Fletcher Building's Commercial arm keeps their head above the tunnel

Fletcher Building Ltd [FBU.NZ] getting a large part of the NZ$406 million contract to build the road tunnel under Victoria Park in Auckland is not only evidence of their dominance in contracting in this part of the world, it is an indication of its underlying strength in the recession hit market.

That underlying strength lay in the ability of the company to fall back on its commercial/infrastructural arm while its residential building group has been hit by the big slowdown in the residential building sector.

Not only does this Auckland roading project provide revenue from actually building the tunnel but it also provides revenue for Fletcher's add-on divisions. Concrete, steel, aggregates and more can be provided from FBU's various businesses.

There is more of this infrastructure building to come. Stadiums around the country are being built or refurbished in time for the 2011 World Cup and Fletchers will probably have a hand in somewhere building most of them.

The other road tunnel to be built, in the Waterview part of Auckland, will also no doubt get FBU input somewhere.

The company is one of a few large enough the ability and infrastructure themselves to be able to build these sorts of large projects and Fletcher stand above most when it comes to the tender process.

They are big, have the expertise, knowledge and relationships and that will help them through the next few recession hit years.

Shareholders just need to be patient.

Disc: I own a small FBU holding in the Share Investor Portfolio

Fletcher Building @ Share Investor

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ING/ANZ Deadline not necessarily the end

The deadline looms at the end of business today for those investors embroiled in the ING/ANZ fraud where some investors were duped into buying into highly risky funds after being told by their teller at ANZ, their investment advisers or ING directly that they were getting low risk investments, to accept on offer from ING/ANZ of 60c in the dollar in return for their silence.

Methinks that most investors would have signed up for this as many are elderly and/or ignorant of other alternatives. Once these people have accepted ING/ANZ's measly offer they could be signing away their rights to take action against those that are culpable, for ANZ/ING has required them to sign a waiver against action of any kind, or even speaking about it, if they accept their offer.

Having said that, given that individuals are signing under a form of duress then any legal rights they may have waived by signing could be argued against in a court by a multi-party action.

I argued other alternatives a month or so back but acceptance of the offer that closes at 5.00pm today could be a good bet given that the Fair Trading Act and Consumer Guarantees Act are strong laws that can be used to trump any flimsy legal waivers signed under force or some form of duress, as is the case here.

Since my last column on this subject I have become aware of two other distant friends who have respectively lost NZ$ 800,000.00 and $2 million dollars in this scam.


Timetable for ING/ANZ investors

* Investors have until Monday, July 13, 5.00pm to decide on ING's proposal.

* Investors who went through the ANZ Bank have until July 31 to make a formal complaint.

* Investors who accept the offer should gain access to their money by August 28.

* Those who don't accept the offer will continue to own units in the funds.

* Investigations by the Commerce Commission are ongoing but won't be completed by the decision deadline.

* Complaints have also been made to the Securities Commission asking it to delay the offer until the Commerce Commission has ruled but the commission said yesterday it had no ability to stop the offer going ahead because the offer is not misleading or deceptive.

Timetable from NZ Herald


ING/ANZ scam @ Share Investor

• ING & ANZ duped "investors" can take their own action
• Scam Watch: Helpful Investor Tools

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Related Links

Citizens Advice Bureau
Disputes Tribunal
Fair Trading Act


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Folic Acid in Bread a bad rap for National Government

If its not Cadbury taking stuff out of my food, its Government morons putting stuff in my food that annoys me. I loathe my food and my health being buggered with.

The Nazi style way the food additive, folic acid was introduced by the previous Labour Government by the former Food Safety Minister Annette King was no surprise because Mein Kampf seemed to be some sort of text book that that Government loosely followed in terms of execution of Labour Party policy but for the present National Government to do nothing to stop the introduction in September of this possible dangerous additive being added to our daily bread is nothing short of hypocritical.

Hypocritical because this mass medication of our food supply was part of the Labour Nanny State that we all got thoroughly sick of that encompassed how long we showered, what we ate, drank, smoked, said, who to like and even debates over the definition of rape in normal relationships, a whole host of other socialist/Nazi style interference and who knows what else had we had the misfortune of another Labour regime.

Do National remember why they were elected?

We wanted this bloody Nanny State crap to come to an end!

National's Kate Wilkinson, Minister of Food Safety, in the face of evidence that folic acid in bread could be a cancer danger, says that she doesn't want the additive but she can do little about it because of a food standards agreement with Australia that we just cant break.

Even if you agreed that folic acid should be added to all our bread so we had no personal freedom to eat this crap, a  pregnant woman would have to eat 11 slices of this bread to ameliorate any folate deficiency in her diet and lessen the possibility that her baby would get spina bifida.

5 kids get this disease every year, not a good reason to put the rest of the population in danger by using a staple food to do so. Best a prospective mother takes a folate supplement if worried, better for her and the rest of us and we will have the freedom of choice to eat what we want.

The additive will add to the cost of bread to consumers and waste millions of plastic bags that have to be re-printed with this muck added to the ingredients list.

Grow some balls Kate and stop the folate, you are in Government now and yes you can do it.

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Still Watching Contact Energy

Contact Energy Ltd [CEN.NZ] is a stock I used to own just before 9-11, in fact I moronically dumped it on that day due to my inexperience in the stockmarket at the time.

I bought in at NZ$3.10 at the IPO and picked more up at $2.66. I had 5000 at one stage for the princely sum of around $12000.00 bucks (you can smell the regret in this reminisce cant you?)

Meanwhile back in the present I think you can still get a relative bargain by buying this company. The share price has dropped around 7% since I last wrote about the company on June 8.

Contact had a 30% drop in half year profit to 31 December 2008, added NZ$550 million in debt through a public bond issue and expects its full year profit for the year ended 30 June 2009 to be down around 30% as well.

This doesn't make good reading but Contact has performed better than most during this recession. Contact's lower profit was to do with higher water levels in dams bringing down their wholesale energy prices. It wasn't recession related at all apart from the shutdown of some of Comalco, a large power user and profit is unlikely to get much worse than this.

That is one reason why I continue to watch this stock closely, its recession proof nature.

One other good reason to buy, if you were looking at this stock over the last year, is that its stock price is near its 52 week low of $5.47, closing at $5.63 last Friday and you cant get a better reason than that.

The company is a good long term bet and even a good short to medium term money maker for those of you with a short attention span. I say this because the share price seems to get good support at current price levels and the company always has the sword of takeover from its Aussie majority owner parent Origin Energy Ltd [ORG.AU] hanging over it.

Keep it on your watchlist too if you have been thinking of adding it to your portfolio.

I am getting my buy finger ready.

Contact @ Share Investor Blog

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