Dear Members

Thank you to everyone who participated at our AGM held at the Sheraton last month; it certainly set the scene for the enjoyable networking evening that followed.  This year the AGM and Corporate Knight was jointly sponsored by RSM Advisory and MBMG and we are very grateful to both companies. RSM Advisory has been a loyal supporter and sponsor of these two events for the past 6 years whilst MBMG has supported a number of events over the past year.

We now have our new committee on board and active, so special welcome to Lisa Anaman, Joseph Gumbel and Richard Prouse who have joined the committee this year. Existing members who were re-elected are Cris Dunning, Grant Signal, David Mills, David O’Callaghan, David Old, and Doug Ozanne and our two vice presidents are David O’Callaghan and David Mills. Many thanks to Karlene Davis who is our ex-officio NZTE representative. I would like to thank Howard Hill for his valuable contribution to the committee over the past three years. Rex Hancock also did not stand due to work commitments and I thank him for his participation in the committee last year. Finally I would like to thank Gary White, who, after 10 years of contribution to the Chamber committee in various capacities, has decided to step down from his advisory role. At the AGM, we voted to make Gary an Honorary Member of the Chamber.

As the re-elected President I look forward to working with the committee during the coming year to provide the Chamber with an interesting and valued mix of activities and services. In the next few weeks we will be holding a planning meeting to allocate specific roles although one or two are already clear such as Richard Prouse as our Eastern Seaboard Representative and Lisa Anaman who will be taking over the Community and Charities Portfolio. We are looking forward to launching an Eastern Seaboard initiative representative office in the next few weeks.

We have continued to enjoy strong membership and generous support from our sponsors over the past year. Given the continuing fallout of the global financial crisis and the disruption due to protests in the early part of the year, we are very pleased with this result. Your support has enabled the Chamber to continue to be effective and slowly grow. We hope to expand on our activities from last year to provide you with a greater range of opportunities and benefits and we look forward to your continuing support.

 In terms of sponsorship we are now looking to confirm sponsors for our 2011 calendar that includes a principal Chamber sponsorship package, Corporate Knight functions and other one-off functions yet to be announced.  Sponsors gain recognition of their support to the Chamber via the website, directory, newsletter and the sponsor’s display board at our Chamber functions.

The NZTCC and the NZ Society will again be hosting next year’s annual NZ Black & White Ball to be held on 5th February. Planning for the event is already well advanced and members who wish to secure Ball tickets should keep an eye on our website for further information as tickets will be on sale in December. We are currently seeking additional sponsors for this event.

This month’s Corporate Knight networking function is our last formal event for the year and our sponsor for the evening is once again IPS Asia.   IPS is a success story for fellow Kiwi Kevan Fahey who has, over many years, developed his own construction company into a very successful business unit that operates in both Bangkok and the resort regions of southern Thailand.

We look forward to seeing you all at the MA DU ZI (see below for details)I on the 25th.

Kindly sponsored by

New Site makes finding Kiwi beer easy

New Zealand is the third best country to live in the world, climbing 17 places in the latest United Nations' index aimed at measuring development.

The Human Development Report 2010 (HDR) was released today by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UN Development Programme Administrator, and former New Zealand prime minister, Helen Clark.

The report, "The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development," highlights countries with the greatest progress as measured by the Human Development Index (HDI).

The index calculates the well-being in 169 countries, taking into account health, education and income, which are combined to generate an score between zero and one. The countries are grouped into four categories: very high, high, medium, and low.

New Zealand was named 20th in the 2009 report and this year is just behind Norway and Australia, first and second respectively.

The country's score has been rising by 0.5 percent a year between 1980 and 2010 from 0.786 to 0.907 today, placing it in "very high" category. New Zealand's life expectancy is 80.6 years, average number of school years is 12.5, and gross national income per capita is $25,438 ($NZ32,046).

The report, the 20th anniversary edition, also looks at HDI data available for the past 40 years in 135 countries and names the "Top 10 Movers".

Top 15 countries:

NZI New Zealand Black & White 2011 Ritzy World Cup Ball

This has been confirmed for Feb 5th 2011 at the Amari Watergate. For more information please contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Tickets will be on sale in December.