{"id":631723,"date":"2026-10-15T20:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T20:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/631723\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T20:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T20:44:10","slug":"tell-me-who-in-the-western-world-is-less-ambitious-at-raising-capital-than-nz-simon-bridges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/631723\/","title":{"rendered":"Tell me who in the Western World is less ambitious at raising capital than NZ? \u2013 Simon Bridges"},"content":{"rendered":"

We probably can\u2019t even think about comparing ourselves with America, where the artificial intelligence (AI) boom makes the numbers barely believable. In the past year, United States pretax revenue has grown by 30%, or US$1.2 trillion. And, as the Economist recently noted, American markets have digested the largest-ever IPO (SpaceX), equity raise by a public company (Google) and foreign firm (SK Hynix), as well as the biggest private-funding round (OpenAI), private-debt deal (Broadcom) and bond issue in history (Amazon). Anthropic is preparing an IPO for after the mid-term elections with a target valuation of up to US$2 trillion \u2013 or, put another way, many, many times our nation\u2019s entire GDP.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard not to be awed. But I come back to it: what would we need to do to have even an ounce of this business success in our local capital markets?<\/p>\n

The problem isn\u2019t ideas or amazing start-ups. In Auckland, which I know best, the Icehouses and Outset Ventures (where Rocket Lab itself was birthed) have a heap of great enterprises looking for capital. Higher up the chain are the Halters, Tracksuits and Crimsons: remarkable successes. But we need more of them as the third pillar of our economy, alongside farming and tourism, and more of them going on to list in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

As Fran O\u2019Sullivan<\/a> said last weekend, \u201cmore billionaires are not an economic strategy. More globally successful companies are\u201d and \u201cNew Zealand\u2019s challenge is to help more businesses make the leap from promising local company to global competitor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let me say it again: a critical missing ingredient is capital.<\/p>\n

Some good financing is happening. Jamie Gray<\/a>\u2019s Herald piece on private credit and the likes of Private Capital Group shows that. But banks still dominate about 95% of the market, and our big Australian ones are conservative in their financial practices. Loans for property beat business funding every day of the week.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the OECD\u2019s report on New Zealand\u2019s economy identified an acute \u201cstructural shortage of domestic growth-equity supply in the NZD5-50 million range\u201d, forcing many Kiwi companies offshore earlier than optimal to raise money. It said New Zealand should \u201cconsider making minority Crown investments in a Business Growth Fund\u201d or \u201cconvening a growth-equity (GE) and venture-growth (VG) fund of funds [and] encourage KiwiSaver providers and other institutional investors to allocate small shares of their portfolios to these funds.\u201d <\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s parliamentary inquiry into banking said something similar: we need to consider new lending models.<\/p>\n

One fact to celebrate is the well over $100 billion we\u2019ve accumulated in KiwiSaver. But while challenger brands are dipping their toes into local venture investments, the Aussie banks\u2019 funds again dominate, and their risk appetite is limited.<\/p>\n

What if the settings ensured more KiwiSaver funds invested more locally? Today KiwiSaver remains underdone in growth and private-asset categories. The argument against is that we don\u2019t want funds taking undue risks with New Zealanders\u2019 money, but deft changes could surely put us in a sweeter spot: safe and local. The new and very successful Active Investor Plus, or golden visa, funds have helped. But could the settings be further enhanced to produce more local productive investment and thicker capital markets?<\/p>\n

On the NZX specifically, those in the know tell me we need reform of product disclosure statements, accommodative tax changes and, more fundamentally, a Financial Markets Authority (FMA) focused on promotion rather than over-regulation, alongside an NZX with a more streamlined, lower-requirement listing regime.<\/p>\n

At the small to medium enterprise (SME) end of town, the gripe has always been that businesses struggle to get capital from the large commercial banks and, when they do, must put up every personal asset they hold \u2013 usually the house \u2013 as guarantees in a way those higher up the food chain do not. I detect this complaint is growing.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already noted the pleasing growth in private capital, but leaving that subsector to grow organically isn\u2019t enough. Some in our business and political classes say we should keep backing Kiwibank, which has a stronger track record on SME lending than others \u2013 and I certainly don\u2019t push back on that.<\/p>\n

Doing a little homework on SMEs and capital, it\u2019s instructive that countries we often turn to for policy ideas have recently established SME growth funds \u2013 or banks, if you will \u2013 to step in where the private sector won\u2019t, just as the OECD suggests we consider.<\/p>\n

Australia, Ireland, Britain and Canada now all have Business Growth Funds to help scale SMEs with opportunities not well served by venture capital, traditional private equity or bank lending. The model tends to combine government funding with a group of shareholding banks that co-invest on a commercial basis.<\/p>\n

In Australia, for example, the Government has put in A$100 million and six banks a further A$440m. In this public-private partnership, both sides guarantee a portion of the risk should a business fail. The policy aims include reducing reliance on personal assets such as the family home and encouraging lending based on the viability and cash flow of growth companies without significant assets.<\/p>\n

The British story is much the same, only with bigger numbers: GBP$5 billion helping more than 650 businesses grow since 2011. Why wouldn\u2019t we try this here? NZ$100m from the Government, with the very same banks doing it in Australia putting in comparable amounts on this side of the Tasman. Kiwibank and others may also want to throw into the kitty for fear of missing out.<\/p>\n

This piece certainly isn\u2019t intended as a beat-up on big banks. If anything, the Government should be looking at the risk-averse capital frameworks in place here and changing them.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also conscious that I\u2019m bringing a set of problems around access to capital, and some ideas, but not necessarily fully formed answers.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not the expert, and certainly not the brains trust here. The Government has hundreds of policy folk who, after November 7, should turn their minds in disproportionate numbers to these points while we all wait for a Government to form. Because if we had better money flowing to our SMEs, start-ups, bigger businesses and potential next IPOs, we could have many more Rocket Labs \u2013 and, yes, more billionaires to go with them \u2013 but, more importantly, more jobs, growth and wealth generally.<\/p>\n

Simon Bridges is the chief executive of the Auckland Business Chamber and was the leader of the National Party from 2018 to 2020. He has also served as the Minister for Transport, Economic Development and Communications. He is the chair of the NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi and has worked as a senior Crown prosecutor in the Tauranga District Court and the High Court at Tauranga.<\/p>\n

Catch up on the debates that dominated the week by signing up to our Opinion newsletter<\/a> \u2013 a weekly round-up of our best commentary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We probably can\u2019t even think about comparing ourselves with America, where the artificial intelligence (AI) boom makes the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4523,1975,1643,21356,138,1288,3088,3936,219,38211,78,21556,185,7494,14909,111,139,69,17145,6037,18323,131,223,3457,1299,377],"class_list":["post-631723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-ambitious","tag-at","tag-bank","tag-bridges","tag-business","tag-capital","tag-commercial","tag-director","tag-economy","tag-icbc","tag-in","tag-independent","tag-is","tag-less","tag-me","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-raising","tag-simon","tag-tell","tag-than","tag-the","tag-western","tag-who","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631723","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=631723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}