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Strong foundations. Enduring outcomes. Independent, research led and invested alongside our clients. Aurellan partners with Wilshire to deliver global insight with local care and expertise. Contact Us About Aurellan Aurellan Asset Management is an independent New Zealand-owned investment company which provides tailored investment management services to wholesale and institutional investors as well as managed fund solutions. The word Aurellan captures the spirit, goals and vision of our founders. Aurum for gold, auvum for the longevity of our time horizon and elan for the energy we aim to bring to every client interaction. Aurellan exists to serve our clients with dedication and clarity. We bring energy and care to every relationship, ensuring that our solutions are tailored to the unique objectives and responsibilities of each investor we work with. Built on experience Our team has a track record in managing billions of dollars for some of the largest institutions and families in New Zealand. Aurellan has a partnership with Wilshire Advisors LLC "Wilshire" within the New Zealand market. Wilshire was founded in 1972 in Santa Monica, CA with around 300 staff globally and offices in the USA, UK, Singapore, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and China. Independent decisions We are not affiliated with any investment banks, brokers nor do we employ our own investment teams, allowing us to build portfolios which utilise specialist managers and strategies which Aurellan and Wilshire believe are truly the best fit and most appropriate. Aligned with you Our owners are employees and investors in our portfolios aligning us with our investors and enabling our proposition to be uniquely independent, impartial, unencumbered by conflicts and truly long term. We have a strong culture of co-investment alongside our clients. Contact Aurellan Asset Management, Level 6, Aon Centre, 1 Willis St, Wellington Anthony Edmonds, Director - Business Development and Clients 021 499 466 anthony@aurellan.com Subscribe to our research or send us a message First Name Last Name Email I want to subscribe to receive Aurellan research Message Send Thanks for submitting!

Have a question or need assistance? Feel free to reach out to us through the contact form below. We'll get back to you as soon as possible. First Name Last Name Email Message I want to subscribe to receive Aurellan research Send Thanks for submitting! Complaints Aurellan Asset Management Limited is a member of the IFSO Scheme, an independent external dispute resolution scheme for financial service providers in New Zealand. We take complaints seriously and aim to resolve any concerns fairly, promptly and transparently. If you have a complaint, please contact us first. If we are unable to resolve the matter to your satisfaction, you may be able to refer your complaint to the IFSO Scheme. The IFSO Scheme is free for consumers and can be contacted on: Phone: 0800 888 202 Email: info@ifso.nz Website: www.ifso.nz Get in Touch

< Back Edmonds, Di Leva venture brings $1.5 trillion US firm to NZ investors David Chaplin - Investment News NZ 14 Sept 2025 The new investment firm founded by Anthony Edmonds and Chris Di Leva has confirmed the US-headquartered Wilshire Advisors as its global partner. Full article is available here Previous Next

< Back Aurellan Intergenerational Thinking Podcast: Backing the next generation of NZ companies 29 Jun 2026 What does it take to back the companies shaping New Zealand's future? In the latest episode of the Aurellan Intergenerational Thinking podcast, Aurellan CEO, Chris Di Leva sat down with Fi Foster of Movac and Andrew Bascand of Harbour Asset Management to explore how innovation gets funded, and where it comes from. Fi took us inside the venture process: how Movac identifies and backs companies like Dawn Aerospace, Crimson, Hnry and Auror, and what conviction looks like when you are investing at an early stage of a company's lifecycle. Andrew offered a complementary lens from listed markets, reminding us that breakthrough innovation often emerges from the most unexpected places. Case in point: Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, now an index heavyweight, began life within an appliance manufacturer. Worth tuning in if you think about where the next generation of value is created. Watch on YouTube or listen on your favourite podcasting platform. 🎧 Apple Podcasts → https://lnkd.in/e3Nbn55g 🟢 Spotify → https://lnkd.in/eecjqM_V 📻 iHeartRadio → https://lnkd.in/eH2U_FBN Previous Next

