Dalziel castigates 'celebrity promoters'

BY MARTA STEEMAN

Labour commerce and justice spokeswoman Lianne Dalziel has fired potshots at Sir Colin Meads, former National Party MPs and John Banks during the launch of her private members bill related to the ING-ANZ Bank frozen funds debacle.

She attacked them for being "celebrity promoters" and "celebrity directors" of failed finance companies.

Dalziel said yesterday that she had developed "an antipathy towards the celebrity promoter people like Sir Colin Meads, All Black hero or Richard Long, trusted news presenter".

Long promoted investments in Hanover Finance and Meads in Provincial Finance.

"What do they know about the products they promote? Should they be allowed to be the face of integrity that belies the quality of the product on offer?"

She also attacked former politicians who became "the celebrity director". Lombard Finance had three former National Party MPs on its board, including Sir Douglas Graham.

The actions of Huljich Wealth Management had not stood up to scrutiny and one of its directors, Auckland Mayor John Banks, had said "I'm only a director." The other director is former National Party leader Don Brash.

Dalziel's bill aims to stop the powers of the competition and fair trading regulator, the Commerce Commission, and other regulators being undermined, and springs from the settlement ANZ Bank and ING reached last year with 13,000 investors in two frozen funds that had $520 million of their money when frozen.

In a $400m settlement, ING and ANZ required investors to sign away their rights to gain any benefit from someone else taking action against them, including any potential benefit from the Commerce Commission's investigation into whether the marketing and promotion of the two frozen funds was misleading. In the settlement investors received about 60 cents in the dollar.

Dalziel, who launched the bill on Friday at a meeting of the Hastings Frozen Funds Group, said she had no problem with any company making a settlement conditional on not proceeding with any civil action. That occurred in agreements all the time.

But the powers of a regulator who had identified a breach of the rules should not be undermined by these agreements.

The Commerce Commission's report on its investigation is expected to be released in the next week or so.

Dalziel said if its inquiry produced no findings of wrongdoing on the part of ING NZ, now fully owned by ANZ, or those offering investments in the two funds, then there was no problem.

If ING was found wanting in its legal responsibilities to its investors then the bill would apply. The bill would be retrospective, she said, and she had warned ING that would be the case.

The bill is entitled The Illegal Contracts (Unlawful Limitation on Regulators' Powers) Amendment Bill.

Dalziel said she would be thrilled if the Government introduced its own bill along the same lines.

Last time she introduced a private member's bill it was picked from the ballot first time and only a day before it was due for its first hearing in parliament, the Government introduced its own bill.

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