathematically verify the maximum supply that can enter the market. While Ripple has proved to be a responsible steward of XRP supply for almost five years – and has clearly demonstrated a tremendous track record of investing in and supporting the XRP ecosystem – this lockup eliminates any concern that Ripple could flood the market, which we’ve pointed out before is a scenario that would be bad for Ripple!

This move underscores Ripple’s commitment to building XRP liquidity and a healthy and trusted market. Long term, the value of digital assets will be determined by their utility. XRP has emerged as the only digital asset with a clear institutional use case designed to solve a multi-trillion dollar problem – the global payment and liquidity challenges that banks, payment providers and corporates face.

Unlike other digital assets purely driven by unexplained speculation, real institutional customers are already using and finding value in XRP, and governments, regulators and central banks are increasingly recognizing the role it could play in the global system.

XRP goes beyond what Bitcoin does well — a store of value — and delivers transaction speed and throughput that is orders of magnitude faster than BTC or ETH. While other digital assets continue to bump against their transaction limits, XRP remains the fastest, most efficient and most scalable digital asset in the world – making it the best digital asset for payments. It’s no surprise that institutions are looking to XRP to provide much-needed on-demand liquidity for cross-border payments.

Game changer for $XRP! 55 billion XRP now in escrow Tweet This

Here’s how the escrow works:

The Escrow feature in the XRP Ledger allows parties to secure XRP for an allotted amount of time or until specific conditions are met. For example, Escrow allows a sender of XRP to put conditions on exactly when a payment can be completed, so the payment remains cryptographically locked until the due date.

We use Escrow to establish 55 contracts of 1 billion XRP each that will expire on the first day of every month from months 0 to 54. As each contract expires, the XRP will become available for Ripple’s use. You can expect us to continue to use XRP for incentives to market makers who offer tighter spreads for payments and selling XRP to institutional investors.

We’ll then return whatever is unused at the end of each month to the back of the escrow rotation. For example, if 500M XRP remain unspent at the end of the first month, those 500M XRP will be placed into a new escrow account set to expire in month 55. For comparison, Ripple has sold on average 300M XRP per month for the past 18 months.

Ripple’s vision remains the same – to enable the Internet of Value in which money moves like information moves today – and XRP is at the heart.

To learn more, please visit ripple.com/xrp.

| A Ripple release  ||  December 7, 2017   |||

Dec 13, 2017  -  The export price of butter reached a new high in the September 2017 quarter, to be up 8.8 percent from the June 2017 quarter, Stats NZ said today.  Export butter prices increased 75 percent in the year ended September 2017, and these gains were closely tracked in domestic butter prices in New Zealand shops.

Whole milk powder prices were down 2.0 percent and cheese fell 1.7 percent in the September 2017 quarter. Dairy product export prices as a whole increased 38 percent in the September 2017 year, despite dipping 0.9 percent in the September 2017 quarter.

The recent increase in butter export prices was influenced by high global demand and a drop in European milk supply.

"Lower international supply was caused partly by lower farm-gate milk prices in Europe, which led to reduced herd sizes. At the same time we’ve seen a consumer swing towards butter and away from products like margarine,” prices senior manager Jason Attewell said.

“Globally, consumers often place a premium on New Zealand butter. That demand has pushed the export price to new heights.

In the September 2017 quarter, the price of a 500g block of butter (as measured by the consumers price index) was up 9.7 percent from the June 2017 quarter.

“Kiwi food shoppers have felt the impact of record world butter prices. The average price of the cheapest available block of butter in supermarkets reached a record $5.55 in September, up 60 percent from September 2016,” Mr Attewell said. “Prices have continued to climb into November, hitting $5.74 a block.”

“In recent years, export and domestic price changes for butter have tracked very closely, which reflects the fact that New Zealand consumers are ‘price takers’ on the international market despite New Zealand being a major butter producer.”

Other indicators, such as the fortnightly Global Dairy Trade (GDT) auction price for butter, also increased during the September 2017 quarter– the auction price reached a five-year high of US$6,026 a metric tonne on 19 September 2017.

However, since September GDT prices have fallen. The auction price on 5 December 2017 was down 24 percent to US$4,575 a metric tonne. Typically, there has been a lag of 4–6 months between GDT price movements and the prices New Zealand consumers see on supermarket shelves.

