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…
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.
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 »
A year ago when I interviewed Radius managing director Chris Holmes, we discussed the lack of liquidity in the shares and investors’ frustration at being “locked in” to an illiquid investment.
Chris explained that the Board, which is led by Tony Hannon, had been looking at the unlisted market as an option for introducing liquidity to the shares. Holmes said he wanted to see it given priority on the agenda at the following board meeting, and that would be his recommendation to the Board.
“The one thing I can see being a necessary problem to solve is getting some liquidity there for people that want to get out.”
They’ve had a good year to address this issue now, so how do you get your money out of Radius?
The short answer is… Read the rest of this entry »
It has been a year since I reported on my interview with Radius Properties’ managing director Chris Holmes, just prior to Radius’ AGM on 23 September 2008.
Here we are a year later, with Radius’ latest AGM scheduled for Monday 28 September 2009. Has anything changed in the past year?
Most definitely!
Unfortunately, they are not pretty changes.
Last year Chris Holmes explained that rather than pay dividends to investors, Radius preferred to spend the money on property developments. The idea was to create capital growth in the share price as opposed to paying direct income in the form of dividends.
Let’s see how they did… Read the rest of this entry »
OPI Pacific Finance, better known as MFS Pacific Finance, has this morning been put into receivership. This follows the Supreme Court of Queensland’s order to put Octaviar Ltd, OPI’s parent, into liquidation.
A major factor in the demise of OPI Pacific Finance, and its sister company Vestar, was the extensive related party dealings within the wider Octaviar (previously MFS) group.
In 2003 MFS, which wanted to expand into New Zealand, bought Pacific Finance and renamed it MFS Pacific Finance.
In December 2006 MFS bought Northplan from its Ferrari-driving founder Kelvin Sims and renamed it Vestar.
By Stuart Washington – reprinted with permission.
The financial planning industry has a series of dirty little secrets that make investment banks look like paragons of virtue. And that’s pretty hard to do in this day and age.
Dirty little secret #1
VOV understands that the current situation with the Vestar court case is as follows… Read the rest of this entry »
