Capital Markets PostBank buyer?

Press, 19 December 1988, Page 1

Capital Markets PostBank buyer?

By

NEIL CLARKSON

A watchdog group claims a securities trading company, Capital Markets, Ltd, is a contender for the purchase of Postßank,

should the State-owned enterprise be privatised. Public Eyes, formerly the Coalition for Open Government, said it was opposed to the sale of PostBank and the Bank of New Zealand. A spokesman for Public Eyes, Mr Mike Smith, of Wellington, asserted that selling Postßank to Capital Markets, Ltd, would “give privatisation in New Zealand a new dimension.”

Mr Smith said Capital Markets was a publicly listed company but more than half its shares were owned by private companies in the Fay, Richwhite

group. The company’s 1988 annual report indicates there are 14,196 shareholders, 10 of whom own 78.78 per cent of shares.

Postßank’s sale to Capital Markets had been widely tipped, Mr Smith said. “Further credence to this possibility was given when Robin Congreve, Postßank’s Govern-ment-appointed chairman, stood down earlier this year after a letter from Richard Prebble, sent to S.O.E.s, requesting directors with possible interest in a purchaser to do so.

“Congreve is a taxation specialist, a former lecturer in taxation and a director of Capital Markets,” he said.

(Mr Bill Birnie, an employee of Fay, Richwhite, also stood down

as a director of Postßank.) The two men behind Capital Markets were Mr Michael Fay and Mr David Richwhite, of the private merchant banking firm, Fay, Richwhite and Company. Capital Markets was formed in 1984 and was publicly listed on the Stock Exchange in 1986 after it took over an oil exploration company, Horizon Oil, Ltd.

Mr Smith, in explaining PublicEyes’ opposition to privatisation of the banks, said: “In our view it is essential that the New Zealand public retain the ability to be able to influence investment in New Zealand.

“It is a symbol of all that is wrong in New Zealand that the sale of these institutions is contemplated.”