< Back Anthony Edmonds appears on "Beat the bank" podcast 14 Oct 2026 Anthony Edmonds appears as a guest on the “Beat the bank” podcast series and talks about his career, the businesses he has built, Aurellan, and the importance of smart portfolio construction. Previous Next

< Back Aurellan Intergenerational Thinking Podcast featuring Causeway Capital CEO Sarah Ketterer 12 Mar 2026 The ups and downs of 25 years of value investing In the most recent Aurellan Asset Management podcast, Rachel Weld interviews Sarah Ketterer, co-founder of Causeway Capital Management, discussing the firm's evolution from its inception to overseeing approximately US$75 billion today. Sarah speaks openly about: • the ups and downs of building an investment business • the lessons learned along the way • how Causeway has structured itself to endure across generations Causeway is one of the underlying managers in the Aurellan Global Shares Fund, alongside Loomis, Sayles & Company and Los Angeles Capital Management 🎧 Watch below on YouTube 🎙️ Or listen on: Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/show/6E4lg41DEoCcbytV3IiMwZ Apple – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/intergenerational-thinking-with-aurellan/id1845060554 iHeart – https://iheart.com/podcast/299614352 Previous Next

< Back The shark already has teeth: Looking at the facts around capital gains tax in NZ Anthony Edmonds 3 Nov 2025 A dead shark can still bite — and so can New Zealand’s tax system. Our latest article unpacks why the real question isn’t “should we have a capital-gains tax?” but “how far will Inland Revenue go with the one we already have?” A little-known fact: don’t touch a dead shark’s teeth. In the early days of YouTube, I remember watching a seasoned fisherman get bitten by a dead shark. You would think, given his profession, he had read Eugene Kaplan’s Field Guide to Coral Reefs , which cautions against putting your hand in the mouth of a dead shark as it can, but not always, result in a reflex biting action. It is with the same amusement I find myself watching the political debate raging around whether New Zealand should adopt capital gains tax. This reflects that it appears a key fact being completely lost on our esteemed politicians is that New Zealand already has a capital gains tax regime. However, just like the dead shark, it bites selectively. Under existing tax law, if an investor acquires an asset with the intent of selling it for profit, any resulting gain is taxable income. The complexity lies not in the rule itself, but in how intent is interpreted by Inland Revenue. Take for instance crypto assets like bitcoin and precious metals like gold. Inland Revenue are quite happy to take a tough line stance and say that the only possible “intent” in buying these assets is to make a capital gain when they are sold. They then insist that people pay tax on any capital gains. I assume their view stems from the fact that these assets pay no income or dividends, so Inland Revenue has simply jumped to its own conclusions about intent. Before the introduction of Portfolio Investment Entity (PIE) regime in 2007, the same reasoning applied to New Zealand share funds: since they were in the business of investing in shares, Inland Revenue said their intent must have been to profit from capital gains. When the PIE regime was enacted, the Government explicitly exempted New Zealand share PIE funds from capital-gains tax to give investors — particularly in KiwiSaver — certainty of this tax treatment. The exemption itself is clear evidence that New Zealand has long operated a capital gains tax framework. In contrast, when it comes to individuals investing directly in New Zealand shares, Inland Revenue’s interpretation of “intent” becomes less consistent. But let’s dig into the validity of this. The wider share market, as represented by the S&P/NZX 50 Index, has a weighted average dividend yield around 3.0% (as at 30 September 2025) and some shares, much like bitcoin and gold, do not pay a dividend at all. Given the risks associated with investing in NZ shares it would be impossible to justify why any rational person would invest in shares unless they expected to get a materially higher return than just the dividend yield. The only other source of returns is capital gains, so this fact supports taking a position of saying that all investors holding direct shares must have an intent to make capital gains. Yet IR has tended to take a more lenient view. That leniency is not guaranteed. Inland Revenue recently got a taste of success in terms of taking a harder line around collecting tax. Recently, the media published comments from Inland Revenue saying it had pulled in $12 of tax for every $1 it had spent on chasing money from people. Undoubtedly Inland Revenue would enjoy a great influx