Registry reduces NZX stake

By PAUL PANCKHURST

The stock exchange's largest shareholder - and one of its biggest critics - has been quietly selling down.

Share registry operator Computershare cut its stake from 8 per cent to 6 per cent last week, selling 250,000 shares for $2.1 million.

That was a profit of more than $1 million for Computershare, which had quickly emerged as the biggest shareholder after the listing of NZX last year.

A company associated with staff and management at sharebroker Forsyth Barr, Probatus, is now the biggest, on 8 per cent.

Computershare's Mike Smith said the sale was "just a bit of profit-taking". However, sharemarket players see the sell-down in the context of the clashing interests of Computershare and NZX.

The share registry business is one possible avenue of expansion for the NZX.

After fruitless talks on a tie-up with Computershare, NZX announced in March that it had plans to set up a registry to compete with Computershare and the second operator, BK Registries.

The plans added to tension over NZX proposals to raise the connection fees charged to registries and to launch a "central clearing house" for share trading.

The clearing house plan came after the bad publicity surrounding a series of unscheduled sharemarket trading halts.

NZX touted it as a way to improve "market integrity" and a solution for a system that was "structurally flawed".

The registries saw it as unnecessary and a "smokescreen" for NZX to advance its own commercial interests. They are wary of competing with an organisation that is also a market regulator.