Cyber attack surreal – CEO
NZX chief executive Mark Peterson says the cyber attack that hit the stock exchange this year was surreal.
‘‘You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy, but at the same time too, hopefully all of New Zealand gets to understand what level of risk is out there now,’’ he said at an investor day on Wednesday.
In August, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks over consecutive days took the stock exchange’s website offline, disrupting trading. It was reported that attackers wanted a ransom paid in bitcoin and many of the country’s listed companies also came under fire.
NZX told analysts in a briefing it is expecting reports to be released this week following investigations into the attack and capacity pressure in its systems this year when for a three-week period, trading surged 400 per cent above the maximum levels of activity seen in 2019.
Peterson has been in the role since April 2017. He said, when he took the position, he felt the stock exchange operator needed to simplify its operations and refocus on its core markets business to grow.
‘‘It didn’t quite know what it was. It had a mixture of different types of businesses in it that were
never really cohesive but really the kernel of the exchange is the markets business, so we very quickly thought that’s where the energy needs to be,’’ Peterson says. ‘‘I thought, and a lot of people in the market thought, that the NZX needed to be better – it needs to be bigger and it needs to be better.’’
Since then, he has presided over the sale of superfluous assets like magazines and newspapers and a troublesome Australian grain trading business, removed any blockages that were stopping the company from growing and invested in the exchange’s fund management operations to help expand the market.
He told the analysts and investors that the company’s ‘‘get fit’’ campaign has now started to
bear fruit. That’s coincided with a big tailwind this year from Covid19, which saw a huge upsurge in companies turning to the markets to raise capital as well as a jump in trading activity as investors look for returns at a time of low interest rates.
Peterson says that environment is likely to continue for the next few years, and that the NZX is well positioned to take advantage of it. ‘‘This business for the last 10 or 15 years has probably never really grown and for the very first time in 2020 we have got to learn about running a business and handling a business that is in growth mode.’’
So far this year, close to $14.5 billion in capital and $5b of debt has been raised through the NZX, and some $49.3b of shares have been traded, 41 per cent higher than 2019 and headed for a record.
There have been two initial public offerings this year, Rua Bioscience and Harmoney, with New Zealand Rural Land Co planning to list later this month. Three companies, skincare and supplements business Me Today, diversified services business SMW Group and aged care facilities operator Promisia Integrative completed reverse listings where they took over dormant shell companies.
Next week, the exchange expects a direct listing of a New Zealand business and a foreignexempt listing of a company already on Australia’s ASX exchange that wants to grow in New Zealand. With an eye to future growth, NZX is now targeting companies that may be ripe for listing. That’s a change from the norm before 2017 when there was no issuer relationships team and NZX just responded to inquiries rather than actively hunting out prospects.
Under the leadership of Sarah Minhinnick, who joined in February as head of issuer relationships, NZX is targeting 1200 private companies with income of more than $30 million a year.
Many of those companies aren’t aware of the benefits of listing and Minhinnick and four others are systematically cold calling eight of them a week.