Institute of Chartered Accountants new chief executive Craig Norgate says capital markets in New Zealand are not deep enough to promote scale in businesses, but the float of State assets might improve this.
Mr Norgate is spearheading a proposal to merge the institute with its Australian counterpart to give it greater scale.
He said the New Zealand regulatory environment needs to be friendly to business and there is a gap in the capital markets.
"We've got to have enough companies of scale in our listed markets to attract pools of capital that are then available for other businesses in New Zealand that want to scale up."
Mr Norgate said a lot of capital left the country during the global financial crisis, so unless New Zealand has pools of capital, businesses in this country won't thrive.
He believes that the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and other institutional investors do not have enough of their capital allocated to New Zealand.