Local and international production have both increased and milk supply in Europe has begun to expand.

“Fears of the butter shortage, or #BeurreGate, continuing through to Christmas have abated,” Mr Attewell said.

“However, with the dry start to our summer it’s unclear how the price of butter will change in the near future.”

A STATISTICSNZ release  ||  December 13, 2017   |||

Dec 13, 2017  - The appointment of Adrian Orr to be the new Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) appears to be a good move by the Minister of Finance. To be really effective, however, Mr Orr will need to take seriously the issue of our sustained overvalued exchange rate over the last decade which has played a role in holding back export growth.

“We are hopeful the appointment of someone from has worked inside the RBNZ, but also had a very successful career outside since, signals a willingness for reform within the bank, given the review and the new Government’s pre-election promises of changes to targets and the decision-making model, says Dr Dieter Adam, CE, The Manufacturers’ Network.

“Under the previous Governor’s leadership we saw consistent comments around the role of the currency in holding back growth in exports. We did not, however, see much credible action to change the situation. We understand that under current settings, the RBNZ has limitations as to what it can do to address the exchange rate level and volatility. With a new Governor more willing to act within existing means and the potential for wider reform, there is an opportunity to make strides to address the challenge.

“Our currency remains significantly higher than long term averages, both on the Trade Weighted Index and critically, against the Australian Dollar, where much of our manufacturer's export revenue comes from.

“The RBNZ’s recent work to introduce macro-prudential tools, such as the loan-to-value ratios have been a positive move to address concerns on financial stability while giving the Bank more freedom to act on interest rates. We would encourage the incoming Governor to continue down this path, particularly in continuing investigation of debt-to-income rations.

“Addressing the currency challenges our tradable sector has faced over the last decade are key to helping to improve our export success and the transition to a more productive and high value economy. Let us not forget, however, that the use of updated targets and additional tools by the RBNZ alone won’t suffice to meet the challenge. The Government needs to make decisive policy changes to address the economic fundamentals behind – first and foremost - the misallocation of capital into property speculation, high levels of household debt, and the absence of any significant productivity growth in the real economy of New Zealand." says Dr Adam.

| A Manufacturers Network release  ||  December 13, 2017  |||

Dec 11, 2017  -  The NEM.io Foundation, the organisation behind the NEM blockchain technology, is setting up shop in New Zealand as part of what it says is $US40 million global expansion plan, and has been in New Zealand promoting a $US90 million ($130m) global development fund that it says will help kick start local blockchain companies.

The NEM.io Foundation is a Singapore based not-for-profit organisation whose purpose is “to introduce, educate, and promote the use of the NEM blockchain technology platform on an international scale to all industries and institutions.”

NEM has its own cryptocurrency, XEM, that is says is “recognised as one of the top ten cryptocurrency by market capitalisation.”

A NEM.io Foundation team, led by Jason Lee, global director, partnerships and strategic alliances is hosting a series of introductory events in Auckland, Wellington and Tauranga throughout December. The team also presented at the Blockchain Summit Auckland 2017.

A spokesman said that, in addition, the NEM.io Fondation team had been engaging with the Blockchain Association of New Zealand, universities and various blockchain companies and startups interested in the building on the NEM blockchain via the global development fund.

The head of the NEM.io Foundation in Australia and New Zealand, and a council member of the NEM.io Foundation, Nelson Valero, said the global development fund would help businesses, academics and developers feel empowered about the NEM blockchain technology and its potential to disrupt the way they manage information and data.

Lee said all applicants for funding had to be active members of the NEM community, but that this meant, “simply getting involved in conversations on our online forums.”

However, “If you are new to the community, you must have an endorser whom you think will be able to help you quality and contribute to your blockchain project,” he said.

The Foundation’s New Zealand initiative follows the opening of a NEM Blockchain centre in Kuala Lumpur as a joint initiative with the Australia-based Blockchain Centre (a not-for-profit sponsored by Blockchain Global and IBM). It says the centre will be a knowledge and innovation hub that will serve as an accelerator, incubator and co-working space.

The foundation claims to have a unique implementation of blockchain technology. “NEM is built from scratch as a powerful and streamlined platform for application developers of all kinds, not just as a digital currency,” it claims.

