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What is the current buzz around Kiwibank and asset sales?
buzz around um kiwi bank of course as it potentially looks to have another crack getting bigger and by getting bigger then becomes better able to take on the so-called big four uh this is business and of course it is also politics because asset sales are back on the agenda especially for national and the act party new zealand first not so much so it may well be one of those things that you know gets tossed around as an idea but in the reality of an mmp environment actually goes nowhere making the kiwi bank story slightly unique though
is its role in the overall banking atmosphere of New Zealand and whether a bigger bank would solve any of the perceived competition problems that we have. People we know are prepared to change banks, right? So last year, when there was a free-for-all on those cashbacks for borrowing, people were moving freely like the wind. So the idea that there isn't competition doesn't appear to be true.
But I'm in a minority, given everyone from the Commerce Commission to the Finance Minister argues otherwise. I also detect more broadly that asset sales are not as a topic as edgy as they once were. Now, if you go back to the 80s and labor under Douglas and Preble, asset sales were dynamite and not all of them went well, which didn't help the pro sales argument.
But the cold, hardish reality here 40 years on is there isn't a lot left to sell. I mean, you've got some chunks of power companies. That's worth serious dough. We've got an airline, a TV network, a radio network, some farms. It's all got a moderately piecemeal vibe to it, hasn't it? Kiwi Bank should be able to raise the sort of money it needs, and it should be allowed to grow.
Is the counter to a partial sale that we what? We like small, restricted banking, do we, that hasn't been allowed to be all it could be. So we just say, oh, we're all anti-asset sales. In KiwiBank's case, you are holding back growth. But you say you look at, say, TVNZ. In TVNZ's case, it would be about ideology, i.e., should this state run a television station?
Because the place isn't worth anything to sell. If you put it on the market, no one would buy it. And in, say, the case of Genesys, It's about serious coin that we could badly use elsewhere. If this idea goes anywhere this election year, you would hope we are less hung up on ideology and more attuned to the nuances of the debate than we have been in the past.
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