Best of Business

National and Labour are joining forces in support of legislation to tackle modern slavery.
Their bipartisan backing means the Bill can be introduced in Parliament, bypassing the ballot system.
The proposed law would require large companies to report their measures to avoid slavery conditions in supply chains, and fine those not complying or acting to mislead.
National's Greg Fleming told Mike Hosking they’ve taken learnings from overseas, particularly Australia, and will be going with template forms and the like to ensure this does add value, rather than just cost.
He says a lot of responsible businesses are already looking into the working conditions in their supply lines, so this is just aimed at the recalcitrants.
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Meta and Microsoft are among the big tech companies that just released their quarterly results after the stock market closed, and there's more results to come.
Meta shares were up 9 percent, but Microsoft stock was down about 5 percent.
Sam Dickie from Fisher Funds unpacked the data further.
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Simon Squibb has always been committed to encouraging people to fulfil their dreams, and as a multi-millionaire entrepreneur, he's in a position to make real change.
He's invested in startups, used his professional insight to write a book - What’s Your Dream? Find Your Passion. Love Your Work. Build a Richer Life - and he's committed to inspiring people to take risks.
Squibb's in New Zealand and he's already been spotted helping a chef in Remuera to fund her ambitions.
"I can't help it, I love hearing people's dreams, and so there's no holiday from helping people that need it. And so I have actually now helped four people in New Zealand with their dreams, which is pretty exciting."
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Air New Zealand says it hopes to avoid a three-day strike by international cabin crew in February.
E tū Union and the Flight Attendants Association have issued strike notices for wide-body crews on 787 and 777 Boeing flights.
The airline's Chief People Officer, Nikki Dines, says they've covered a lot of ground in 10 months of weekly meetings with the unions.
"There's a lot of things that we've agreed on, the last remaining item is just on pay. That's the one item that we are continuing to work with our cabin crew unions on."
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The Reserve Bank spent most of 2025 lowering the OCR, leaving experts to speculate how these changes impacted the economy.
Since then, economic and business confidence has gone up for the start of 2026, but inflation data for the December quarter has raised some concerns
Milford Asset Management expert Brendan Larsen explained further.
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