Foreign investment bids slow to a crawl

The Overseas Investment Office dealt with only nine applications in January - including two involving a $1 transaction.

One of the $1 deals was for Israel's Shmuel Meitar to buy a stake in South Island farm Walker Peak Station, classified as sensitive land. The Israeli investor was cleared to buy a 27 per cent stake in the iconic farm from Morris Kahn of Monaco for $1. The application was to correct an administrative oversight in the consent application in 1998.

Fletcher Building had to apply to the office to get approval to buy a PlaceMakers site in Kumeu.

Just over 66 per cent of Fletcher is in New Zealand hands but 33 per cent is Australian owned so Fletcher Distribution had to apply to buy 2.1ha of land at 110 Main Rd in Kumeu for $420,000. The land was owned by PJM Wholesale but Fletcher said it wanted the block to ensure the continued success of the PlaceMakers store there.

In decisions processed in December, Lend Lease of Australia got clearance on a $195 million deal with Babcock & Brown Communities Group, Australia's second-largest listed retirement sector and aged-care owner and operator.

At stake is the 14ha Peninsula Club at 441 Whangaparaoa Rd and the 12ha Knightsbridge Village in Mairangi Bay. Lend Lease said it was buying a 57 per cent interest in Babcock.

A $1.1 million deal for Nadine Norcross of New Zealand to sell 6ha of Queenstown land to a Channel Islands buyer was approved.

Russia's New Zealand Dairies got consent for a $415,000 deal to buy 4ha of land on the Waimate Highway at Studholme in South Canterbury. The Russians operate a milk processing plant on adjoining land and are buying the property from New Zealanders Paul and Raylene McIntosh.

Tenon Industries of the United States was cleared in its $1 deal with Ground Works Property of New Zealand. That transaction, with a particularly small monetary value, involves 27ha of land classified as sensitive on State Highway 26 at Matatoki. The value of two other deals was suppressed because they were confidential.

Japan's Kodansha got approval to do a deal with New Zealand company Hardwood Forests to buy two Southland forests with a combined area of 765ha. Also suppressed is the price Douglas De Angelis of the US is paying Yates for 343ha on Banks Peninsula.

The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa awarded the worst overseas investor award to British American Tobacco NZ, which it accused of killing people with cigarettes. Rio Tinto Aluminium was the runner up "because of its single act of political intimidation, threatening to close the Bluff smelter if the former Government's proposed emissions trading scheme went ahead".