of tax revenue if it took a harder line in terms of testing people’s intent when they invest into assets like NZ shares. Those investors in bitcoin and gold will be able to attest to the fact that Inland Revenue is quite capable of imposing its own view about what an underlying investor's intent is in owning assets. I am picking that there would be very few people who would be hugely surprised if Inland Revenue took a hard line in saying that it believed investors had a natural intent to make gains when they invest directly in NZ shares. This reflects that to argue otherwise undermines the logical investment case as to why you would hold these more-risky assets. Further, in a modern world Inland Revenue can quickly see where all the investors are who own things like NZ shares directly. This information resides on the administration platforms used by wealth advisers, online share platforms, and in the registry systems of our listed companies. When Inland Revenue decided that investors in crypto assets like bitcoin should pay tax on their capital gains, they proved to be very effective and efficient in quickly chasing down information on individuals who had made gains. Investors in PIE funds can take comfort in knowing their capital gains on New Zealand equities remain tax-free. Investors holding New Zealand shares directly are needlessly taking a risk that Inland Revenue remains lenient when it comes to forming a view about what their “intent” might be. In future, one option that politicians could take is to say “rather than introducing new taxes, let’s just agree that the intent of this group of investors must be to make capital gains.” It is simple to imagine a politician chewing the ear of the Inland Revenue management team about taxing the gains people had made on different components of their investment portfolio. And this brings us back to politics. While the headlines scream that capital gains taxes might be being introduced, this isn’t that factually correct. What is being proposed are rules around a “fact pattern” which would then result in a person needing to pay tax on certain assets. For example, Labour’s proposed property tax is just a set of rules around a “fact-pattern” that will result in a person needing to pay tax on their capital gains. They are saying that in this set of circumstances the new rules result in the fact that someone has a primary intent of making gains. The real truth about capital gains is that policy wise, the shark already has teeth and even has plenty of hands in its mouth. It just hasn’t bitten….yet. Previous Next

< Back The SPIVA NZ Scorecard's own methodology, applied to passive NZ equity funds, produces the same flawed result Anthony Edmonds 18 Sept 2026 SPIVA's new mid-year Scorecard says 80% of active New Zealand equity funds “underperformed” the S&P/NZX 50 Index. Applying the same method to passive funds built to track the market produces a number that is just as striking, and just as unreliable. This is a short follow-up to the article titled “Index washing: how dirty data pollutes the NZ active (and passive) environment” that Aurellan Asset Management wrote about the SPIVA New Zealand Scorecard. In this follow-up article we comment on S&P Dow Jones Indices' recently published mid-year 2026 SPIVA New Zealand Scorecard data. We applied the same methodology that produced the prominent “underperformance” claim in that Scorecard to a small sample of passive New Zealand equity funds. The purpose of doing this is to highlight what we believe are flaws both in the underlying methodology and in the claim itself. SPIVA'S MID-YEAR 2026 CLAIM: NEW ZEALAND EQUITY FUNDS “As a result, 80% of funds underperformed the benchmark.” This quote comes from S&P Dow Jones Indices' SPIVA New Zealand Scorecard for NZ equities, mid-year 2026 edition, covering the six months ended 30 June 2026. To generate this statistic, S&P Dow Jones Indices appears to have taken a broad set of actively managed Australasian equity funds and compared their performance against a single index, the S&P/NZX 50 Index. No consideration appears to have been given to each individual fund's actual benchmark and mandate, which can vary widely across the universe of funds. We think this methodology is fundamentally flawed and produces unbalanced, meaningless results. When repeated in quotes like “80% of (active) funds underperformed the benchmark,” this can lead readers to the wrong conclusions about the success, or otherwise, of active management. This is a mirror repeat of the same issue we raised in our earlier article, “Index washing: how dirty data pollutes the NZ active (and passive) environment,” which focused on the 2025 SPIVA New Zealand