Herald has previously reported<\/a> that Government funding for the broadband rollout was provided to Chorus through a vehicle called National Infrastructure Funding and Financing, or Niffco.<\/p>\nThe Niffco securities have some equity-like attributes but do not come with the same rights and obligations as those of ordinary shares.<\/p>\n
They are separate from Chorus\u2019 NZX-listed shares and are more like zero-coupon bonds or, as one observer told the Herald, \u201ddebt dressed up as equity\u201d.<\/p>\n
Materials released at Chorus\u2019 latest annual result showed it had Niffco debt and equity with a face value of $1.165b \u2013 maturing from 2030 to 2036.<\/p>\n
Willis had previously said the book value of the debt was $643 million, although this could be very different from the money the Government would realise from a sale. She would not indicate the figure she had received from the Government\u2019s market soundings, noting it was commercially sensitive.<\/p>\n
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said he wanted to know \u201chow much value the Government would lose by dispensing with their interest early\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo investor\u2019s going to buy it unless they\u2019re going to extract some value out of it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The sale could be a test case for National\u2019s 2026 election campaign, which is likely going to involve a promise of asset sales, revenue from which would be reinvested in infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop said infrastructure from this sale would be ringfenced and redeployed into Budget 2026 to help fund other infrastructure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a pragmatic decision that will free up hundreds of millions for more urgent infrastructure needs,\u201d Bishop said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe monetisation process will commence in early 2026 and, subject to market conditions, investor feedback and value-for-money considerations, is scheduled for completion in the second quarter of 2026,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe alternative would be to wait another five to 10 years for Chorus to repay the Crown,\u2019 she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,42601,2223,13242,5399,246,266,22772,78,1702,15472,6722,111,139,20484,69,2170,13311,61,1533,792],"class_list":["post-187684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-chorus","tag-confirmed","tag-confirms","tag-debt","tag-finance","tag-government","tag-holds","tag-in","tag-infrastructure","tag-invest","tag-minister","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nicola","tag-nz","tag-plan","tag-sell","tag-to","tag-will","tag-willis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}