News

With a substantial infrastructure requirement looming and a weak economic environment, the New Zealand capital market will have to be on top of its game in the years ahead. Participants at KangaNews’s annual women in New Zealand capital markets roundtable discussed the issues at hand and how they believe a constructive ecosystem can be developed.

The supranational, sovereign and agency Kangaroo market enjoyed a record start to the year for new issuance, including flow from smaller issuers. Despite ongoing structural challenges for smaller issuers in the sector, there have also been encouraging signs of issuance diversity – including opportunities to print benchmark-sized transactions.

A run of supply in March reveals a robust demand picture for rated and unrated corporate credits in New Zealand’s retail bond market – despite the rise of appealing issuance options elsewhere. The market has remained consistent through various stages of the rates cycle and users say there is little reason to anticipate a change.

The nature and likelihood of pre-failure external support for banks has been brought back into focus following an update to the methodology Moody’s Ratings uses to assess the Australian banking sector. Some banks do not believe the new analysis gives sufficient weight to the likelihood of external support before the point of failure – even for entities not deemed systemically important.