McCARTHY BREWERY

Grey River Argus, 19 May 1938, Page 10

McCARTHY BREWERY

j CHANGE IN OWNERSHIP. / PUBIC TRUST RETAINS BIGGEST INTEREST. [Per Press Association.] WELLINGTON, May 17. The Public Trustee is no longer a brewery owner. This is one of the results of the change that has taken place in the ownership of the brewery which forms one of the chief assets of the estate of the late T. G. McCarthy, which the Public Trustee administers for the public benefit. The statement on the labels of the brewery’s products that the contents have been brewed and bottled by the Public Trustee has been the subject of adverse public comment in the past. The Public Trustee is still the dir- ) ect owner of the hotels and other pro- <. perty assets in this estate, however. |. Hitherto, the estate has been the sole I.

proprietor of the City and Phoenix Brewery, but recently a private company was registered under the title McCarthy’s Brewery, Ltd., with a capital of £66,000, divided into 66,000 £1 shares. The subscribers were given as W. F. Hogg (42,000) and the Public Trustee (24,000). Its objects are, "to acquire and take over as a going conI cern the brewing, bottling, malting, and spirits merchant business now carried on in New Zealand by the Public Trustee as trustee of the estate of T. G. McCarthy (deceased); to carry on and develop the said bus jness and incidental.” It is understood that the Public Trustee is still the largest owner of property, and controls it, and that the change has been made to secure wider distribution of the brewery’s products. The Public Trustee, Mi' E. D. Hales, has declined to explain further than what is obtainable from the Registrar of Companies, the change that has been made in the ownership of the brewery, the commercial success of which is so important to the charitable and educational institutions elig ible to benefit from the estate’s reveue, or to state why the company had been formed. He would not vary the rule not to reveal the affairs of estates administered by his olTice. He said the only persons entitled to information were beneficiaries who I were, in this case, represented by the estate’s board of governors, and they;

it. That people might gain a wrong impression from what ha’ been published already would no’, cause him to make any public state inent. his only concern being to obtain the greatest good for the beneficiaries.