Auckland-based business advisory service insolvent

Press, 14 April 1980, Page 2

Auckland-based business advisory service insolvent

PA Auckland An Auckland - based business advisory service is insolvent. The Sturt Foundation for Investment Research has debts of about $70,000 in spite of having scaled down its activities two years ago. Twenty - three companies owned by the Palmerston North businessman who helped set up the foundation, Mr Keith Clark, are in receivership. Mr Clark resigned from the Sturt Foundation’s fourman board a month before his Land and Building System group crashed last August with liabilities of about $6 million. The chairman of the foundation’s board (Dr Eric Ojala) a professor at Massey University, has confirmed that creditors owed are about $70,000. He said there were three main creditors but declined to name them. None were seeking to have the foundation, formed in 1977 as an incorporated society wound up, he said. However, documents at Auckland’s registry of incorporated societies shows the Sturt Foundation lost $69,254 in its only full year of operations, ending in March, 1978. Income for the year was $9190 and creditors shown on documents include the Bank of New Zealand ($25,106) and Mr Clark’s Land and Buildings Systems company ($21,029).

Sundry creditors included an Auckland advertising agency ($13,930) and three former policemen who worked as the foundation’s directors ($10,353). The three former policemen Mr C. Sturt, Mr B. Kilvington, and Dr A. Winton, left for new jobs in early 1978 when the foundation closed its city offices. They

were owed the $10,353 in salaries.

The trio, according to a prospectus published by the foundation, were to act as advisers to the business community and, among other things, warn of dangers which could cause companies to collapse. ’ ‘ Mr Sttirt the foundation’s figurehead and the former head of the police inquiry into the JBL crash is now working as a solicitor. Mr Sturt said that the foundation had, in effect, ceased to operate because Land and Building Systems was to have been its financial backbone.

“The foundation was the right idea at the wrong time. But when L.B.S. got into trouble, so did we.” Mr Sturt who said he was still regarded as an “honourary director” of the foundation, said its board ,of trustees had long-term plans for reviving its operations. The board planned to develop land at Waikanae, north of Wellington, but even with that income, the foundation could only hope to operate on a much - reduced scale. Investors in Mr Clark’s 23company conglomerate are expected to find out the extent of their losses later this month.

Two Government-appointed statutory managers of the L.B.S. group have spent six months sorting out its affairs and are nearly ready to release details to creditors. A few days before their appointment by the Minister of Justice (Mr McLay), Mr Clark was reported as saying the group had $6 million tangible land assets and liabilities for a similar amount.

i Two months ago, Mr Clark and his staff were paid off and their office officially closed.

Mr Clark has sinced moved to Auckland.