“Using NEM in your application is as simple as making RESTful JSON API calls allowing you to configure your own ‘Smart Assets’ and make use of NEM’s powerful blockchain platform as your fast, secure and scalable.

“Configured for your use, NEM is suitable for an amazing variety of solution classes, such as direct public transactions via streamlined smartphone app, efficient cloud services that connect client or web applications, or a high-performance permissioned enterprise back-end for business-critical record keeping.”

A technical whitepaper on NEM is available here.

| A COMPUTERWORLD RELEASE ||  DECEMBER 8, 2017   |||

Dec 11, 2017 - ​Brand launch and Chamber of Commerce workshop help progress Ruapehu business ambitions.  Two milestone events in support of Ruapehu business development and Council’s goal of increasing jobs, incomes and opportunities took place at the Chateau Tongariro Hotel last week.

The first was the official launch of Visit Ruapehu's new regional brand – ‘Our Greater Outdoors’ that was followed by a special workshop attended to discuss the possibility of establishing a Ruapehu Chamber of Commerce.

Visit Ruapehu Trade and Marketing Manager Jo Kennedy said that there was a lot of excitement around the new regional branding which was jointly funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and developed with input from leading tourism experts, local operators and community partners such as iwi.

“We now have strong, authentic brand marketing and communications material that will help enable tourism and visitor services to maximise its contribution to sustainable regional growth,” she said.

“Although the new brand was developed by the Ruapehu tourism and visitor sector it is available to other businesses wanting to give a regional context to their operations, products or service.”

“We now have the opportunity to align all Ruapehu, regional partners and other stakeholders to speak with one united vision and voice to promote our region.”

Around 25 people representing Ruapehu business including; farming, iwi, tourism, hospitality, consulting, utility companies, government agencies, manufacturing and small business took part take part in a workshop to discuss how a local Ruapehu Chamber could help support and inspire local business vitality and success.

Special guests at the workshop were Michael Barnett, Chief Executive of the Auckland Regional Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Amanda Linsley, Chief Executive of the Manawatu Chamber of Commerce.

The workshop discussion highlighted that there was a strong consensus that a collective business voice could add value and help influence a wide range of Ruapehu issues that are challenging the business sector.

Mr. Barnett stressed the importance of Ruapehu businesses getting the “why” (we are doing it) right before focusing on the “what” (a Chamber could do).

“A key question is whether a local Chamber of Commerce is needed or whether another structure such as a Business Forum or some other arrangement would best suit Ruapehu’s needs,” he said.

Workshop participants agreed that they would consider the questions raised during the workshop over the summer before reconvening early in the New Year.

| A Ruapehu District council release  ||  December 11, 2017   |||

Dec 8, 2017  -  Over its long history, Canada’s banking industry has absorbed a range of adjacent players in the sprawling world of financial services: trust companies, investment dealers, property and casualty insurers, and wealth advisors. Many of these structural mergers involved both extensive regulatory reform as well as significant cultural shifts within the industry. Yet as Canada’s banks consolidated and expanded into these other verticals, they tended to impose their cautious ways rather than adopt the more free-wheeling ethic of the smaller players they had raced to acquire.

The fintech revolution, however, will demand a complete reboot of this well-established dynamic. As these ambitious startups evolve from giant-killing disrupters into innovation-minded partners for the banking sector, both sides are struggling to figure out how to live with one another.

Fintech firms offer entrepreneurial energy, innovative technologies and highly flexible consumer engagement techniques. But they also bring a healthy dose of impatience to a famously staid industry that was widely congratulated, almost a decade ago, for the corporate caution and regulatory prudence that allowed Canada’s banks to ride out the 2008 credit crisis.

Banks, for their part, are awakening to the realization that younger consumers want to do most of their banking on their mobile devices, which is also how they shop and consume news. The American Banking Association even published a tip sheet for its members on how to “make friends” with fintech.

It’s a tall order. The sluggish pace of in-branch or web-based banking and lending, hard-wired into the banking industry’s culture, is anathema to the fintech industry’s sense of urgency and opportunity, and reveals, to many of these startups, a reluctance to take chances on new mobile and data technologies.

