VoV has remained silent until now on the issue of South Canterbury Finance.

Allan Hubbard has his supporters, and a vocal number of them have been protesting against the statutory management imposed by the Government on Mr & Mrs Hubbard and nine trusts and companies they run. The Hubbards are also under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, another matter that his supporters are unhappy with.

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Q&A Friday is published every Friday while there is demand. Email your questions to vern@vov.co.nz. We won’t publish your name.

Legal Case Against Vestar

Question: Can anyone give us any information regarding the class action against Vestar by Lawrence Herzog? Read the rest of this entry »

Q&A Friday is published every Friday while there is demand. Email your questions to vern@vov.co.nz. We won’t publish your name.

Today we have some news updates that have come across James Usmar’s desk this week… Read the rest of this entry »

Q&A Friday is published every Friday while there is demand. Email your questions to vern@vov.co.nz. We won’t publish your name.

How Did It Happen?

Question: Hey Vern, Firstly I’d like to say that without people like you, these white collared thieves would just simply get away with this. Good on you for carrying the torch for us. I dread getting mail about all this mess because it just brings back the pain. Our money is all gone, the guys that took it are holidaying in Hawaii or wherever, the guys that advised us to give the other guys our money have mostly changed jobs or towns and are untouchable. Am I alone in this feeling?

What I’d really like to know is Read the rest of this entry »

In our article “Q&A Friday 28 May 2010″ a reader asked the question: “The ‘A’ class has been repaid in full. I haven’t been able to find any information on what is happening with ‘B’ class debentures. Their website is well out of date and not helpful. Does anyone have any recent information?”  Read the rest of this entry »

Q&A Friday is published every Friday while there is demand. Email your questions to vern@vov.co.nz. We won’t publish your name.

St Laurence

Question: I have received a letter from Stock & Share Trading Company Pty Ltd offering to buy my class B secured debenture stock. They are offering 5 cents in the dollar. Is this a good deal? Should I take it? What would I get if I waited to get paid out by the receiver?  Read the rest of this entry »

Q&A Friday is published every Friday while there is demand. Email your questions to vern@vov.co.nz. We won’t publish your name.

Today’s Q&A is a very brief one due to the short week. Please keep your questions coming and I will add them to the list. Read the rest of this entry »

Q&A Friday is published every Friday while there is demand. Email your questions to vern@vov.co.nz. We won’t publish your name. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to our new Q&A Friday feature. I expected to be inundated with questions and you did not disappoint me! Read the rest of this entry »

I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the “Victims of Vestar” name and would like to ask for your feedback.

The name hasn’t been sitting well with me for some time. This feeling was cystallised recently in an exchange of comments with Graham who talked about “a blog which is Read the rest of this entry »

VoV has been in touch with the Frozen Funds Group, an action group working on behalf of investors in the ING Diversified Yield Fund. Here is what they have to say…

A group of us investors (+ a few advisors) banded together over a year ago to form the Frozen Funds Group. We have been battling with ING/ANZ for compensation and believe that at least partly through our efforts have achieved a Read the rest of this entry »

An article in Saturday’s Herald titled “Recession over the hump and wasn’t so bad after all, Sir Robert says” quotes Bob Jones as saying…

“Naturally the downturn wiped out the developers as downturns always have and always will, and in turn, wiped out thousands of mums’ and dads’ savings through dumb finance company lending to those developers.

“Aside from stupidity, the salient reason for this disaster was the imbalance which arose when finance companies found cash inflows easy and sensible lending options scarce. So they increased their high-risk lending to developers in the absence of other options. It’s an age-old cynical, cyclical pattern which will repeat itself within a decade.”

It’s obvious to us investors now that the reason finance companies found cash inflows so easy was Read the rest of this entry »

The NZ Herald reports today on papers filed in the High Court at New Plymouth. It quotes an elderly woman whose life savings were invested into seven failed finance companies and funds, including ones Vestar was connected with.

This will sound very familiar to Victims of Vestar members, many of whom have identical stories. Read the rest of this entry »

Following pressure from EUFA, Hon Simon Power, the Minister of Commerce, has discovered Commerce Commission officials have been providing him with false information.

EUFA has been engaged in fruitful dialogue with the Minister but frustrated for some time about the deceptive and obstructive information they say his officials are providing him.

This has culminated in Read the rest of this entry »

Special thanks to DS who observed that “Nothing is slower than the justice system” and tipped me off to the following grook by Piet Hein…

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New Plymouth firm Dennis King Law served seven sets of proceedings last week and applied to have all proceedings heard in the High Court.

The firm is the second to take action on behalf of family trusts against former directors of Vestar and members of its investment committee, including Donal Curtin, Kelvin Syms and Simon Purvis.

Barrister Lawrence Herzog represents investors in the first case and has a significant head start Read the rest of this entry »

Dunedin-based sharebroking and investment company Forsyth Barr opened a North Shore branch at the end of last year with three staff members, including non other than Pip Irwin, one of Vestar’s spruikers.

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Sandy Maier, chairman of Radius Properties wrote to shareholders on 8 December. If you are a Radius investor, you should have received a copy of this letter. For those of you who haven’t, or are interested, here are the highlights. Sandy writes…

“In spite of the concerted and determined efforts of Chris Holmes and Tony Hannon leading up to the AGM, three new directors were appointed to the RPL Board – Sherry Maier, David Glenn, and myself (the “New Directors”). The final vote at the AGM was approximately 8 million votes in favour of the New Directors to 3 million votes against.”

“The New Directors promised, if elected, to get to the bottom of the various problems within RPL and report back to shareholders fully, frankly and promptly. Unfortunately the news is not good, and your investment in RPL is at risk.”

After analysing previously unavailable company information, we are told that RPL faces some serious short term issues, including… Read the rest of this entry »

It was a very interesting Radius AGM yesterday, with vigorous discussions on both sides and some interesting revelations coming out during the course of the meeting.

David Glenn seemed to have direct access to live share registry information because twice during the meeting he queried Read the rest of this entry »

Radius investors have received two alarming letters in the last few days, one from Radius titled “Radius Properties Limited – External Interference” and one from David Glenn titled “I Believe Your Investment in Radius Properties Limited is AT RISK.”

In short, David Glenn is concerned that the current managers and directors of Radius Properties Ltd are exhibiting a continuing pattern of poor judgement, seriously prejudicing your investment in Radius.

Radius investors Delwyn & Colin Trigg have made a shareholder proposal which, after much subterfuge and obfuscation by Radius, will be voted on at the short-notice AGM on Monday 28 September 2009.

VoV has investigated the allegations very carefully and will outline in this article the background to the allegations and why VoV will be voting in favour of Delwyn & Colin Trigg’s proposal… Read the rest of this entry »