Member log in

Creditors lose out, failed Serepisos firms owe $50m

A pair of Terry Serepisos’ companies put into receivership were carrying more than $50 million in debts and unsecured creditors are likely to be wiped out.

Frozen lender Equitable Mortgage appointed John Fisk and Richard Longman of PricewaterhouseCoopers as receivers to 79 Manners Street and Maison Property Holdings on May 19.

First receivers’ reports for the companies note Equitable is owed $14.4 million, South Canterbury Finance $27 million, ASB Bank $5.5 million, ANZ National Bank $3 million, and First Mortgage Trust $1 million.

The value of the companies’ assets appear to fall substantially short of this combined $50.9 million debt. Reports for both companies note: “From our observations to date we believe that there are unlikely to be any funds available for unsecured creditors.”

The companies own, and receivers are selling, the Ivivi Building on Victoria Street, several dozen car parks, and 23 apartments and units at the Lone Star and Renaissance Apartment complexes.

Last weeks' complex sale of the Grand Mercure Hotel to Mark Dunajtschik also gets a mention:

"Prior to our appointment, the Company entered into a sale and purchase agreement for certain car parks located at 74 Tory Street, Wellington. The proceeds of this sale will be applied to the secured creditors over this asset with no funds available to the receivership. To ensure that the receivership did not affect the Company's ability to complete the sale, Equitable Mortgages partially revoked their appointment of receivers over this specific asset only," the report said.

The reports notes South Canterbury’s security interests have been subordinated to ASB, and Inland Revenue are owed $2500 GST by Maison.

More by Matt Nippert

Signup to free NBR email alerts here

Comments and questions
5

At what point do directors get sued for running an insolvent company in this country?

How do so many get so much in loans without decent security to back them up? Guess the young are running financial institutions like casinos these days.

Obviously some sort of legislative controls and penalties are required to avoid such risky lending. I'd hate to be one of the people who "invested" in term deposits and the like with these lenders.

Heard this before?................
Rarely have so many been owed so much by so few.

It's so easy to get loans, all you do is pay off the valuer, and get a certified value which is much higher than the actual market valuation, did it many times myself years ago on speculative residential properties, it's called or was back then, oiling the wheels, money talks and it will again in the future, why because all!!! humans are greedy sods, and stop at nothing for the almighty buck.
I was very lucky in one aspect, an accident 4 yrs before the doom, put me in a wheelchair and out of the property business, otherwise I would have lost the lot too.
It's like being an alcoholic the more you drink the more you want, borrowing and buying property is the same, the more you borrow the more you want to buy, so you crank it up and up and up and up, you just cannot stop.
Then it's the bragging rights, that is another story.
St Lawrence is a classic case/model.

Post new comment or question

Login to use your NBR member name
Full HTML is not supported but you can use the following tags in your comments:
Link: <url>link</url>
Quote: <quote>text</quote>