Du Val Group: High Court to decide if interim receivership documents can be made public

The High Court at Hamilton will hold a hearing next week to decide if media can access the initial PwC receivers’ report on the Du Val Group.

The High Court at Auckland will hold a hearing on Monday to decide if media can get access to the initial PwC receivers’ report on the collapsed Du Val Group, enabling the information to be made public.

Justice Neil Campbell issued a decision today from the High Court at Hamilton saying he had scheduled a one-and-a-half-hour hearing to address matters raised by media, including the New Zealand Herald and BusinessDesk/NZME.

The High Court put Du Val Capital Partners and other Du Val Group companies into interim receivership on August 1 after an application from the Financial Markets Authority.

When making the orders to appoint receivers to 64 Du Val entities, the court also made an order prohibiting the searching or copying of the court file or any documents filed in the proceeding without the leave of a judge, Justice Campbell noted.

Another order made on August 1 was that the receivers were to report to the court within 10 days of their appointment on matters including whether, in their opinion, any entity should be released from receivership and any form of administration.

Since then the Government has stepped in and placed the group into statutory management.

Justice Campbell does not think the media should see all the information.

“My provisional view is that access should be granted to the formal court record, except for redactions of private information such as bank account numbers, but that access should not be granted beyond that.

“The Financial Market Authority’s application to appoint receivers and supporting affidavits make allegations that have yet to be tested. The court does not usually grant access to such documents at the pre-hearing stage,” the judge said.

He noted strong public interest in the receivers’ appointment and then statutory managers to various Du Val entities.

“To the extent that some entities remain subject to receivership, there may nonetheless be force in the argument that the receivers’ report should not be published as in respect of those entities the report is untested and so is analogous to a pleading or affidavit,” he said.

The ruling notes parties to the matter are the FMA as the applicant and all the Du Val entities as the respondent.

The judge said the media representatives were entitled to appear and be heard.

Statutory manager John Fisk of PwC has said Du Val Group’s liabilities could total $250 million.

Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 24 years, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.