All the news … and some NBR new hires to boot

When it rains it pours, they say. And, in the newsroom, dry spells can become showers then torrents quite quickly, especially during reporting season. We are all, happily, saturated with news.

This week alone, we’ve reported on two legal actions against Fletcher Building (West Australian building group BGC against Fletcher’s subsidiary Iplex for burst pipes, and the Commerce Commission is to sue Fletcher over plasterboard rebates).

We’ve seen CBL’s Harris fined $1.4 million for his role in the company’s collapse, Synlait's recapitalisation deal, and the Commerce Commission’s final report into personal banking services putting the spotlight on Kiwibank as a maverick challenger.

Senior journalist Tim Hunter’s been keeping on top of the power crisis, with another pithy Hunter’s Corner similarly adding new information and demystifying what’s known.

We’ve had the latest on the gift that keeps on giving – to journalists and interested readers, not the poor investors and creditors – of Du Val, with updates from the liquidator including that ‘non-shareholder’ investors will be treated as creditors, the late-breaking Wednesday news that Du Val Group is in statutory management, and the latest, published Friday afternoon on Du Val’s debts, here.

Our hardworking Du Val hound, Brent Melville, reckons he’s off to the pub early today (we shall see).

On top of all this, it’s earnings season – a chance for analysts and financial journalists to pin company management down on what exactly is going wrong.

Interesting results stories include SkyCity’s mandatory carded play to hit earnings by as much as $20m, Spark’s profit dive, Kiwibank ready to beef up to fight the Big Four with a top profit, a $40m dividend from Port of Auckland, gentailers defending profits after record results while consumers struggle, and Fletcher Building paying $3m a month more in power bills.

New-ish blood

In and among that, behind the scenes, your co-editors have been busy signing contracts. We’re very pleased to announce two award-winning senior journalists are rejoining the NBR team – Nicholas Pointon and Karyn Scherer.

Pointon, who won last year’s NZ Shareholders’ Association top award for business journalism, has been on an OE to South-east Asia and Europe, and from November will work for NBR from Wellington. We look forward to his trademark quirky, in-depth investigations such as on multi-level marketing scheme Validus, many liquidations, and cryptocurrency collapses.

Nicholas Pointon giving an acceptance speech at the NZSA business journalism awards last year.

Scherer returns at the end of September to NBR after four years away, among which she was the editor of the NZ Listener. She is an award-winning investigative reporter with 30 years’ experience. Her work for NBR includes investigating the Fuji Xerox scandal, and revealing the roading industry’s rotten underbelly.

We’ve also recently hired two content producers to bolster our audio and video production department – Jake Latham and Joe Coughlan.

Senior journalist Karyn Scherer.

The production team expansion is on the back of two more high-profile hires that started with NBR in the last month – our new Te Ao Māori editor Mike McRoberts and our Back in Business podcast host Simon Shepherd – who both joined from the now-defunct Newshub.

If you haven’t yet viewed McRoberts’ stunningly-produced first piece on the Nelson Tenths settlement drama, or listened to the twice-weekly Back in Business, then we urge you to take some time this weekend

While other newsrooms are shedding staff amid budget cuts and publication collapses, NBR is proudly hiring the best business reporters around, so we can continue our top-notch news, investigations, and analysis.

As we are 100% subscriber funded, all of this is thanks to you.

As always, send any feedback to editor@nbr.co.nz