Asset Sales: Orcon

Written By: - Date published: 6:08 pm, April 15th, 2013 - 8 comments
Categories: business, Privatisation, same old national - Tags:

It was announced today that Government-owned Orcon was sold off last Friday.

A group of NZ investors have bought it off SOE Kordia.

There’s been speculation since last year that it was being readied for sale (I’ve meant to write a post on it a number of times…).  I think we might need an OIA into whether there’s a government agenda and pressure here.

Last October they merged with another Kordia offshoot (Kordia Networks), and shed dozens of jobs, including their call-centre moving to Manila.  In theory this meant it was being pulled tighter to parent Kordia, in reality it was streamlining it for sale.  In February Kordia CEO Scott Bartlett said he’d never get rid of the Orcon brand.

A lot of customers (including me) have noticed the significant drop in service this “streamlining” has entailed.  Their call-centre in Manila has apparently sucked all their resources, leaving other support systems overloaded.  Mistakes seem more frequent and more slow to be resolved.  But no doubt costs are down, which looks good to a new buyer.

So we’ve lost another Government asset with merely an afterthought of a note to mention it.  Kordia will no doubt return a bigger dividend to the government this year – giving a temporary boost to the books – as this government keeps selling golden-egg laying geese and making us all poorer in the long-term.

8 comments on “Asset Sales: Orcon ”

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  1. Lanthanide 1
    15 April 2013 at 6:14 pm

    National promised to only sell the power companies, so another lie by Key?

  2. Draco T Bastard 2
    15 April 2013 at 6:21 pm

    About the only reason why I was still there was because it was state owned. Time to move on I suppose.

  3. infused 3
    15 April 2013 at 6:27 pm

    lol, Orcons been bleeding money for ages. Orcon bought iserv, another dead duck. They have been trying to integrate the two companies for like 3 years and gave up.

    You’d be brave to buy it.

    “…leaving other support systems overloaded”

    Their ‘support’ services were so old and still running on original hardware of memory serves me right.

    Their entire system is fucked.

    It’s good to see you lot really have no understanding of why these things happen. Must be some big conspiracy….. ooooOoOo….

  4. Tim 4
    15 April 2013 at 8:58 pm

    Kordia should never have been allowed to evolve into the entity it has for a start. And there’s one piece of infrastructure that should remain in public hands – preferably operated in non-SOE fashion.

    Having just said that – the NActs will try and flik it asfast as they possibly can – but buyer beware.

  5. millsy 5
    15 April 2013 at 11:19 pm

    This is a shame. Orcon and Kordia could have been moulded into a genuine rival for Telecom and Vodafone/TelstraClear (who managed to pick up NZR’s fibre network for a song).

    • Draco T Bastard 5.1
      16 April 2013 at 10:37 am

      Not really as Orcon was limited to using Telecom’s network in most places. They do have a lot of their own network in place in CBDs and spanning the country – it’s part of the added costs of competition.

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