Tag Archives: Financial Times

More Women Needed in Politics Says Ardern

More Women Needed in Politics Says Ardern

This has been a year dominated by women speaking out and fighting back. The Financial Times spotlight those who have made waves this year, from prime ministers (including New Zealander Jacinda Ardern) to World…

Benefits of Foreign Owned Property Debated

Benefits of Foreign Owned Property Debated

New Zealand, famous for the mountains that formed the dramatic backdrop to the film The Lord of the Rings, is now known for something else among the super rich: as a possible safe haven…

Lessons from New Zealand on Fiscal Discipline

Lessons from New Zealand on Fiscal Discipline

“New Zealand and the UK are both regarded as pioneers in the use of a more modern system of accounting – accrual accounting, a method that records revenues and expenses when they are incurred…

Q and A With Opera Singer Kiri Te Kanawa

Q and A With Opera Singer Kiri Te Kanawa

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, who was presented with the 2017 Gramophone Awards Lifetime Achievement Award last week in London, and who has just announced her retirement from public performance, sat down with the Financial…

Amber Sainsbury Teams With Danny Boyle

Amber Sainsbury Teams With Danny Boyle

New Zealand-born Amber Sainsbury is founder and CEO of UK-based creative arts charity Dramatic Need, for which Oscar-winning film director Danny Boyle has served as a trustee since 2007. The charity’s South African flagship,…

New Plymouth Firmly on the Cultural Map

New Plymouth Firmly on the Cultural Map

“ Lye’s story might well have slipped into obscurity had his 18,000-item archive not ended up in a small seaside city on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island,” Nigel Tisdall writes for…

Beekeepers Fight for Rights to Manuka Honey Name

Beekeepers Fight for Rights to Manuka Honey Name

Surging demand for manuka honey, the sticky substance prized for its anti-bacterial properties, has generated a multimillion-dollar export boom for New Zealand, Jamie Smyth writes for the Financial Times. But success has come with…

Journalist Jamil Anderlini Emancipated in Hong Kong

Journalist Jamil Anderlini Emancipated in Hong Kong

Asia editor at the Financial Times, New Zealander Jamil Anderlini spent the past 11 years on the Chinese mainland in Beijing. In a feature for the paper, Anderlini talks about his move to Hong…

Wellington Takes Top Spot In Quality-Of-Life Ranking

Wellington Takes Top Spot In Quality-Of-Life Ranking

“Forget London, New York or Tokyo, for a better quality of life you should go to Wellington, Edinburgh or Vienna,” writes Conor Sullivan in an article for The Financial Times….

Wine Producers Balancing the Old with the New

Wine Producers Balancing the Old with the New

New wave wine producing has been “unusually slow” to catch on in New Zealand, according to British wine critic Jancis Robinson, “even though the country’s wine business is enjoying an unprecedented level of self-confidence.” “The…

Monica Galetti’s New Venture Mere About to Open

Monica Galetti’s New Venture Mere About to Open

Monica and David Galetti have left their chef and sommelier roles at Le Gavroche to start anew in Fitzrovia. They talk work-life balance, Brexit and the joy of champagne with the Financial Times. The couple…

New Zealand the Place to Be in 2017

New Zealand the Place to Be in 2017

From the Himalayas to the Highlands and south to New Zealand, a panel of travel industry leaders have picked the hottest destinations for the coming year in a feature for the Financial Times. While some…

Cox London Carving a Life Force

Cox London Carving a Life Force

“In an industrial site in north London, behind an anonymous brick façade, lies an awe-inspiring emporium, with bronze foundry and workshop attached. This is the headquarters of Cox London, a husband-and-wife-led team of designer-makers…

Emilia Wickstead Shares Her Favourite Things

Emilia Wickstead Shares Her Favourite Things

London-based, New Zealand-born fashion designer Emilia Wickstead shares a few of her favourite things for the Telegraph’s “My Luxuries” column. Wickstead, who according to the Financial Times showed a “whimsical and poetic”…

