Contact Energy chief financial officer Mark Elliott has resigned to take up a job with Australian parent Origin Energy.

Big cashflow boost for Contact in 2014 as capital projects wind back.

Small- and medium-sized businesses will be able to put their annual electricity consumption out to tender for the best price under the next phase of the Electricity Authority’s award-winning What’s My Number? campaign.

Shares in Contact Energy, the power company half owned by Australia’s Origin Energy, fell after the NZX said it would only recognise the ‘pure free float’ of shares available for trading when it determines index weightings.

NZX has gone with the popular choice and is switching its index weightings to a ‘pure free float’, meaning only stock not held in a majority stake is counted.

Contact Energy chief executive Dennis Barnes told the New Zealand Downstream Energy conference that on aggregate the return on electricity investments did not meet commercial investor expectations.