Broadcaster backs Hotchin

Mike Hosking. Photo / Janna Dixon

A broadcaster is defending Hanover co-founder Mark Hotchin, describing the businessman as a victim of tall-poppy syndrome.

On Newstalk ZB's breakfast show yesterday, host Mike Hosking said Mr Hotchin was being unfairly hounded by media.

He was not a criminal and had apologised for his company's failure.

"What's his crime? There isn't one ... he's not charged, he's not in court, he's not in jail," he said.

"What he did was make some bad decisions, borrow too much, gear too highly, and the company fell over."

Hanover, co-founded by Mr Hotchin and Eric Watson, left more than 16,000 investors out of pocket when it froze $554 million worth of assets.

The two businessmen took $91 million in dividends in the years before it defaulted on payments to investors.

They have been criticised for continuing extravagant lifestyles while investors, many of them elderly, wait for their returns.

Hosking was commenting on an article in a Sunday newspaper for which a reporter tracked Mr Hotchin and his wife to a resort in Hawaii.

"There is an undercurrent in this country, and it manifests itself a lot in the print media, of wanting to persecute people," Hosking said.

"Their sickle can't cut enough tall poppies down," he said.

Hosking said keeping private and company money separate was standard business practice.

Investors responded by saying he was missing the point.

Tauranga resident Caroline Lind, who lost a large part of her nest egg - $155,000 - in Hanover's collapse, said that Mr Hotchin's flamboyant lifestyle was indirectly funded by investors.

"That private money is our money, sifted through 16 or more companies."

Ms Lind, 64, criticised the Securities Commission for allowing Mr Hotchin to extract money through a maze of trusts.

But she said the Hanover founders "had no shame", and deserved heavy scrutiny by media and authorities.

Hosking said Mr Hotchin had fronted up and apologised to investors, and critics wanted too much from him.

"Do we want Hotchin in a state house, on state assistance, depressed and broken?"

Exposing Unacceptable Financial Advice co-ordinator Suzanne Edmonds said some finance company directors had done just that - sold everything they had.

"Some have sold homes, given everything away, and are living on the bones of their backsides, because they have made a commitment to their investors," she said.

"I would like to see a little humility, they are being very flamboyant."

Mr Hotchin has been criticised for leaving a $30 million eyesore on Paritai Drive in Orakei half-finished while he takes a $400,000 holiday in Hawaii.