Fintech firms offer entrepreneurial energy, innovative technologies and highly flexible consumer engagement techniques. But they also bring a healthy dose of impatience to a famously staid industry

As a former banking consultant who now helps raise capital for fintech startups, I can see both sides.

If it hopes to survive, the banking industry needs to find new ways of partnering with these nimble newcomers. Yet the learning has to happen in the other direction as well: if they want to succeed and grow, impatient fintech entrepreneurs must find ways to work with these large, closely regulated institutions.

Let’s start with the source of the chafing. Various fintech players with serious ambitions have told me they often feel worn down by bank clients’ insistence on historical performance data for innovations with no past, the dearth of seasoned innovation champions within these huge organizations, the lasting effects of legacy technologies, and frustratingly diffuse decision-making processes.

Risk aversion runs deep in the banking sector, and, in many cases, it seems to be a point of pride. As some fintech founders report, they’re often told by bank partners that every feature of a new service must work perfectly, while potential downsides are scrutinized to the point of exhaustion. And though fintech founders are acutely aware of the fast pace of their own industry, many come away from these encounters sensing that their banking partners have little sense of urgency.

Today, some banks are starting to see that there may be risks associated with their institutional inertia. Most have established innovation labs or are backing proof-of-concept projects with fintech partners. While some fintech startups express skepticism about these ventures, others offer up useful advice for their bank partners on how to make such forays succeed:

— resist the analysis-paralysis instinct and give your innovation teams sufficient scope to dive into proof-of-concept partnerships, knowing that some will fail

— ensure that there’s a business sponsor behind such pilot projects, as well as a path that leads to a possible deal, and

— be prepared to pay fintech partners for the value they create through successful initiatives that generate new service offerings and improved customer engagement.

But it’s a two-way street. Fintechs need the support of banks to help overcome one of their main challenges: getting to scale and ultimately putting products in front of customers. This can entail something of a Catch-22, however, because banks often seem to be more receptive to partnerships with fintech firms that have already created a compelling brand promise, have a consumer track record and bring their own investors or sponsors to the table.

Fintech options ease the pain points of financing for entrepreneurs ‘There’s no silver bullet here’: Global financial firms still grappling with fintech challenge, report finds

So, what does a successful partnership look like? These pairings, fintech firms say, will increase addressable market segments; demonstrate how an improved user experience leads to increased adoption; expand the lifetime value of a customer relationship; and focus on service offerings that minimize competitive tensions.

To work with fintech firms, banks also need to reconcile themselves to some unfamiliar practices, such as associating their brands with products and services they don’t necessarily own. And both parties have to find common ground on technical issues such as customer data sharing, anti-money-laundering/know-your-client compliance and which key performance indicators will be employed to measure success, given that at least initially, the new fintech partnerships are unlikely to make a dent in the top line.

As this difficult pairing game proceeds, it may be useful to look beyond the banking industry for learnings. My own suggestion: IBM in the early 1990s, when then-CEO Lou Gerstner, a former consumer packaged goods executive, radically shook up the sleepy culture of a massive tech manufacturer. Recognizing the mortal threats facing his company from both the hardware and software sides of the computer industry, Gerstner forced IBM’s tens of thousands of employees to begin thinking about creating business solutions that actually responded to its customers’ needs. The end result? During Gerstner’s tenure, among many other changes, he shut down unprofitable businesses and added valuable service offerings to the commoditized hardware business, increasing the market cap of IBM to US$168 billion from US$29 billion.

Simply put, fintechs are to the banking sector as Gerstner was to IBM: crucial change agents, pushing these giants to confront the uncertain future taking shape outside the walls of a fortified industry that’s far more exposed than Canada’s bankers may realize.

Change, as we know, is hard. Not changing, however, would be worse.

Roy Kao is senior advisor, Finance & Commerce, MaRS Discovery District. This article first appeared in the Ivey Business Journal.

| A Financial Post release  ||  December 8,  2017   |||

Dec 8, 2017  -  Figures released today show that Kiwis lost over $1.1 million to cyber security issues in the third quarter of 2017. This brings the total financial loss to New Zealanders from cyber security issues reported to CERT NZ to over $1.9 million since April. CERT NZ’s latest quarterly report was released today and shows that security threats continue to impact New Zealanders and their businesses.

