KEY POINTS:
Former Fay Richwhite executive Rob Cameron, an advocate of state-owned asset sales, is to lead a Government taskforce intended to find ways to bolster New Zealand's sharemarket.
Commerce Minister Lianne Dalziel yesterday gave details of the team which "will see the Government and private sector work together to develop New Zealand's capital markets".
Cameron has been appointed to chair the group, which also includes NZX chief executive Mark Weldon and Fletcher Building chief executive Jonathan Ling, who this week repeated a warning his company, one of the NZ market's leading lights, was under pressure to move to the ASX.
The other six members include senior figures from the sharebroking, banking and funds management industries.
The Capital Development Taskforce will report to senior ministers and develop a "blueprint and action plan" to be released late next year.
Yesterday Cameron said the taskforce would take a broad approach.
"We'll be looking at key constraints and opportunities for the development of the financial system and capital markets, identifying and discussing choices about what you might do to improve their performance and identifying which bits the private sector are involved in and which might involve public policy."
Last year his investment banking firm Cameron and Partners published a report touting the benefits of partially listing large SOEs, including an improvement in the size and depth of the sharemarket and widening the range of choices available to investors.
Cameron helped to develop the state-owned-enterprise model when working at the Treasury during the early 1980s, and also oversaw the sharemarket float of Telecom in the early 1990s when working for merchant bankers Fay Richwhite.
Weldon has also repeatedly expressed his support for a partial float of some SOEs to help address his market's lack of depth and growth.
One local market watcher from a large international investment bank believed the partial float of SOEs would inevitably be one of the taskforce's recommendations. "Of course they'll vote for Christmas."
But he believed the most significant issues facing the sharemarket were the often poor quality of companies allowed to list and a relatively lax regulatory environment.
"People don't mind investing in Fletcher Building and the price going up and down, that's what markets do.
"People do mind investing in Feltex to find the company goes bust.
"That in my view is the first place they should start," the analyst said.
"The second place they've got to move to is regulation around investor protection. Whether it's finance companies or whatever, across the board, it's got to be dealt with at a central Government level.
"There has got to be much more serious penalties and NZX should absolutely not be the frontline regulator, they should be taken out of that business and the Securities Commission and enforcement rules should be beefed up."
But Cameron said taskforce members would put aside self interest and conflicts of interest "and actually make a serious contribution to getting a better outcome for the economy overall".
THE TASKFORCE
Rob Cameron: Chairman, Investment banker, architect of SOE model
Mark Weldon: NZX chief executive
Scott St John: Managing director of sharebrokers First NZ Capital
Adrian Orr: Chief executive of the Guardians of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, former Reserve Bank Deputy Governor
Gareth Morgan: Economist and fund manager
Rob McLeod: Business Roundtable chairman, tax expert
Franceska Banga: Chief executive New Zealand Venture Investment Fund
Nigel Williams: ANZ National Bank corporate and commercial banking director and also a director of NZX
Cathy Quinn: Member of Securities Commission, partner of Minter Ellison Rudd Watts specialising in corporate, securities and competition law.
Jonathan Ling: Chief executive of Fletcher Building.
