KEY POINTS:
Some of the world's biggest financial institutions have gained a stake in a kauri forest on the Coromandel Peninsula.
In a sponsorship deal with the Kauri 2000 Trust, BNZ is to plant and maintain 100 trees on a Department of Conservation block at Kuaotunu for every kauri bond it arranges for international bond issuers.
The bank expects to plant 1000 seedlings a year. BNZ staff and trust members planted the first batch last week.
Bond issuers will receive a certificate showing the location of their trees in the BNZ Kauri Forest.
Companies involved in the first planting include the European Investment Bank, Nordic Investment Bank, Export Development Canada and the International Finance Corporation in Washington.
BNZ's head of capital markets, Patrick Mullins, said the move was not part of the bank's strategy for becoming carbon neutral by 2010, but would contribute to it in the long term.
It had come about because the bank wanted to find a way of giving international clients a unique, tangible link with New Zealand, he said.
The sponsorship of about $20,000 a year is the biggest single donation to Kauri 2000, which is recreating significant stands of kauri on publicly-owned land on the Coromandel Peninsula. The trust has planted about 27,000 trees.
Cliff Heraud, who started the trust as a way of marking the millennium, said he could hardly believe his idea had become one of international significance.