Len Lye Centre Offers a Place of Reflection

Len Lye Centre Offers a Place of Reflection

“‘Art,’ wrote the -born artist Len Lye, ‘is the most valuable and least useful of all things ever made.’ Bearing that in mind, how might you make a museum dedicated to the artist?” Financial Times’…

Martin Jetpack Turns Science Fiction Into Reality

Martin Jetpack Turns Science Fiction Into Reality

Australia-listed Martin Jetpack will begin manufacturing its P-14 aircraft next month, as reported in an article in The Financial Times. “We are at the start of the journey,” said Peter Coker, Martin Jetpack’s chief…

Emilia Wickstead Dazzled by WWI Ships

Emilia Wickstead Dazzled by WWI Ships

The Great War’s liberating effect on womenswear is often overlooked. Aimee Farrell, writing for the Financial Times meets the designers – including New Zealand-born Emilia Wickstead – now redressing its sartorial legacy championed in…

GoPro Poaches Apple’s Design Man Danny Coster

GoPro Poaches Apple’s Design Man Danny Coster

California-based action camera manufacturing company GoPro has poached a member of Sir Jonathan Ive’s design team at Apple, New Zealander Danny Coster, who will become vice-president of design, reporting to Nick Woodman, chief executive. Coster…

Aviva Boss Mark Wilson Preys for Growth

Aviva Boss Mark Wilson Preys for Growth

“Kiwis are meek creatures, prodding in the leaf litter for worms. But Mark Wilson, the New Zealander who runs Aviva, is a bird of more raptorial kind. Seizing the chief executive’s job three years…

Luxury Lodge-Hopping in New Zealand

Luxury Lodge-Hopping in New Zealand

“Once seen by many as a destination for backpackers to hike, bike and bungee jump, New Zealand’s profile is changing,” Mark Jones writes in a Financial Times feature. “In 2014 the national tourist board…

Virgin’s Tom Mockridge Talks New Challenges

Virgin’s Tom Mockridge Talks New Challenges

New Zealander Tom Mockridge, chief executive of British cable group Virgin Media, talks with the Financial Times about broadband, News Corp and why UK football television rights need a big shake-up. Mockridge is so habitually…

Darren Pene Pati Wins at Operalia 2015

Darren Pene Pati Wins at Operalia 2015

New Zealander Darren Pene Pati, “the one with the special tenor voice”, took second prize and the audience prize for male singer at this year’s Operalia, The World’s Opera Competition, held in London. According to…

Diplomatic Businessman Sir John Buchanan

Diplomatic Businessman Sir John Buchanan

Sir John Buchanan, who has died aged 72, was an Auckland-born scientist who rose to be finance director at BP before taking on prominent non-executive board roles in sectors ranging from mining, most recently…

Artist Kristina Webb Prospering in Insta-Economy

Artist Kristina Webb Prospering in Insta-Economy

Kristina Webb, a 19-year old New Zealander, has built a full-time job on Instagram with colourful, Disney-like pictures, which are appealing to a huge teenage base of viewers. “It is sort of my perfect job…

New Zealand Chardonnay Trounces Burgundy in Blind Test

New Zealand Chardonnay Trounces Burgundy in Blind Test

“Auckland, on the same latitude as southern Spain, may seem an unlikely location for vineyards capable of making precise ripostes to white burgundy,” British wine critic Jancis Robinson writes for the Financial Times. “But…

All Blacks Thrashing of USA Eagles a Big Money-Spinner

All Blacks Thrashing of USA Eagles a Big Money-Spinner

The first rugby match in the United States for the All Blacks in over three decades helped TLA Worldwide, an American athlete representation and sports marketing business, report a 26 per cent rise in…

Hannah O’Neill Dances in Paris Opera’s Swan Lake

Hannah O’Neill Dances in Paris Opera’s Swan Lake

A New Zealander is one of the Paris Opera Ballet’s “emerging young dancers” who has brought “style and elegance” to Nureyev’s production of Swan Lake. This was the “sprightly” Hannah O’Neill’s first time dancing…

