Air New Zealand said the impact of the Christchurch and Japan earthquakes significantly hit its long-haul passenger numbers in May.

It has also won its second contract to fit out a luxury jet “for a sub continent client.”

The airline said it carried 892,000 or 1% more passengers in May than in the same month a year earlier but demand, or revenue passenger kilometres fell 2.8%, reflecting a 9.3% fall in long-haul passengers.

The Japan route was most affected with passenger numbers down 12%.

The airline said its overall capacity, available seat kilometres fell 3.9% in the month while its load factor rose 0.9 percentage points.

Short-haul passenger numbers were up 2.5% with domestic demand increasing 3.4%. How

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A company called ConceptShed is marketing their newest invention, the AutoWed vending machine.

The AutoWed is a novelty wedding machine offering a quick hitch, a couple of rings and a personalized certificate for just $1. Audio prompts, specially produced music, a bespoke retro keyboard and VFD display, ring vending and ticket printer all wrapped up in a Cadillac-pink cabinet with shiny aluminum fittings.

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News: Polish CA revisions and Greek vote in focus

The Czech koruna tested the 200-day moving average, but failed as the global equity market turned positive in the afternoon. The pair moved to 24.40 EUR/CZK and eyes today’s Greek protests. The koruna withstood sharp fall of ČEZ share price (largest title on Prague stock exchange) on news that the EU Commission will launch a formal investigation and that Germany (according to the Greens) will not want electricity from Temelin nuclear power station.

The Greek vote is in focus on the Czech markets in the upcoming sessions. We

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June 24 – DNZ Property Fund has teamed with other unit-holders in Argosy Property Trust to represent an 11% holding, enough to force a special meeting on the future of its management contract.

DNZ bought out its own management contract last year and chairman Tim Storey says getting rid of the external manager has resulted in “a very robust structure.”

With Argosy, “the first issue is to force better governance,” he said. Down the track, he hopes the property group will consider DNZ’s proposal to merge the two portfolios.

Storey says he hopes OnePath NZ Ltd. will oblige

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The dollar strengthened for another week. Will this continue? US CB Consumer Confidence, US Unemployment Claims and Canadian GDP are the key events this week. Here’s an outlook for the most influential trading events.

In the FOMC statement last Wednesday, Ben Bernanke undermined the need for QE3 after the termination of QE2 this week, in light of improvement in the US economy from a year ago. Will the continuation of the current slowdown affect the FOMC decision?

Let’s Start

1. US CB Consumer Confidence: Tuesday, 14:00. Con

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The newest pet craze sweeping China involves pet pandas or are they?

Nope, these little bundles of joy are actually just chow chow dogs that have been dyed black-and-white to look like pandas.

How soon before this takes off in the west, and will you be at the forefront?

June 23 – OnePath NZ Ltd., the fund manager owned by Australian & New Zealand Banking Group, has backed off its proposals to internalise the management of its two listed property trusts.

The fund manager wanted $32.5 million from Argosy Property Trust and $14 million from Vital Healthcare Property Trust, but is reassessing its options after the independent directors of both entities said they couldn’t recommend the deal.

The announcement comes as Ascot Property Management Ltd. put forward a proposal to unit holders in Vital Healthcare for them to dump OnePath’s manager and install it to internalise the property trust’s management. Ascot P

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