Scorecard. THE MIRROR TEST, PART TWO In our original article we turned the Scorecard's own method back on New Zealand-available passive global equity funds. We found that 86% of a sample of index and passive global equity funds “underperformed” the S&P World Index over the three years to 31 July 2026, not because those funds are poorly run, but because none of them are actually designed to track that particular index. We concluded it was wrong to describe this as underperformance. To once again demonstrate the flaws in this approach, we applied the same methodology and index that S&P Dow Jones Indices used to assess active management to 11 passive New Zealand equity funds, using their returns for the 12 months to 31 August 2026. We chose this group of passive funds because the one-year return data was readily available, not because they represent the full population of passive New Zealand equity funds. The S&P/NZX 50 Index (Gross) returned 7.63% for the year to 31 August 2026. The result: 9 of the 11 passive funds (82%) “underperformed” the S&P/NZX 50 Index over the 1-year period. Sources: respective managers' published fact sheets and fund updates, and performance data published on www.investnow.co.nz , one-year returns to 31 August 2026. This table is provided to illustrate a methodological point. AN EXAMPLE: SIMPLICITY Simplicity's NZ Share Fund returned 6.73% for the year to 31 August 2026, against 8.40% for the S&P/NZX 50 Index (Gross), an “underperformance” of almost 1.7%. Taken on its own, that looks like the kind of gap used as evidence that a fund, or its manager, isn't doing its job. But Simplicity's own disclosed market index for this fund is the Morningstar New Zealand (total return) Index, including imputation credits, not the S&P/NZX 50. This tells us the fund is constructed, managed and benchmarked against a different, equally legitimate, measure of the New Zealand market. In our view, describing this fund as having “underperformed” a benchmark it doesn't use, and was never designed to track, risks giving readers a misleading impression of how the fund is actually managed. THE POINT, STATED PLAINLY Analysing a fund's performance against a specific index or benchmark that it does not actually use tells us nothing about the success, or otherwise, of how that fund has been managed. Furthermore, using a single index to assess a broad collection of funds that have a wide range of benchmarks doesn't produce meaningful information or insight. It certainly doesn't produce results that can be used to claim whether, collectively, a broad group of managers has over or underperformed. The same is true regardless of whether we are considering active or passive funds. A passive fund not beating the S&P/NZX 50 doesn't mean it's a poor tracker. It may be tracking a different index entirely, as Simplicity is. In our sample, 73% “underperformed” a single benchmark for essentially the same reasons active managers might: differing index providers, differing constituent weightings, and differing mandates. Demonstrating that a single benchmark can't be used to fairly judge a broad set of passive managers tracking different indices highlights why the same flawed single-benchmark approach can't be used to assess a broad range of active managers. SOME KEY POINTS TO NOTE We used one-year returns to 31 August 2026 to measure our sample of passive New Zealand equity funds, while SPIVA's “80% of funds underperformed” quote relates to its “New Zealand Equity Funds” category over the six months to 30 June 2026, a category we believe may in fact be Australasian in composition (see below). This is a different period and, on SPIVA's side, arguably a different fund universe. We used it because it was the return data we could readily obtain, not because it produces a more favourable comparison, and we want that limitation to be clear rather than buried in a footnote. It is also worth noting that the underlying Morningstar data set SPIVA's “New Zealand Equity Funds” category uses appears to be Australasian in composition, not New Zealand-only, and includes funds that invest in Australian equities (like trans-Tasman equity funds). In our view, judging funds of this nature against a single benchmark composed entirely of New Zealand equities, the S&P/NZX 50, is flawed. There is a further distortion worth flagging. Academic research we cited in our earlier “Index washing” article (Cremers, Fulkerson and Riley) found that SPIVA's US Scorecard counts every closed or merged fund as an underperformer, regardless of its actual results before closing, a bias that inflates reported underperformance over longer periods. The New Zealand Scorecard appears to apply the same