Director Andrew Niccol Shines a Light on Drone Warfare

Director Andrew Niccol Shines a Light on Drone Warfare

Nobody wanted to back a film on the subject of drone warfare, according to New Zealand-born director Andrew Niccol, whose drama Good Kill, about that very subject, is on now in UK cinemas. “We had…

Ross McEwan Gets down to Business at Royal Bank of Scotland

Ross McEwan Gets down to Business at Royal Bank of Scotland

Very few chief executives of big banks know how to brand a cow, what to do when calving season starts, or how to tell Angus from Shorthorn cattle. Except, that is, Ross McEwan, Financial…

Film Tourism in New Zealand Massive Earner

Film Tourism in New Zealand Massive Earner

As cinemagoers rush to see the third Hobbit film, “Tolkien-mania” is again sweeping New Zealand, where record tourist arrivals are boosting the economy and helping to offset a slump in the price of its…

That Little Emilia Wickstead Point of Difference

That Little Emilia Wickstead Point of Difference

Over the past half decade, New Zealand-born Emilia Wickstead has emerged as London’s go-to designer for occasion dressing. Her ability to find inspiration in 1950s and 1960s couture salons and the candy-coloured society ladies…

Playwright Arthur Meek’s Upside Down Perspective on Colonialism

Playwright Arthur Meek’s Upside Down Perspective on Colonialism

Can western theatre ever tackle the subject of colonialism without replicating its inequalities, Financial Times’ reporter Matt Trueman asks. New Zealand playwright Arthur Meek, feels that it would be presumptuous to write a story…

Dale Murray’s Secret-Sauce Idea for New-Thinking

Dale Murray’s Secret-Sauce Idea for New-Thinking

New Zealand-born entrepreneur Dale Murray found inspiration for her UK mobile phone top-up company, Omega Logic over drinks one night discussing the shortcomings of the IT industry with one of her co-founders. Murray quit a senior…

New World Versus Old World Sauvignon Blanc

New World Versus Old World Sauvignon Blanc

The first Friday in May was International Sauvignon Blanc Day, and British wine critic Jancis Robinson took part in “a fascinating blind tasting in anticipation of the great day”. “A small group of wine professionals…

Cardboard Cathedral Architect Wins Pritzker Prize

Cardboard Cathedral Architect Wins Pritzker Prize

The designer of Christchurch’s Cardboard Cathedral, Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, has been named the winner of this year’s Pritzker Architecture Prize, largely because of his work designing shelters after natural disasters in…

Don’t Beat the Currency War Drums Yet

Don’t Beat the Currency War Drums Yet

The drums of war have been beating for two years now. With America, Britain and Japan printing money and the Euro zone considering unprecedented zero interest rates, the other tradable currencies – especially New…

Kiwi Drought Hits Choc-lovers

Kiwi Drought Hits Choc-lovers

The price of Christmas chocolates look set to surge as the cost of key ingredients – including New Zealand milk – squeezes manufacturing margins. Milk powder prices have risen 50% in the year to…

Bank Chief Faces Long List of Challenges

Bank Chief Faces Long List of Challenges

New Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) chief executive New Zealander Ross McEwan must confront a long list of challenges, according to the Financial Times, and at the forefront of issues facing him, “is the…

Saxophonist Has More Fire Than Most

Saxophonist Has More Fire Than Most

Jazz musician, Aucklander Nathan Haines’ latest album The Poet’s Embrace, is “full of muscular playing and emotional bite,” according to Financial Times reviewer Mike Hobart. “Haines has more focus and fire than most who…

Focus on Liveability

Focus on Liveability

Auckland inspires strong feelings in the editor-in-chief of Monocle magazine, Tyler Brûlé. “Dear Auckland,” Brûlé writes, “I realise it’s less than 96 hours since we parted company but I can’t stop thinking about the…

