The company’s new tools let businesses manage several teams together

After a long wait, Slack has announced the version of its popular work chat application that is designed for enterprises. On Tuesday in San Francisco, the company unveiled its new Enterprise Grid product, aimed at helping companies administer and connect multiple chat instances.

Grid allows business administrators to set up each team inside their organization with their own centrally managed Slack instance. Those workspaces can then be linked together using shared channels, and all of the people inside an enterprise can direct- message one another, even if they’re not part of the same workspace.

Those features help deal with one of the biggest issues enterprises have encountered with Slack. The chat application isn’t really designed to support an entire business with thousands of people all working inside the same instance. But the only other option prior to the launch of Grid was to use a series of isolated Slack teams and give users membership to each one they needed to take part in.

Now, it’s possible for companies to create an archipelago of connected teams, which should be more useful for larger organizations.

> > > Continue to full article on CIO

Higher than forecast tax revenues are the primary reason the Government accounts for the first five months of the financial year are ahead of forecast, Finance Minister Steven Joyce says.

The Government’s financial accounts to 30 November 2016 were released today, and they show that the Crown’s Operating Balance before Gains and Losses (OBEGAL) was a deficit of $768 million, which was $936 million better than the Treasury projected at the Half Year Fiscal Update (HYEFU).

"Stronger economic growth is flowing through to the Government's tax take'" Mr Joyce says. "Tax revenue for the five months to November is $460 million ahead of forecast in the Half-Year Update, and $1.4 billion ahead of Budget 2016 forecasts."

Mr Joyce says that it is appropriate to remain very cautious in terms of what the increased tax receipts might mean for the full-year financial result.

“Treasury's Half-Year Update forecast a $473 million surplus for the whole 2016/17 year,” Mr Joyce says. “It is far too early to say whether that surplus will be able to be achieved.

"These accounts include the first tranche of the Government's expenses related to the Kaikōura earthquake, with just under $700 million of EQC estimated costs being included. It will still be some time before the full cost of the recovery is known."

"The Earthquake again demonstrates the importance of the National-led Government’s prudent financial management. Getting back to surplus and repaying debt in the good times means we are in a position to support communities at times like this when they're in need.

“More generally these accounts underline the importance of strong fiscal discipline as we continue to build up our financial resilience in a relatively uncertain world. We need to remember that Budget 2016 forecast only a small surplus for the full financial year.”

| A Beehive release  |  January 26, 2017  ||

Fuss about citizenship reminiscent of Takaro Lodge Flap.

Midas Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel backed Facebook, Paypal, and Xero. But his founding of crime and insurgency systems developer Palantir currently valued at $20 billion can be considered less than helpful to floundering New Zealand law-and-order systems producer Wynyard Group.

On Wednesday, 02 November 2016 in:-  Wynyard Class Action Must Identify Litigation TargetsMSC Newswire reported: “Wynyard for example walked into this kind of Silicon Valley deep-pocket storm when it found itself confronted with sometime New Zealand resident and Tolkien buff Peter Thiel’s Palantir crime product.”

Underpinning Mr Thiel’s right to New Zealand citizenship is his passion for Tolkien.

The name Palantir comes from the Lord of the Rings in which the Palantir was a magical seeing stone that let you see what was happening in lands far off.

Mr Thiel’s skill has been to see what is about to happen in the rather closer internet era once described by Bill Gates as representing the epoch of “disintermediation” in which people dealt directly with the people and services they required.

Mr Thiel’s strong and highly visible support for the election of President Donald Trump can itself be seen now quite clearly.It was based on an understanding that the new President could communicate directly with voters rather than having to deal with them via the intermediary of the established media.

Mr Thiel’s activist support for President Trump can also be viewed as triggering pique from New Zealand’s Labour Party Opposition to the bestowing upon him of New Zealand citizenship.

Otherwise Mr Thiel is a photofit personified of all New Zealand’s activist yearnings.

He supports openly all major societal alternative and libertarian thrusts, notably the right for people to live on man-made islands beyond legal jurisdictions in a concept known as “seasteading.”

He is an ardent proponent of peoples’ right to privacy and put the pervasive celebrity tittle-tattle internet site Gawker out of business by financing the legal action against the site on grounds of intrusion by showman Hulk Hogan.

He is the leader of the second generation of California innovators who sprang up in the footsteps of Bill Gates and Steven Jobs.

This set is sometimes described as the Paypal Mafia, the network of former employees and co-founders that includes SpaceX’s Eion Musk and LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman.

Mr Thiel now stands identified as the jewel in the crown of the New Zealand government’s campaign to see installed here information technology disruptive-scale investors to seed development in the home-grown industry.

One of the reasons that the government is evasive about this whole daring strategy is that it also encompassed Kim Dotcom.

