UNGRATEFUL INVESTORS.

Observer, Volume XXIV, Issue 26, 12 March 1904, Page 3

UNGRATEFUL INVESTORS.

A B.N.Z. Scream

SOMEHOW or other, the shareholders of the Hank of New Zea.

land do not appear to recognise the debt of gratitude which they owe to the colony for pulling them and their institution out of the mire. At any rate, some of them do not. The fact crops out in the grumbling that goes on- continually about the hold which the Government keeps upon the management of the bank, and still more about the claim which the colony has made good to a share in the profits of a concern that owes its very existence to the support it received from the public credit.

The latest evidence of ingratitude is furnished by Mr William Ware, of Remuera. This gentleman has sent to the London Financial Times a letter full of complaint as to the woes of the shareholders. His special grievance relates to the Government's assumption of the position of a permanent partner, with a preferential call on the profits, after "the shareholders have borne the whole cost of reinstating the bank." This he declares to be a gross injustice, and in a hysterical scream he endeavours to pillory the colony before the London financial world aa a greedy parasite fixed upon the unlucky bank, and sucking out of it money that should rightfully belong to the sharer holders.

But Mr William Ware, and those who think with him, must have conveniently short memories. Let them carry their minds back to the fateful year 1894, and ask themselves what would have become of either them or their bank if the colony had not then propped them up. The bank was literally on the brink of insolvency. Mr John Murray himself said so, and held at the head of the Government the threat of closing the doors of the bank, and spreading distress all through the land, unless the Government came to its aid. To the credit of the Seddon Government, it promptly took in the situation, and lent the credit of the colony for the raising of two millions to carry on the bank. Also,- it provided machinery for the realising of the bad investments that had brought the bank to its knees.

Thanks to the Government's prompt Action, the bank soon re-established its business on a sound footing. But had the shareholders been left to their own devices, where would they have been to-day ? As it is they have found the call upon their pockets heavy enough. Let them imagine what would have happened if the bank had gone into liquidation. Their total liability would have been called up at one stroke — not merely a portion of it in instalments — and ruin would taken hundreds of them by the throat. Instead of that, the blow was enormously lightened for all of them, and a property that threatened to be swept out of their hands has been gradually built up into a dividend-pay-ing concern. But to the State, and not to the shareholders, belongs the credit.

Yet Mr Ware and his fellow-share-holders begrudge the colony today a small moiety of the profile which its guarantee has helped to create. Was there ever grosser ingratitude for salvation from dire calamity? If Messrs Ware and Co. had any sense of propriety they would prostrate themselves with gratitude before the Seddon Government, and sing pseans of praise to them for their benevolent action towards the bank and its proprietors. Certainly, they should be the last to belittle the colony before the British financial public: