By SIMON HENDERY
The Securities Commission says investors who bought about $700,000 in United States shares through failed "boiler room" broker Bergers Securities will be able to get their money back through a court-enforceable undertaking.
Bergers Securities, which was placed in liquidation in June, was the second sharebroking firm set
up in Auckland by Benjamin J Mauerberger to go bust.
It sold shares in US companies through personal contacts and by cold-calling people on a phone list obtained from a commercial phone list provider.
The company claimed expertise in global sharemarket investing, research, venture capital and private equity.
Mauerberger's previous sharebroking firm, Mauer-Swisse, collapsed last year after featuring in an Australian Securities and Investment Commission probe into cold-calling scams.
A report by liquidator Anthony McCullagh filed with the Companies Office in August said New Zealand investors placed about $712,500 with Bergers for the purposes of purchasing shares.
The Securities Commission said yesterday that it had accepted undertakings from Mauerberger and Bergers' sole shareholder at the time of liquidation, