LETTERS TO THE NEWSPAPERS

Southland Times, Issue 23227, 16 June 1937, Page 4

LETTERS TO THE NEWSPAPERS

BUILDING SOCIETY PREMISES 1 PURCHASE OF SITE IN TAY STREET The disturbing effects of anonymous letters to the newspapers on those shareholders who were not familiar with the affairs of the society were referred to by Mr John Gilkison, one of the directors re-elected at the annual meeting of the Southland Building Society last evening. “I have been approached by several people who have asked me about these letters,” Mr Gilkison said, “and I always say that we don’t know whether these letters are written by shareholders or not. If they are, the proper place to air their grievances is at the annual meeting, and not in the newspapers. (Cries of “hear, hear.”) The implication is that if they don’t belong to this society they belong to some other body and wish to damage the reputation of the Building Society. “I fail to see why they should be published by any newspaper circulating in the town,” Mr Gilkison added. “Their publication is definitely against the best interests of the society.” Mr R. J. Cumming, another director who was re-elected, declared that the man who wrote the letter that appeared that morning and called himself “No Confidence” was not a friend of the society, or he would never have used that nom-de-plume. The effect must be to create no confidence among those shareholders who did not know the position. The writer might have had an axe to grind, but at any rate he was no friend of the society. “There has been some criticism of , the purchase of the site in Tay Street, Mr Cumming continued,’ “and this writer said that the present building would do for the next 20 years. E’ther he does not know anything about it, or he is deliberately misrepresenting the position. You have only to go inside the building to see that it is imperative to secure more accommodation. If you want a site suitable for such an institution as the Southland Building Society, you are limited to one or two, and when we purchased the site it was at a price £3500 less than the former owners paid for it. At what the owners called the final bedrock price we secured a price £l5OO below that, and when we saw we could get the land at the side for more offices we bought that at £5OO less than what was asked, so you will see that we were not muddling along. The total interests for both sites is £1431 and we have tenants paying £1244 in rent, leaving our rent at £lB7 (Applause).”