EXTRAVAGANT BANKRUPT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18897, 20 December 1924, Page 22 (Supplement)

EXTRAVAGANT BANKRUPT.

LIFE ON £3000-A-YEAR. DISCHARGE SUSPENDED. Starting with a capital of between £100 and £200, Bertram James Rodman borrowed £40.000 and launched out into "big business" as a company promoter. He recently applied for a discharge from bankruptcy in the London Court. The official receiver said Redman's liabilities were £317.789, and ,the assets about £100. He charged Redman with various offences against the Bankruptcy Acts and with contributing to his failure by rash speculation and extravagant living. Eleven .proofs having been lodged for £242,631 in respect of income tax, super--1 tax and execs; profits duty for the years 1918-1923. Redman had returned a'contingent liability of £307,389 of unpaid tax, but had treated it as not expected to rank, on the ground that he had not earned the income on which the assessments were made. Redman asked for a discharge subject to a consent judgment for £500. * The registrar said the suggestion that in a case of this kind, with liabilities of over £300,000, a discharge should be granted subject to a judgment for £500 was too idle for the Court to entertain tor a moment. Here was a man originally an advertising agent, and then a stockbroker, who launched out in 1915 with a capital of £100 or £200 and took over the whole of the share capital of John Brinsmearl and Sons, Ltd. In the spring of 1917 he borrowed £40.000 and i purchased all the shares in a business at Sheffield and formed it into a new company. The debtor, the registrar continued, appeared to have formed 11 companies, of which six had been wound up, and only one was in a satisfactory position. According to the official receiver he had been ininsolvent for the last nine years, and during the whole of that period had been living at the rale of £3000 a year-—at the expense of the creditors. He had bought a huge estate and residence and incurred in connection with it an expenditure of £27,000. Th,, discharge would bo suspended for live years.