Business Profile
While New Zealand's economy has always had an agricultural base - wool, milk and meat exports - Auckland today is a city with more of a business and services-oriented economy. The business directory shows familiar corporate names, such as IBM, 3M, Microsoft, Cisco, Merrill Lynch, KPMG, Citibank and Price Waterhouse. The city's mainstays are business and financial services, manufacturing, transport and communications, and the trade and hospitality industries. These last two reflect the importance of tourism to the country as a whole, and to its biggest city. Auckland also contains the country's biggest port, handling 50% of container traffic.

Tourism is New Zealand's single biggest revenue earner, currently estimated to be worth roughly four billion New Zealand Dollars to the country. This is on a steady increase, with Auckland reaping many of the benefits, thanks to the city's high world profile as host of the recent Americas Cup.

The city's GDP is almost 17 million New Zealand Dollars per annum, and thanks to current low interest and exchange rates, it is estimated that this will increase at a steady rate of about 4% per annum for the next three years. This is 1% higher than the growth anticipated for the country as a whole, which reflects the constant population drift towards Auckland. This drift does, however, contribute to the city's unemployment rate of 6.9%, which is high compared to 6.1% nationwide. The city contains 10% of New Zealand's population, and that population on average is younger, more highly paid and better educated than the population generally. The last major census in 1996 showed, for example, that 19% of Auckland's residents had a university degree, exactly twice the national average.

Asian visitors have traditionally accounted for almost one-fifth of New Zealand's tourists, so the 30% drop in visitor numbers at the start of 1999 was attributed to the Asian financial crisis. Economic recovery, following the impact of this crisis, has naturally been welcomed - tourism arrivals at Auckland airport rose by 8.7% over 1999, and retail spending rose by 4.2% for the year ending 30 September 1999.

Business Etiquette
Conducting business in Auckland is no different from that in any other major Western city. There are no cultural pitfalls to watch out for, and the only noticeable difference lies with the nature of the New Zealand people. They are notably friendlier, more informal and more relaxed. Although ties and jackets are worn, jackets may soon be discarded and shirt-sleeves rolled up. A more informal dress code also exists in restaurants and bars, although the smartest restaurants may still expect a jacket and tie to be worn.

Punctuality is appreciated, but no-one will be offended if the visitor is a little late, especially at times when the traffic is busy. Invitations to dine out or to visit someone's home, are far more readily issued than in many countries, and are issued genuinely, not merely as a gesture. The native host will expect to pay for a meal or a round of drinks, but guests can step in and pay their turn without creating arguments or offence. Friendliness not formality is the Auckland watchword.

Auckland, as one of the world's great trading ports and centres of knowledge, is among the exciting possibilities of a lifetime. The world's classic cities - London, Paris, Milan, Shanghai - have been evolving for over a thousand years. Aucklanders have the good luck to live in a city- region still in its infancy - a peerless natural environment and a cosmopolitan city which is being forged from a mix of cultures. What could be more exciting for Aucklanders than to be part of a successful world city in the making? And we can have some effect on shaping it. But first we need to know what our current status is as a world city.

Many New Zealanders dismiss Auckland as impersonal, sprawling, heartless, the home of big business, clogged motorways, too many foreigners. They use J.A.F.A. Jokes (Just Another F*#@ing Aucklander) to portray Aucklanders as brazen, inward-looking, interested only in making "easy" money through property and finance dealings. Some JAFAs contain seeds of truth, such as one from a United States conference some years ago for political leaders of selected world cities. When the "Governor of Auckland" was invited to speak, three stood up, and spent the next 30 minutes explaining to perplexed delegates that Auckland was really a mix of cities under seven Mayors (with no governor at all)!

Cities or villages? Residents do not identify themselves as "Aucklander's" but as coming from a particular suburb or "village". It is only when they travel to competing world cities - Sydney, Melbourne, London, Milan, that Auckland-is-a-community values are displayed.

Indeed, anyone who explores Auckland's vast urban landscape swiftly discovers that this is not one world city but a cluster of competing villages the driving force of which is an incubator of small-medium service, businesses. A city of 100 villages, linked together by spaghetti- like motorways and a coat hanger harbour bridge!

Auckland's world city claims face other difficulties. Most world cities have a historical, urban heart, stunning architecture, memorable cultural and scientific places of "achievement" to visit, and above everything an effective public transport system so that people can get around quickly and socially. Auckland has none of these! Instead, ribbon low-rise development is the rule and high-rise the exception. Aucklanders, even the poorest, have cars, giving them a mobility and access to beaches and rural pursuits that most Japanese and Europeans can only envy. Auckland's urban growth has created a new form of human settlement, the "city-region", with its relatively fewer people spread over a relatively larger area. In practice there is little community or cohesion within Auckland's city-region. The reality is a sprawl that crosses long-drawn political boundaries.

Most Aucklanders live in the suburbs of one "city-village" but work in a different city to that in which they live. In short, the city-region is the sum of unequal parts: the original, now enfeebled core-city and suburbs that have grown so big they have become "edge cities", with enough residents and employers to feel themselves autonomous.

Yet Auckland's claim to be a prosperous world city cannot be denied. Auckland operates as a single economy and frequently emerges near the top of international surveys comparing the business environment of competing world cities; e.g. Fortune magazine (23 November 1998) listed Auckland in the top five cities for doing business in the Asia- Australasian region - behind Asia's big four (Singapore, Tokyo, Osaka, Hong Kong) but ahead of Sydney, Melbourne, Seoul and Taipei.

Success has come because Aucklanders place a high value on self-sufficiency; what business leader Douglas Myers describes in this book as "rugged individualism." When Aucklanders decide what they want, nothing can stop them. More individual world sporting champions come from Auckland than probably any other comparable world city.

Since the late 1 960s, innovative, well-educated and pragmatic Aucklanders have transformed and diversified the city-region economy from dependence on the primary processing of a limited range of goods for the British market to a modern diversified economy. And Auckland has continued to grow through the turbulence of international trade shocks and recessions, and despite its structural inadequacies.

Against that background, the sustained growth of Auckland as a unique world city seems assured. But it will depend to a large degree, as the first 150 years have, on securing a steady inward flow of foreign investment and more immigrants with vision and dreams wanting to relocate to one of the world's best cities for doing business.

Business Information
NZ Quick Reference Business Guide
NZ Companies Office

Economic Scene
National Business Review
New Zealand Stock Exchange