Ann: Air NZ receives letter from Minister of Finance, page-2

Is this a real business, or just a quasi-government department? This is really, really blurring the lines.

Government suggestion, direction and interference in a public company (shareholder or not) certainly calls into question for me Air NZ's ability to operate as a separate independent entity.

The NZ government has begun interfering with a number of industries and businesses on a fundamental level, which is making conducting business in certain industries (metals and energy production, mining, farming among others) very difficult.

This is the same government which stood by and let thousands of staff loose their jobs, for which Air NZ paid out huge sums on redundancies and is now recruiting those people among others after a short period of time further diluting your profits as shareholders away. Perhaps the government should have used its' influence to instead have these staff who lost their hopes and dreams seconded to other businesses (e.g. the health service during these COVID times), retaining their employment with AirNZ without salary to return as COVID abated. This would have created considerable cost savings to the wage bill and to a large degree prevented the rot that occurred during the lockdowns in NZ and Australia.

At the heart of the problem is a majority shareholder with an inability to stop tampering with Air NZ affairs and without clear direction.

Do shareholders understand that the current loan arrangement from the government vs IMO the more effective capital raising route prior to even drawing the first dollar on high interest bearing loans from the majority shareholder (a conflict of interest, unless the loan was non interest bearing IMO) is inefficient and will have a drag on growth at the very least into the mid term for the business, if not the long term as well?

Do shareholders own shares in the government of NZ without even realising it? It may appear so.

I personally cannot justify any investment in Air NZ until this government sell down their shareholding (which they will not, because they clearly see their presence as for the public good). There are less conflicted businesses in the ASX and NZX airline and airport space which provide for far superior investment opportunities to what we see here.

Disclosure: I do not hold Air NZ shares at any capacity, but posted to cite the reasons I do not hold shares.