The New Zealand Exchange Limited (NZX) is New Zealand’s sole stock exchange located on the picturesque waterfront of the city of Wellington.
In the 1870s during the Gold Rush, the NZX began as a number of regional stock exchanges. One hundred years later these regional exchanges were merged together to form one national stock exchange, namely the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZSE). NZSE put together a computerized trading system on June 24 1991, which allowed them to abolish the open outcry market. Eight years later this computerized system was exchanged for the FASTER trading system.
On October 2002 the New Zealand Stock Exchange’s Member Firms voted for demutualisation, which made the NZSE a limited liability company. A year later the New Zealand Stock Exchange Limited formally made a change in its name to New Zealand Exchange Limited, trading as NZX and listed its own securities on its own main equity market. The NZX controls three main markets, that being the New Zealand Stock Market, New Zealand Debt Market and the New Zealand Alternative Market. The NZX also has a total of three subsidiary companies: Smartshares, Agri-Fax and Link Market Services.
The Government has spent the last twenty years transforming New Zealand from an “agrarian economy dependent on concessionary British market access” to a more free market, industrialized economy that will now allow it to compete on a global platform. Per capita income has continued to rise over the last eight years and had more than $25,500 purchasing power parity terms in 2006. Exports also grew in 2006 after having struggled for a few years.
The overall exports came to about 28% of GDP, down 5% from 33 percent of the GDP percentage five years before that. With this the Labor Government has been able to promise that expenditures on education, pensions and health will grow proportionately to output. The GDP, purchasing power parity, was $106 billion in 2006 with the GDP official exchange rate being $98.77 billion. The GDP composition was made up of 4.3% agriculture, 26.9% industry and 68.8% in services.