convention. Its own methodology notes state that funds which do not survive the measurement period are treated as underperformers, alongside funds that survived but failed to beat the benchmark. SPIVA's own data shows why this matters. Of the NZ-based global equity funds that existed at the start of the 15 years to 30 June 2026, 68% have closed or merged over that period. On SPIVA's own methodology, 68% of NZ-based global equity funds would be said to have “underperformed” over a 15-year period, even in a scenario where every single open fund outperformed over that same period . This clearly highlights the problem that Cremers et al identified. One issue we are still investigating is whether a fund that Morningstar reclassifies is treated as having “closed,” which would potential further distort the results. THE ASK, UNCHANGED This update doesn't change what we asked the FMA to test in our original briefing. Our ask is whether the Scorecard's headline claims, and the claims of anyone repeating them commercially, have a reasonable basis under the unsubstantiated representation standard in the fair dealing provisions of the Financial Markets Conduct Act. It adds a current, concrete example: S&P Dow Jones Indices' own new mid-year number, and a same-method test showing the identical mechanism can manufacture a headline “underperformance” statistic out of funds explicitly built to track the market. We are not asking the FMA to accept our conclusion. We are asking it to assess whether SPIVA's mid-year 2026 headline claims, and this mirror-test result, both have a reasonable basis, and whether repeating either commercially, without the context set out here, amounts to fair dealing. THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE ACTIVE-PASSIVE DEBATE At Aurellan Asset Management we offer our clients both active and passive funds and solutions, and believe that both have a place within clients' portfolios. Our comments are not designed to defend active management, or to try and claim that active managers have, in general, added value. Our focus in raising these issues is about data integrity. New Zealanders make real decisions, including KiwiSaver and retirement savings decisions, on the strength of headline statistics like these. When a statistic as widely repeated as “80% of funds underperformed” is built on a single-benchmark comparison that doesn't reflect the mandates of the funds it measures, the result can mislead investors regardless of which side of the active-passive debate it appears to support. That is the concern we are asking the FMA, and S&P Dow Jones Indices, to address, not who wins the active versus passive argument. A NOTE TO THE ARTICLE SPIVA mid-year 2026 figures are drawn from S&P Dow Jones Indices' published New Zealand Scorecard ( spglobal.com/spdji ). We recommend verifying the exact figures against the primary document before relying on them. They have not been independently audited against it here. Statements about whether particular conduct breaches the fair dealing provisions or FMA guidance are the author's opinion, formed on the material set out here. They are not legal advice or a finding of any kind. The author is not a lawyer. Sample and period: the 11-fund comparison uses funds selected for readily available public return data, not the full population of New Zealand passive/index equity funds, a limitation we are disclosing, not hiding. Fund returns are to 31 August 2026. SPIVA's mid-year figures are to 30 June 2026. The two-month gap between these periods is a genuine limitation of this comparison and should be read as such. Fund data was sourced from respective managers' published fact sheets and fund updates, and www.investnow.co.nz . Simplicity's benchmark is as stated on its website. Aurellan offers both actively managed and index-tracking strategies to its clients. Nothing here should be read as a general criticism of index investing, passive management, or any named manager. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance. Previous Next

< Back Aurellan Intergenerational Thinking Podcast featuring co-Founder Campbell Gower Anthony Edmonds and Campbell Gower 21 Oct 2025 In this second episode of the Aurellan Podcast, Campbell shares how he helped build enduring New Zealand brands like Charlie’s Juice, Mountain Buggy and phil&teds — and why the Gower Family Office chose to back Aurellan Asset Management. The latest episode of the Aurellan podcast is available on the following platforms: Apple Spotify iHeart Radio Or view below: Previous Next

