Exchange Rate Alert

It's hard to ignore the global financial meltdown at the moment. Every positive milestone Pingar achieves has to be set against events not in our control. The past week is evidence of that.

On the positive side, Pingar LP was finally incorporated in New Zealand, the company was selected as one of Europe's 100 'hottest' mediatech companies in 2008 by an advisory board of leading European venture capital companies and Earl of Erroll was recruited as Chairman of Pingar's UK Advisory Board. In normal times, not a bad five days. These are not however normal times.

Over the same week, global equity markets tanked, the NZD went south and the 'R' word was back with a 'V' (I think that's 'Vengeance'). Today, it is the projected direction of the NZD which is of most interest to me.

Traditionally, economists say that a lower NZD benefits NZ exporters. And in one respect, they are absolutely correct. However such benefits are not available for NZ companies in the process of establishing offshore beachheads. Those NZD costs have just gone up.

Fortunately for Pingar, GBP is currently our target market currency. It has also headed south over the past few weeks so the exchange rate difference between NZD & GBP is not as pronounced as say NZD v USD. That's a whole different ball game.

Normally, New Zealand starts the world's financial day. Not tomorrow. It's Labour Day here so the banks are closed and we will all go out fishing. At least that's my plan. By the time the NZ markets re-open on Tuesday, a whole day will have passed. No doubt new equity and currency levels will have been breached and re-set.

So I hope the fishing tomorrow is good. It might be the last for some time.