Like Mr Thiel who emigrated with his parents to the United States, Kim Dotcom was also born in Germany.

It is likely that the government will now informally approach Mr Thiel with a view to his outlining investments other than Xero that can be said to be in the national interest.

Mr Thiel, for example, is said to be actively engaged in life sciences, notably in the field of postponing or even eliminating death.

In some ways the fuss about Mr Thiel’s New Zealand citizenship resonates with the campaign in the 1970s against United States oilman Stockton Rush.

Mr Rush and his family moved to New Zealand to create Takaro Lodge, a hunting and fishing retreat with an emphasis on conservation and located coincidentally in the same Wanaka lakes region favoured by Mr Thiel.

However and all those years ago it became known that Takaro Lodge had been fitted in whole or part with gold plated plumbing fitments.

These gold taps now became a class warfare icon.

Bill Rowling was the first New Zealand Labour Party prime minister from a privileged background.

Newly installed he was determined to publicly demonstrate his working class credentials which now took the form of a campaign against Mr Rush and his lodge and of course his taps.

Meanwhile, out-of-pocket and patriotic New Zealand investors in the until quite recently NZX listed Wynyard Group will find themselves cherishing a singular and not unreasonable hope.

It is that Mr Thiel can be persuaded to put his shoulder to the wheel in restoring their forensic systems producer to solvency.

Mr Thiel is considered the major holder of Palantir.

Wynyard Group had its beginnings in Christchurch with the Jade organisation which in the 1970s invented one of the world’s first programming compilers, i.e. a programme that generated other programmes.

The Wynyard Group investor class action group is currently evaluating its options in regard to the now insolvent onetime NZX main board company.

On their agenda at their forthcoming meeting might now be a motion calling for a formal approach to their newly revealed fellow citizen, Peter Thiel.

|  From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk  |  Thursday 26 January 2017  ||

More reading:  Wynyard Class Action Must Identify Litigation Targets

The minimum wage will increase by 50 cents to $15.75 an hour on 1 April 2017, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Michael Woodhouse announced today.

The starting-out and training hourly minimum wage rates will increase from $12.20 to $12.60 per hour, remaining at 80 per cent of the adult minimum wage.

“The Government is committed to striking the right balance between protecting our lowest paid workers and ensuring jobs are not lost,” says Mr Woodhouse.

“An increase to $15.75 will benefit approximately 119,500 workers and will increase wages throughout the economy by $65 million per year.

“At a time when annual inflation is 0.4 per cent, a 3.3 per cent increase to the minimum wage will give our lowest paid workers more money in their pockets, without hindering job growth or imposing undue pressure on businesses.

“Annual increases to the minimum wage since 2009 reflect this Government’s commitment to growing the economy, boosting incomes and supporting job growth throughout New Zealand.”

| A Beehive release  |  January 24, 2017  |

Auckland Chamber launches confidential service to ensure employers meet New Zealand wage regulations.

Increasing numbers of migrants and younger workers being taken advantage of by employers; notes Auckland Chamber head Michael Barnett.

Anyone who believes they have been underpaid, had their passport confiscated or wanting to clarify their employment conditions can register confidentially on a dedicated website: www.paychecknz.co.nz.

“We will investigate the situation in complete confidence,” said Mr Barnett.

He stressed that the Chamber was not being anti-employer in setting up the service. “But we don’t want the vast majority of good employers to be branded by the minority.”

Through other services, the Chamber has successfully assisted many hundreds of migrants and young people who leave school without qualifications into employment. “Many are vulnerable people who can easily be taken advantage of.”

There is also a small group of employers who are migrants who may not be familiar with NZ’s wage regulations; e.g. that the minimum wage is $15.25, and could make use of the service, concluded Mr Barnett.

|  ACOC release  |  January 23, 2017  |

The Automobile Association is calling on petrol companies to display all their petrol prices and says the government should force them to if they don't.

Under the law petrol companies are required to display the price of all fuel products at the pump - and they are meeting that obligation.BP petrol station in Kaikōura

The AA says petrol companies should put the price of premium petrol as well as 91 octane on their roadside boards. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King

But AA petrolwatch spokesperson Mark Stockdale said there were many complaints about service stations not putting the price of premium petrol on their roadside price boards.

In a survey of AA members, 77 percent said they kept an eye on roadside boards and 81 percent felt all fuel prices should be on them.

The boards are required to show the price of 91 and diesel, but not 95 or 98 octane. It's estimated 20 percent of cars in New Zealand use premium petrol.

|  Continue to the full article  |  January 19, 2017  |

Slack, the popular work chat app, has launched one of the features that users have been clamoring for over its entire lifetime: threaded messages.