< Back Aurellan Intergenerational Thinking Podcast featuring co-Founder Anthony Edmonds Anthony Edmonds and Chris Di Leva 10 Oct 2025 Aurellan CEO and CIO, Chris Di Leva interviews fellow co-Founder Anthony Edmonds. This conversation covers Anthony's lucky break which got him into investments to founding and exiting three successful investment businesses. View on the following platforms: Youtube Apple Spotify iHeart Radio Previous Next

< Back Di Leva, Edmonds partner in new investment management business - Investment News David Chaplin - Investment News NZ 20 Aug 2025 After months of speculation, former Apex NZ chief, Anthony Edmonds, has emerged with a new investment management firm to be headed by ex Harbour multi-asset specialist, Chris Di Leva. Read the full article here Previous Next

< Back The investment tax hack Sir Michael Cullen probably never meant to give us Anthony Edmonds 29 May 2026 Budget 2026 doubles a threshold that has sat untouched for years, and in doing so creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity for long-term investors in New Zealand. It is not often that a finance minister leaves office having quietly gifted New Zealand families one of the most powerful tax-free investment structures in the country, without apparently meaning to. But that, in essence, is what Sir Michael Cullen did when he set the Foreign Investment Fund (FIF) de minimis threshold at its original level. The threshold was designed to spare small investors from complex tax calculations. What it also did, for anyone paying close enough attention, was create a permanently tax-exempt compounding vehicle of genuinely extraordinary potential. Governments of both flavours came and went. Inflation rose. Markets rose considerably more. The threshold sat there, untouched, like a leftover’s container at the back of the fridge that nobody thought to open. Budget 2026 has finally opened the fridge. The current Government has doubled the threshold to $100,000, framing it as simplification. It is not wrong. But for anyone who understands what compound growth does over a very long investment horizon, it is rather more than that. Those who know me will raise an eyebrow here. I have spent most of my career arguing that PIE funds are the single best structure available to New Zealand investors, and I stand by that. But this significant opportunity sits outside the PIE world entirely, as it is simply too good to ignore. In my own portfolio, I am doing exactly what this article outlines, while also still investing in my favoured PIE funds. The mathematics and financial outcomes in real dollars are too compelling to ignore. And for the record, I hate the "de minimis” threshold, outside of exploiting the loophole it provides. While the Finance Minster said increasing this threshold made "it simpler and fairer for Kiwis to invest offshore”, my preference would be for tax incentives that made it fairer and simpler for Kiwi’s to invest into New Zealand regulated funds (including ones that then invested offshore) and businesses. Surely this would be better for our economy, especially because incentives and loopholes create crazy outcomes and opportunities, which is the entire reason to read on! The tax rules, and stay with me through the complexity…… The FIF regime, universally known as FIF because nobody has time to say Foreign Investment Fund twice, taxes New Zealand residents on offshore investments by applying a deemed return each year, which is termed the Fair Dividend Rate method, or Comparative Value method. FIF exists to stop investors accumulating wealth offshore by never realising gains or receiving dividends. However, if the total original cost of all offshore FIF investments is $100,000 or less, the FIF rules do not apply at all. Below that threshold, tax only applies to actual dividends received. This “de minimis” threshold was set by Labour Government around 2007, and left untouched through administrations of both parties until Budget 2026 doubled it. I am picking that nobody ran the numbers on 65-year compounding scenarios. Critically the threshold is cost price, not market value. The $100,000 “de minimis” threshold is based on the original purchase price of the directly held global shares, not the current value. A portfolio bought for $99,000 that grows to millions of dollars remains permanently below the threshold forever. So, let’s see how big a benefit this could be! The accumulating ETF and why structure matters A below the $100,000 threshold investment is exempt from FIF. That eliminates one tax. Two remain, being capital gains and dividends. New Zealand does not appear to have a general capital gains tax, at least one that is actively enforced for listed shares (more on this later), so growth over 65 years is untaxed on sale. Dividends are handled by choosing an accumulating