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Articles by John Conlan
Corporate Governance Symposium 2025
On Monday, 11 August 2025, MinterEllisonRuddWatts held its 22nd annual Corporate Governance Symposium for directors and senior executives at the Pullman in Auckland. The Symposium began with a welcome from MinterEllisonRuddWatts Partner Mark Forman who introduced the topic for discussion at this year’s symposium: ‘Governing for growth’.
Reform of the New Zealand foreign investment regime
The reform of the Overseas Investment Act 2005 (Act) will bring significant change to the regime. Will these changes be enough to achieve the Government’s vision? Fundamentally, the reform will displace the Act’s core purpose that it is a privilege to own sensitive assets in New Zealand with a more balanced approach.
Renewable Energy Zones: Bridging the gap for Northland’s electricity resilience and reliability
At the end of 2024, Transpower, along with Northland’s electricity distribution businesses Northpower and Top Energy, released their Resilience, Reliability and an Energy Bridge – Te Tai Tokerau Northland discussion paper. This paper followed the June 2024 Northland tower collapse which cut electricity to 88,000 people and caused a financial loss of more than $37.5 million.
How New Zealand will manage peak demand
The Electricity Authority (EA) released a decision paper in July on potential solutions for the peak electricity capacity issues. It has decided to pursue a package of six solutions which will support its long-term view of security of supply. In the following paragraphs we summarise the EA’s outlook across the short, medium, and long-term horizons.
Corporate governance law reform
The Government has announced a two-phase process seeking to reform corporate governance laws. In the first phase the Government is looking to update corporate legislation to reflect modern business practices, make compliance simpler and deter and detect poor business practices. In other words, this phase seeks to resolve uncontroversial problems to improve the performance of our corporate legislation, and aspects of our insolvency law.
Public M&A transactions: Structuring trends and target considerations
The recent spike in public M&A activity continues with potential new take-private transactions continuing to be announced. Our firm advised on the most recent deal being the friendly takeover of Volpara Health Technologies (ASX: VHT) by Lunit, a medical AI company (listed on the KOSDAQ board of the Korea Exchange) developing AI solutions for precision diagnostics and therapeutics.
Measures to update the wholesale electricity market
This month saw “electricity crisis” headlines proliferate with an unseasonal cold snap and low wind generation causing Transpower to release a warning notice and ask New Zealanders to reduce power use. After a long period of no growth, reports this month also suggest electricity demand in New Zealand is increasing.
Solar + BESS: An answer to New Zealand’s electricity security equation?
In recent years, it has become common for utility-scale solar projects in Australia to include a grid-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) to provide energy generated by the solar farm to the grid outside of the times when the sun is shining.
When the sun sets on solar panels: End of life solutions
Aotearoa New Zealand is in the midst of a solar revolution, with solar farm developments contributing to over half of the new renewable energy projects in the country. Large-scale solar developments are a relatively new development in New Zealand, and we can look to earlier adopters of solar (whether rooftop or utility-scale) for lessons on how to deal with long-term issues that can arise with this technology.
Decommissioning a renewables project
Recent reports that the Government will review the oil and gas decommissioning regime imposed under the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2021 begs the question whether the process of decommissioning a renewable energy project in New Zealand should be under more scrutiny.
MBIE releases briefing for the incoming Minister for Energy
Last week the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) released its . The publication of the briefings provided to incoming Ministers by officials provides a useful glimpse behind the scenes in Government. In particular, the briefing for the Minister for Energy, the Hon Simeon Brown, raises a number of strategic choices the Government must make to shape the energy sector for both the short-term and beyond the current governmental cycle.
AI risks and opportunities
Click here to listen to the audio In this episode, MinterEllisonRuddWatts partners Tom Maasland and John Conlan talk about the opportunities and risks posed to businesses by accessibility of generative AI. Tom and John look at the risks and benefits to be weighed up by a company that’s wanting to choose which gen-AI tools to procure: how, as a business, can it ensure that it’s using new AI tools constructively and effectively?
Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland and Contemporary Women’s Writing. Edited by Claire Bracken and Tara Harney-Mahajan
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Enabling cities and regions: Insights on City Deals and place-based approaches
Introduction Aligning central and local government in the planning and funding of the infrastructure needs of our cities and regions is a priority. This has been highlighted through the conclusions of the Review into the Future of Local Government (established by the Minister of Local Government) and the National Party’s recently announced “five-point plan” for infrastructure.
Have your say: the future of the ETS and forestry offsets
Consultation is now open for feedback on proposed amendments to the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to reduce reliance on forestry offsets. The inclusion of forestry in the ETS has been the subject of mounting criticism, most notably by the Climate Change Commission.
Confrontational protest makes an impact
“The powerful will not let you vote away their power.” My mom once sent me a meme with this quote on it and it has stuck with me ever since. And it’s true. Power corrupts, and the corrupted love their power. One example of corrupt power is congressional offices. Even though members of congress pretend to hear their constituents, they don’t actually have to see them in person. They see numbers. After all, numbers are what keep politicians and representatives in power.
Confrontational protest makes an impact
“The powerful will not let you vote away their power.” My mom once sent me a meme with this quote on it and it has stuck with me ever since. And it’s true. Power corrupts, and the corrupted love their power. One example of corrupt power is congressional offices. Even though members of congress pretend to hear their constituents, they don’t actually have to see them in person. They see numbers. After all, numbers are what keep politicians and representatives in power.
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