KENT’S BAKERIES, LIMITED.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20709, 6 May 1929, Page 8

KENT’S BAKERIES, LIMITED.

[Advt.]

TO THE EDITOE r^™' —^^ e advertisement in your issue of May 2, whereby the Dunedin- Stock Exchange disclaims any connection with the issue of debentures and shares by the Kents Bakeries, Ltd., can only be described as a gratuitous public insult. In common with other brokers, we state in any advertisement of our issues that copies of the prospectus can b e obtained from any licensed sharebroker. In the eour se of handling issues exceeding £1,000,000, we have never before seen this statement provoke an official body into a newspaper attack ©on- our business, or upon that of any other broker. When offering an issue we, as an act of courtesy, supply Stock Exchange members with copies Of the prospectus, and welcome their subscriptions. We pay them over £IOOO a year in commission. If thev do not choose to sell an investment, there is no harm done, but a public attack of this nature is nothing less than unscrupulous- Our relatione with the majority of Stock Exchange members throughout New Zealand are very happy, but there is a malignant minority which appears to be actuated by jealousy in such matters as these. i u Th oi. p^ra ?? aph in question states that th e stock Exchange has had no opportunity of examining the' merits of the issue. We did not suggest that it had done so, but may remark that if it has not done so, it is singularly inept, since copies of the prospectus were sent to many of the members a week before the advertisement of it appeared in your paper. If that were insufficient, ■the committee had only to, telegraph to the Auckland Mock Exchange, whose members have sold a laTge proportion of the issue in that city. We invite any prospective investors in Dunedin to prove' this by personal inquiry. We need hardly say that we consider this manifesto to be deliberately intended to injure the flotation of Kent's Bakeries, Md., and that if the committee of tire Dunedin Stock Exchange does not wish its members to handle business which it regards as questionable, the proper course is to advise them of the fact in a private manner, for which it has daily opportunities. To take the matter a stage further we assert that the paragraph advertised by this committee is in continuation of a private vendetta which is being conducted against our business by a prominent Dunedin broker, towards whom our attitude is that if we allow him enough rope he will hang himself.-" We suggest that if the person in queswon, and his satellites, are to constitute themselves arbiters of the financial morality of New Zealand, they would obtain more support by using methods which are less calculated to bring -them into contempt with decent people. To conclude, we wish to state (as it were, in self-defence for gaining a living by carrying on the same trade as our Dunedin commentators) that dividends and interest have been, or are being, paid on £060,000 of new investments with which we have been concerned. We also advise any Dunedin man who is interested in this matter to inquire from the National Bank at Auckland whatever he wishes to know regarding Kent's Bakeries, Ltd.; or the '• original company of George Kent and Sons, Ltd.—We are, etc., 6. Stewart Cray, Ltd. t, ,„ , ™ Per G - s - Cray. Royal Oak Hotel, Wellington. May 3.