On Wednesday, the company began the process of rolling out the update to all of its users, which will allow them to keep conversations about a particular topic corralled into a single thread. The feature is designed to keep conversations on a particular topic out of the main flow of a chat channel, the company said in a blog post.

Starting a thread just requires users to hover over a message, click the “Start a Thread” button, and type their response. Replies will be grouped into a sidebar thread, and a small link will appear below the original message showing who has replied to a thread and how many replies it has garnered.

Users have been requesting threaded replies for years as a way to help deal with crowded chat channels where multiple conversations are going on at once. Slack allows users in a channel to talk with one another in a single, uninterrupted flow, which means it can be difficult when folks are discussing two or more different topics. This feature should help with that, along with assisting in reducing clutter from ancillary discussions.

Launching threaded replies will also help Slack compete with other messaging services like Microsoft Teams, which has pushed its support for threading replies as a key feature. Microsoft is slated to make Teams generally available next month, and a recent survey of IT professionals showed them optimistic about the tech giant’s chances of competing with Slack.

|  Continue to full article here |  January 18, 2017  |

MELBOURNE, Australia, Jan. 18, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mondelēz International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MDLZ) has reached an agreement to sell most of its grocery business in Australia and New Zealand to Bega Cheese Limited (ASX:BGA) for $460 million AUD. The transaction adds the iconic VEGEMITE brand and other well-established grocery brands to Bega’s portfolio. The move enables Mondelēz International to further focus its portfolio and drive profitable growth by investing in its core snacks categories and Power Brands, including Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate and Oreo biscuits.

“We’re extremely proud of our history as the custodian of the VEGEMITE brand for over 90 years, transforming it from its local roots into a global icon that’s synonymous with Australia,” said Amanda Banfield, Vice President Australia, New Zealand and Japan for Mondelēz International. “It’s been a privilege stewarding this brand, which is found in almost every Australian household and is part of the fabric of the nation. As we continue to execute our strategic growth plan, with a keen focus on core snacks categories and global Power Brands, we’re excited to see VEGEMITE and these much-loved brands continue to grow and thrive under Bega’s ownership.”

Bega Cheese’s Executive Chairman Barry Irvin said he was ecstatic to be bringing together two companies with an Australian heritage spanning over 200 years. "We believe these iconic brands alongside the Bega Cheese brand are strong building blocks to enable Bega Cheese to become a great FMCG business.

“We feel privileged to be taking on the responsibility and guardianship of one of Australia’s most loved brands, VEGEMITE, and look forward to working with the people at 1 Vegemite Way in Port Melbourne to continue the legacy of this great company.”

Included in the sale are Mondelēz International owned brands – VEGEMITE, ZoOsh, Bonox – and other products that use the Kraft brand under license, such as peanut butter, nut spreads, processed cheese slices, ambient cheese spread, mayonnaise, parmesan cheese, Kraft Easy Mac and Kraft Mac & Cheese. Bega will receive a license to the Dairylea brand for use in Australia and New Zealand. The Philadelphia business is not included in the deal as it is a Mondelēz International Power Brand.

The Port Melbourne manufacturing site will transfer to Bega as part of this agreement and approximately 200 colleagues who spend most of their time working on this part of the business will be offered roles on comparable terms with Bega. The transaction is expected to close in the coming months.

The Reserve Bank has released a Bulletin article examining the core macro-economic model it uses to support the monetary policy decision making process.

The New Zealand Structural Inflation Model (NZSIM) provides the central organising framework for the Reserve Bank’s forecasting and economic analysis. It is a structural model that provides a platform for evaluating the growth and inflation effects of various economic scenarios, including potential policy responses.

The Bulletin article provides a brief review of the Bank’s recent forecasting models, the philosophy underpinning the design of NZSIM and explains how the model is used in the Reserve Bank’s forecasting process.

More information

• Read the Bulletin article
• Listen to the Behind the Bulletin interview.
• See a simplified and stylised depiction of the Reserve Bank’s economic model.

|  A RBNZ press release |  January 19, 2017  |

The UK's Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) plan to open an office in New Zealand in 2017 according to an article in Recruiter titled 'May’s way means recruiters must think of new ways to attract talent'May’s way means recruiters must think of new ways to attract talent'

 Samantha Hurley, operations director at the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo), welcomed the PM's commitment to continuing to attracting the “brightest and the best” from across the globe to work or study in Britain.

“All the countries interested in negotiating trade agreements with the UK – Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and the US – are locations where APSCo is active. We have offices in the first two, are planning to open an office in New Zealand this year and are leading a trade delegation to the US in February. The professional recruitment sector is open for business,” she added.

|  'May’s way means recruiters must think of new ways to attract talent'  |  January 18, 2017  |