“CERT NZ was launched in April 2017 to take reports from all New Zealanders about how they have been affected by cyber security incidents, so we can help them recover,” says Rob Pope, Director CERT NZ. “The reports we received in the quarter to 30 September show that our relative geographic isolation is no barrier to being affected by these threats.”

“Between 1 July and 30 September, CERT NZ received 390 incident reports of which the vast majority, 297, were responded to by CERT NZ.”

In this reporting period, CERT NZ has seen an increase in targeted invoice scams affecting both individuals and businesses around New Zealand. “As we noted in our previous report, targeted attacks are on the rise. In this quarter we’re seen an increase in invoice scams impacting New Zealand businesses through a range of means.

“We’ve also seen a marked decrease in ransomware reports following the global ransomware attacks that we saw earlier this year, with these reports dropping by over 50%.”

Mr Pope encourages all New Zealanders affected by cyber security issues to report them to CERT NZ, “Our team is here to help people who have been affected by cyber security issues by giving them advice and assistance on how to avoid and overcome them. The more reports we receive, the more information we can share with New Zealanders to help them protect themselves”

If you or your organisation experiences a cyber security threat – or if you suspect you may have been exposed to one – contact CERT NZ any time or call 0800 CERT NZ, Monday to Friday, 7am – 7pm.

| A Beehive release - MBIE  ||  December 8,  2017   |||

Dec 7,  2017  - An article published today in the Reserve Bank Bulletin reviewed the policy responses by overseas central banks to house-price collapses. It was originally written by a contracted researcher, Maitland MacFarlan, as part of the Bank’s general consideration of risks around housing markets. The article considers several episodes of house price collapses around the globe over the last 30 years, a period that encompasses the Nordic financial crises that began in the late 1980s, the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, and the more recent global financial crisis (GFC). The paper focuses on the policy responses to these problems and lessons that current policy makers can derive from these experiences. The article observes a strong association between housing busts and banking crises, while noting that not all housing busts lead to a more generalised financial crisis, and not all financial crises are accompanied by house price collapses. Housing market crashes have highlighted the need for borrowers and lenders to take more forward-looking, longer-term perspectives on their exposure to market developments. Read the article: House price collapses: policy responses and lessons learned

| A RBNZ release  ||  December 7,  2017   |||

Dec 7,  2017  - Following on from an Employment Relations Authority (ERA) determination relating to Wendco (NZ) Limited, the Labour Inspectorate is advising businesses that have been following similar processes to take steps to meet their obligations under the Holidays Act.  “As the ERA has indicated, an easy approach for a business to take using ‘blanket rules’ to determine holiday entitlements isn’t the same as a lawful one,” says Payroll Lead Tania Donaldson.

“The use of a ‘three week rule’ by Wendco (NZ) Limited to work out entitlements around public holidays meant some employees were not being provided with their full entitlements, and the employer was not meeting their obligations under the Holidays Act.

“To work out an employee’s rights to an alternative holiday, you need to know whether the day is an ‘otherwise working day’ for the employee.

“Working out whether the day is an ‘otherwise working day’ is a practical task, and each situation needs to be considered based on the employee’s specific situation and work pattern, where employers consider and apply all of the factors of s12 of the Holidays Act where they are relevant.

“If it’s unclear whether the day is an ‘otherwise working day’, the things that may need to be considered include what the employment agreement says, the employee's usual work patterns, what the rosters say, whether the employee would normally have worked, and any other relevant factors.

“Employers who configure their payroll system in a way that is convenient to themselves without proper regard to their obligations run a high risk of being non-compliant. While these considerations may require additional effort for some businesses, this is the law and they must abide by it.

“If any employer has breached their obligations through the use of such blanket rules, they must fix their processes to prevent future breaches, and ensure they pay their employees what they’re owed for past breaches.

“This is important as when employers fail to meet their obligations, the employees working hard to sustain the business miss out on their minimum entitlements. In addition, other businesses that do properly meet their obligations face unfair competition.”

Employers who are unsure if they are meeting their obligations under the Holidays Act should go to employment.govt.nz, where there is information, tools and flow charts to help employers become compliant, seek independent legal advice, or ring MBIE’s contact centre on 0800 20 90 20.

Employees who are concerned they are not receiving their minimum entitlements can do the same.

| A MBIE release  ||  December 6,  2017   |||