I didn't want to buy a finance company

[Winston001]

As for all SCF investors being covered and repaid their money - not true. My daughter's future university fees are gone. Preference shares instead of bonds. Now wallpaper. Who knew....

[aprilia_RS250]

Ah sorry - mabey I didn't read the article properly. 2 weeks sounds extreme.
Was there early termination?

Nope, you could have bought them at ~70 cents and now the old trustworthy tax payer will pay you back $1.00! Proven you're not a habitual investor of course

[davereid]

Weird as it now seems, SCFs success was its downfall. In 2002 it had $350 million invested but recently that stood at $2.4 billion. Too much flowed in for Alan Hubbard to manage and risky lending resulted with one or two managers...Alan Hubbard stands alone among finance company owners. He has put $3-400 million himself into SCF. Contrast that with Hotchins and Watson of Hanover Finance who extracted $90 million in the years before it fell over.

Absolutely.

Mr. Hubbards company had to loan the money investors placed with it, if it was to return them with a profit.

SCF as a result made some poor loan decisions. But so did every other bank and finance company.

Mr Hubbard stands alone in attempting (against the odds and with his own money) to rectify the situation.

Paradoxically, the Government Guarantee may have helped SCF to collapse. It meant they kept on getting new mom-and-pop investors, who didn't bother checking out the company - they had no need to as it was government guaranteed. It meant they could keep on making shaky loans. And the cap on protection at $250,000 meant they lost overnight all their big corporate investors.

[avgas]

Nope, you could have bought them at ~70 cents and now the old trustworthy tax payer will pay you back $1.00! Proven you're not a habitual investor of course

Bloody hell, 42% return. Nice.
Sell motherfucker SELL.

[Forest]

As for all SCF investors being covered and repaid their money - not true. My daughter's future university fees are gone. Preference shares instead of bonds. Now wallpaper. Who knew....

Most of the SCF preference shares were placed through Forsyth Barr.

You're not the first person to get shafted by the tartan mafia.

[mashman]

pfff... give them the money and stop fucking about... no i'm not happy about it... but keep to the script and tell whichever pack of wankers that are looking for loopholes to back the fuck off and let's not waste any more money eh!!! Anyone know who's asking the question "Did SCF observe terms of scheme?"

[HenryDorsetCase]

As for all SCF investors being covered and repaid their money - not true. My daughter's future university fees are gone. Preference shares instead of bonds. Now wallpaper. Who knew....

suck.

my sympathy.

[avgas]

pfff... give them the money and stop fucking about... no i'm not happy about it... but keep to the script and tell whichever pack of wankers that are looking for loopholes to back the fuck off and let's not waste any more money eh!!! Anyone know who's asking the question "Did SCF observe terms of scheme?"

Most likely.
But the view was so good from the top that they were distracted.

image removed by avgas due to me finding it in poor taste during this time - no one has complained. But I have family in Chch too

[Banditbandit]

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Percy Bysshe Shelley


"Put not your trust in the Princes of this world, for they will frig thee up, and so shalt their Governments, even unto the ends of the Earth."
Stephen King

[Okey Dokey]

But No. Its much more prosaic. The investors in SCF were mainly retired folk, mums and dads, ordinary New Zealanders who had life's savings they had to place somewhere. SCF was throughout its 70 year history a solid unremarkable finance company.

When finance investments became popular in the late 1990s SCF stood out for not being flashy, paying good but not high interest, and making sound investments.

Weird as it now seems, SCFs success was its downfall. In 2002 it had $350 million invested but recently that stood at $2.4 billion. Too much flowed in for Alan Hubbard to manage and risky lending resulted with one or two managers.

If we had Chapter 11 bankruptcy as in the USA, SCF could have sought statutory protection and waited out the storm. Instead we have receivership which can be rapacious.

Alan Hubbard stands alone among finance company owners. He has put $3-400 million himself into SCF. Contrast that with Hotchins and Watson of Hanover Finance who extracted $90 million in the years before it fell over.

Well said. It sounds as if some of the inflow of investments was due to the gvmt's guarantee scheme. Mr Hubbard is in his eighties, and took on managers to help while he was battling cancer, and diabetes. He really doesn't deserve to be tarred with the same brush as so many other finance company owners. If he is guilty of not better organising a succession plan, he has certainly paid the price (millions of dollars of his own) and it seems he endeavoured to look after his investors as well as the business es SCF had loaned money to.

[schrodingers cat]

Annoying but I can see the wider need to our economy to prevent this company from totally tanking.
What bugs me is the bill I'll be footing next year to have a bunch of thugs chase an oval ball.

The coverage at present is attaining mythical proportions - trickle down benefits blah blah

[Winston001]

Most of the SCF preference shares were placed through Forsyth Barr.

You're not the first person to get shafted by the tartan mafia.

Yes I think you are right and I tend to agree with your opinion although SCF was very stable all the years that I watched it.

suck.

my sympathy.

Cheers. Who needs university anyway, she can just progress directly to being a checkout chick!

[JimO]

It's very nice that Uncle John and Brother Bill have bailed out SCF using our money, but I'm not sure I wanted to buy a finance company. I didn't mind a rail network because that's useful, but we already have Kiwibank, so we don't need a finance company.

Oh well, it's ours now and the property developers and elderly investors have had their bacon saved, so it's all good.

id rather they spent my taxes on that than on long term dole bludgers

[shrub]

id rather they spent my taxes on that than on long term dole bludgers

I'd rather they spent it growing the country and turning NZ into what we should be and could be. But we have a bland and unimaginative government of accountants and softcocks, so I'm not holding my breath.