Fletcher execs off to promote company

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Two Fletcher building executives go on an international roadshow next week to promote New Zealand's largest listed business.

Chief financial officer Bill Roest and investor relations general manager Philip King head to Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Europe and North America for 2 weeks.

There they will attend international conferences, update major institutional investors on Fletcher's activities and promote the business to new investors.

They plan to meet representatives of Macquarie in Asia, Goldman Sachs in London and Merrill Lynch in the United States.

Then they go to the international headquarters of Fletcher subsidiary Formica in Ohio to meet executives.

King said he and chief executive Jonathan Ling took the trip every March but in September he and Roest did the travelling.

King said that on September 13, Fletcher would post an update on its Formica operations as part of its regular investor presentation series. That will go to NZX and Fletcher's website.

Fletcher posts indepth presentations from its divisions.

Last week, Roest and King went with Ling to Sydney and Melbourne visiting key institutional shareholders.

King said the conferences he and Roest take in next month were "an important part of the investor relations calendar for large listed Australian and New Zealand companies. The benefit of them is that they provide critical mass".

"Getting 20 companies in the same venue presenting to investors is very efficient both for the companies participating, and for investors who get to see a good range of companies from Downunder in the space of a couple of days.

"For many of these investors, Australasia is a far-off and exotic place which they have never visited. They get a lot of information about business conditions in our part of the world by meeting with a wide cross-section of companies. It also involves a bit of flag waving for us," King said.

"Sometimes we are the sole New Zealand company participating so we find ourselves talking as much about macro economic factors as we do about the company.

"Ultimately the process helps investors from afar understand what is happening within our business and our region and given the importance of foreign investment to the New Zealand economy it is an important feature of our calendar."