ETF, which is an offshore listed fund that reinvests all dividends internally rather than distributing them. No cash reaches the investor. Nothing to report. Nothing to pay. The result is that a $99,000 investment in an accumulating global equity ETF generates no taxable income in New Zealand for its entire life, reflecting that its purchase price is below the $100,000 threshold. No FIF. No dividends. No capital gains. Investors then can sit back and enjoy the accumulating tax-free returns for ever. It compounds undisturbed into perpetuity. This is not a scheme. It is Parliament’s rules, applied as written nearly 20 years ago. The numbers. Drum roll please! The MSCI World Index has returned approximately 9.4% per annum over its history when dividends have been reinvested. This is across wars, recessions, oil shocks, financial crises, and pandemics. The market recovered from all of them. Here is what $99,000 invested and left entirely alone grows to over 65 years: Years of investment At 9.4% p.a. (MSCI World historical) At 8.0% p.a. (conservative) Year 10 $243,113 $213,734 Year 20 $597,010 $461,435 Year 30 $1,466,070 $996,203 Year 40 $3,600,212 $2,150,728 Year 50 $8,840,998 $4,643,260 Year 65 $34,022,101 $14,729,205 Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Gross of fees and taxes. Nominal figures. Illustrative only. At the MSCI World historical return rate, $99,000 becomes $34 million over 65 years. At a cautious 8%, still $14.7 million. The arithmetic is correct. This is simply what happens when a reasonable return meets a very long-time horizon and the discipline not to interfere. As Einstein once put it, compounding is the eighth wonder of the world. Some important things to get right The strategy is simple but as always, the execution requires a bit of care. First up, getting qualified tax and investment advice is always important. A second element is keeping detailed records showing NZ dollar acquisition cost of the offshore share investment, as this might be critical way out in the future to show that the investment was made below the $100,000 threshold. Finally, and most importantly, is never buying any more FIF investments. Any additional purchase would increase the cost basis and trigger FIF tax across the entire directly held offshore share portfolio. The trick here is to invest in an offshore share asset like an ETF once, below the $100,000 threshold, and leave it entirely alone. You can sell some of it, but never ever buy any more. One risk worth knowing about One qualification needs to be made to the statement that New Zealand does not tax capital gains. Under existing law, gains are taxable where the primary intent of acquiring an asset was to profit on its sale. Inland Revenue has already applied this logic to bitcoin and gold with some enthusiasm. An accumulating ETF pays no dividends, which leaves the door ajar to the same argument. In practice this risk appears unlikely for a broadly held global equity fund, and Inland Revenue has shown no appetite to go there. But it is a risk worth knowing about. For a fuller explanation of this risk read my article The shark already has teeth . But wait, there’s more. This strategy is the first step. Once a direct $99,000 accumulating ETF investment is established, New Zealand’s PIE fund regime offers a powerful and complementary structure for the rest of a portfolio. The Aurellan team will progressively be publishing a series of articles on the substantial tax advantages PIE funds provide, and these are equally underappreciated. The bottom line Sir Michael Cullen set the FIF threshold at its original level. Budget 2026 has doubled it. Neither decision was made with the long-term investor in mind. The mathematics, however, do not care about intent. An investor who puts $99,000 into a low-cost accumulating global equity ETF and never touches it again could be sitting on a genuinely life-changing sum decades later. No FIF. No dividend tax. No capital gains tax. Sixty-five years of uninterrupted compounding. In my own family, we are doing exactly this. The discipline to leave it alone for six and a half decades is the harder part. But then, the best investment decisions usually are. The logic is simple: $99,000 invested in the right structure, left alone, could become something extraordinary. The hard part is not the investing. It is the leaving alone. Sir Michael would probably appreciate the irony. He spent his career trying to make New Zealanders better off. It turns out he may have succeeded in ways that nobody at Treasury ever ran a spreadsheet on. Important Notice Please note this article is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to be tax advice. Previous Next