KEY POINTS:
New Zealand shares fell for a sixth day running, seemingly ignoring takeover updates on Abano and Sky City.
The NZSX-50 benchmark index closed down 19.30 points or 0.4 per cent to 4034.55 on $131 million total turnover. Falls outnumbered rises at 64 to 36.
With little corporate news, brokers said investors appeared to be looking offshore for direction.
"The market basically is still taking its lead from offshore markets and with concern of America slowing," Richard Burton of Forsyth Barr said.
Blue chips on the decline included Telecom, down 2c to 433, Fletcher Building down 9c to 1140, and Contact Energy down 1c to 846.
Sky City fell 10c to 485 as the casino group announced that its only interested party was not ready to make a takeover bid yet but hoped to soon.
"People think the likelihood of that bid coming is less," Mr Burton said.
In contrast, Abano gained 17c to 505 as a second interested party emerged in the dental, audiology and radiology group.
Private equity firm Crescent Capital Partners has made a $5.20 per share full takeover offer, trumping a partial offer from major shareholder Masthead of $5/share.
Crescent has also taken a 10.9 per cent stake in Abano.
But both offers might still be on the cheap side, Mr Burton said. Looking at their prospective price-earnings ratio, he said Abano shares could be worth over $6.50.
"In Australia a stock with 25 per cent-plus earnings growth would be on a price-earnings multiple of 20-plus.
"Given that Abano is growing very strongly and going to grow even stronger in the hearing market in Australia...in the old Australian sharemarket, these sort of stocks would be price well over $6.00."
Performer of the day was miner OceanaGold, which leapt 80c or 25 per cent to $3.90.
The company announced yesterday that it had had high grade assay results from a drilling programme at its Reefton gold mine.
Other moves included Sky TV down 1c to 556, the Warehouse up 10c to 650 on takeover speculation, Auckland Airport down 4c to 279, Mainfreight up 8c to 715, and Infratil up 5c to 289.
In Australia, shares were down 0.5 per cent in mid-afternoon trading, weighed down by losses in major banks on growing worries about the credit crisis.
On Wall St US stocks fell for a second straight day on Tuesday on concerns about the impact of the credit crisis on bank profits and the wider economy.
Financial stocks were sold off after JPMorgan Chase slashed its earnings outlook for four major Wall Street banks, led lower by American Express and US securities firm Goldman Sachs.
The Dow Jones industrial average ended down 65.84 points, or 0.49 per cent, at 13,248.73. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index dropped 9.63 points, or 0.65 per cent, to 1462.79. The Nasdaq Composite Index closed off 17.30 points, or 0.66 per cent, at 2619.83.
- NZPA