Receivership news thrills Strategic's 'jackal'

Strategic Finance investor John Lacey was cock-a-hoop on Friday when he heard the company had been placed in receivership.

"I worked hard for this," he said. "I don't drink, but I'm taking my wife out for a steak."

He heard the news in the car park of Work & Income in Nelson, where he has worked as a security guard since his savings were frozen by Strategic in August 2008. The former accountant, nicknamed "the jackal", had campaigned for 18 months to have receivers appointed and felt vindicated.

"The jackal's done his job," he said. "I had their arses in a thorn bush and they had nowhere to run."

Strategic owes about 12,800 debenture investors, many of them retirees like Lacey, a collective $372 million.

So far the only creditor to receive anything from Strategic is corporate financier Bank of Scotland International, which had a prior charge for $25m plus interest of about $3m.

Its assets, mainly loans for property developments, are currently worth about $220m.

Strategic had hoped to put together a deal to avoid receivership, including a plan similar to the debt for equity swap put together by Hanover Finance and listed company Allied Farmers, but although it put forward several options, none were considered appropriate by trustee Perpetual Trust.

Receiver John Fisk said some of those deals could still be considered by receivers. "We have seen the various proposals," he said, "and there's no reason they can't still be explored. If it's commercially sensible we are obviously keen to do a deal."

Fisk was monitoring accountant for Perpetual during Strategic's moratorium so knows the company well. He said the loan book would now be trawled and rumours of undisclosed related party deals would be fully investigated.

"We can always appoint a liquidator if there are transactions that need to be overturned. One of the benefits of having a receivership is that there is some independent scrutiny of some of those transactions. We will be doing some of those investigations relatively early, because the time is ticking away and a lot of those actions have a two-year period to go back to."

Matthew Lancaster of Perpetual said although the two options put forward by the company had a cash component, receivership was the better option. "There was pressure from all quarters," he said, "but we've got to make a decision in the interests of debenture holders."

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