SENSITIVE INVESTORS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 98, 27 April 1932, Page 4

SENSITIVE INVESTORS.

NEW ZEALAND AND LONDON. CENSORING OF NEWS. All investment markets are exceedingly sensitive to changes in the industrial, social, or political situation of any borrowing country in which they have or are likely to have aDy monetary interest, and New Zealand cannot regard itself as an exception, high as its reputation has been in the London money market. A striking instance of this sensitiveness in London in regard to this Dominion (says the •'Wellington Post") is furnished by a cablegram just received by a large financial institution in New Zealand from London having reference to the suggested censorship of cabled news from New Zealand, also to the Australian exchange position. The reference to the proposal to censor news dispatches from New Zealand relating to such untoward happenings as the Hawke's Bay earthquake and the recent disturbances in Dunedin and Auckland had been published in the London papers, and the sequel to such publicotion was the dispatch of the above-mentioned inquiries, with the addition that the proposal to exercise censorship had "caused considerable uneasiness on the part of investors in New Zealand Government securities, and the recent New Zealand loan opened that clay at £2 discount, as compared with £15/ discount the day before." With respect to the Australian exchange on London, it was stated that a rumour was current in the City at the same time that the rate Australia on London was likely to be raised. This, however, was officially denied by Sir Kobert Gibson, chairman of the Commonwealth Bank, although there are slight changes made in the usances in conformity with the change in the Bank of England rate, which was reduced to 3 per cent on Thursday. Bearing on the subject of investors' sensitiveness it may be mentioned that a Wellington financial house was negotiating for the disposal in London of a very large parcel of debentures issued by a local authority, but immediately after news of the trouble in Auckland had been reported in London a cablegram was received in Wellington reading: "Present time hopeless. Writing." This message was taken is signifying that the disturbances in Auckland had alarmed the British investor, and therefore it was useless for the time being to proceed further with the negotiations for the sale of the securities in question.