Trading Black Gold

Trading Black Gold

New Zealand is famous worldwide for its dairy exports, Sylvia Pfeifer writes for the Financial Times. “Its dairy industry generated $13.9bn in revenues in the year to March 2012. But now the government is…

Trail Running Trend Speeds Up

Trail Running Trend Speeds Up

“It is the perfect new year challenge – a week’s journey on foot and at speed through New Zealand’s fairytale valleys,” The Financial Times’ Jonathan Thompson writes. “It is, to put it mildly, a…

What Stead Reads

What Stead Reads

Author C.K. Stead, 80, talks to the Financial Times about which books changed his life and what he’s currently reading. “The cat is on the bedside table, the books are on the floor,” Stead…

Banking on Nigeria

Banking on Nigeria

Stephen Jennings, the New Zealand-born founder and chief executive of Moscow-based investment bank Renaissance Capital, is setting up a consumer finance business in Nigeria with hopes to tap the fast-growing economy’s rising…

Groundswell Of Riesling

Groundswell Of Riesling

“The emergence of exceptionally fine New Zealand wines proves there is a groundswell of real talent and ambition in these islands,” Jancis Robinson writes in the Financial Times. “Two weeks ago, I came across the…

Dreaming Of A Bach Life

Dreaming Of A Bach Life

New Zealanders and Australians could easily develop hospitality schools that would give Lausanne and Cornell a thumping reflects Monocle editor-in-chief Tyler Brûlé after his “most wonderful eight-day holiday.” “ are good at hosting, selling, serving…

Stay At The Furthermost Edge

Stay At The Furthermost Edge

Tucked up in the high country of the South Island, Mount Aspiring teetering to the rear, Lake Wanaka far down below, the 65,000-acre Minaret Station is not so much the middle of nowhere as…

Healthy UK Appointment

Healthy UK Appointment

New Zealander Professor Malcolm Grant will be appointed chair of the UK’s new National Health Service (NHS) commissioning board. Grant, who is currently president and provost of University College London (UCL), would…

Scottish Dairy Venture

Scottish Dairy Venture

New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra, the largest processor of milk in the world, has made its first move into Europe by forming a joint venture with Scotland-based First Milk, which supplies and markets 15…

Chasing Emerging Markets

Chasing Emerging Markets

“When you are the world’s biggest exporter in a sector powered by Asia’s high-octane economies, it is not difficult to find opportunities for growth,” Kevin Brown writes for the Financial Times. “Fonterra,…

German for Float

German for Float

“With its eagerness for wacky rides and a steady stream of adventure-seeking human guinea pigs, New Zealand was the obvious location” for the 2m monorail Swheeb track, writes the Financial Times’ Tarquin Cooper. “The…

Eerie Compulsion

Eerie Compulsion

Lloyd Jones’ latest novel Hand Me Down World is reviewed in the Financial Times. Hand Me Down World, about an illegal immigrant who makes her way from Tunis to Berlin to find her son…

Funding the Flagship

Funding the Flagship

“The turf in Auckland’s Eden Park stadium is freshly laid and verdant green, but three floors up, the corporate hospitality suite remains unfinished,” writes the Financial Times’ David Fickling. “Martin Snedden, chief executive of New Zealand’s…

Dishy Beef Cakes

Dishy Beef Cakes

Wellington waiters Strip-of-Meat are a company with “a dress code that involves a lot of skin” writes website Inventorspot. “Yes, we’ve seen plenty of businesses of this sort lately, but with a name like…

Perfectly Picturesque

Perfectly Picturesque

New Zealand’s “countryside is stunning (no wonder The Lord of the Rings was filmed there); the people are charming — like happy Britons; and the food and drink can be memorable,” writes Oxford University…

At Home on the Edge

At Home on the Edge

Artist Judy Millar, 52, explains to the Financial Times that she lives “at the end of a seven-mile dusty road on Auckland’s west coast and overlooks perhaps one of the most untouched beaches on…