VOV understands that the current situation with the Vestar court case is as follows… Read the rest of this entry »

PropertyFinance Securities will put its revised moratorium proposal to investors at a meeting in Christchurch on Monday 29 June for a vote.

On 11 June 2009 PFS mailed a massive wad of information to investors in an effort to get investors to agree to change the moratorium trust deed.

They want to do this because they have failed to honour the obligations they previously agreed to and are now in breach of their trust deed.

The directors state that they are now unlikely to achieve “repayment Read the rest of this entry »

New Zealand was ranked as the worst country in a global study of investor-friendly practices by Morningstar Fund Research. The survey looked at how countries safeguard the rights of fund investors.

Dunce of the World
New Zealand’s score of D- was the worst of all 16 countries surveyed, behind such countries as China, Taiwan, Italy, Hong Kong and Spain. Read the rest of this entry »

The New Zealand Herald ran a story today titled “Commission silences PropertyFinance“. I recommend you read it.

The story quotes Securities Commission spokesman Roger Marwick as saying:

“The Commission believes that the roadshow presentations were likely to mislead investors because they set out only the positive aspects of the restructure proposal, and only the negative aspects of the receivership option. By omitting the potential disadvantages to investors of the proposal and the potential advantages of receivership they did not provide balanced information.”

PFSL clearly does not have investors’ best interests at heart and VoV believes more strongly than ever that receivership is now the only option that will adequately safeguard our interests.

Lawrence Herzog, the barrister managing the Vestar legal case, has emailed an update on the Vestar proceedings to participants.

If you believe you are part of the Vestar legal action and do not receive the update, please email herzog@xtra.co.nz with details.

27 April 2009 update: We have received the following note from the instructing solicitor Nigel Faigan…

I confirm that Lawrence has advised me that proceedings have now been filed in the High Court at Auckland. Lawrence has sent me a note with the file number allocated by the High Court Registry.

Please update your website to show people that proceedings have been filed. Please remove my name and telephone number from the website.

Please direct any future enquiries direct to Lawrence Herzog.

The previous proposal by PropertyFinance Securities Ltd (PFSL) to swap our secured debentures for shares in the parent company Property Finance Group (PFG) has thankfully been ditched, but their latest proposal is also seriously flawed. Read the rest of this entry »

The OPI Pacific Finance moratorium now looks shaky after the Public Trustee of Queensland won its latest case against Octavier in the Brisbane Supreme Court on 6 March.

The good news is that Read the rest of this entry »

Donal Curtin, the former chairman of Vestar’s investment committee, has “resigned” as Deputy Chair of the Commerce Commission, effective from today. Read the rest of this entry »

The ex-Vestar business is being passed around faster than a ticking pass-the-parcel at an Iraqi birthday party.

This time Read the rest of this entry »

A heads up from one of our financial advisor correspondents… He has been going through the Westgate Power Centre option for his ex-Vestar clients and discovered that Vestar Read the rest of this entry »

Investors may be aware Vestar was placed into liquidation by the directors/shareholders of the company. Vestar appointed its own liquidator, which in the normal scheme of things this is not a problem.

However, the directors had a fiduciary duty of care to their clients – a matter in which we believe they dismally failed. Therefore Vestar investors who have lodged legal claims against the company should also Read the rest of this entry »

Ever wondered what subprime actually means? Do your eyes glaze over when people talk about collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)? Since it’s a slow Friday before the election, let’s have some fun… Read the rest of this entry »

Investors with money in selected frozen funds can now trade their units on a new online secondary market that went live this morning.

TradeMyUnits.co.nz offers a way for unit holders to sell their investments in frozen funds by pooling the units together and offering them to institutional buyers. Read the rest of this entry »

The number of disaffected investors to register their interest with the Exposing Unacceptable Financial Activities group in pursuing action against Vestar has grown to 248.

At a July meeting of EUFA, 45 investors gave the go-ahead to prepare a case against the now defunct Vestar financial planning group.

EUFA coordinator Suzanne Edmonds announced today that the number of investors who have registered their interest has grown to 248.

“Sadly a significant number are Read the rest of this entry »

Having already lost up to a quarter of a billion dollars in failed finance company investments, clients of the now defunct Vestar financial planning group are about to lose again.

EUFA coordinator Suzanne Edmonds is championing the rights of disaffected investors who “we believe have lost money as a result of Vestar’s negligent investment advice,” says Edmonds.

But unless investors file notification of a claim within the next ten days, the amount of compensation available to them will reduce substantially and they will lose Read the rest of this entry »

Radius is an unlisted public company that invests in health care sector property assets. It owns real assets that generate a real income.

The company also has opportunities to add value to some of its properties which have development potential. Radius managing director Chris Holmes says this is the reason shareholders’ dividend income is down. Rather than pay dividends for the past couple of quarters, Radius has spent the money on getting development sites through the resource consent process.

“In the last two weeks we’ve had the Bute Road [Browns Bay, Auckland] site resource consent come through and that’s taken a little over 18 months. Bute Road is a nice site. We’ve nearly got double the value we paid for that particular site.”

The benefit of that ultimately flows through to shareholders, but Holmes acknowledges shareholders may differ in opinion over Read the rest of this entry »

Life’s too short to get depressed for long, so here’s some good financial humour to get you smiling again…

• Thanks to the clowns at Vestar, a lot of our money is tainted. ‘Taint yours, and ‘taint mine.
• As a result, you will be stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.
• And if you are into estate planning, just remember that a will is a dead giveaway.

Feel free to add to the humour by leaving a comment below…

Two legal cases are underway, one based in New Plymouth and one in Auckland…

New Plymouth
Dennis King Law is preparing a case for Taranaki investors. They have recruited Read the rest of this entry »

Some interesting stuff has been written about Donal Curtin this week. Two in particular are worth reading…

• New Zealand Herald: Tamsyn Parker wrote a very good article titled “Curtin call brings very little response“
• Good Returns: Phil’s Blog carries an excellent article titled “Curtin enquiry arse covering“. Recommended reading.

Have a good weekend!
Verne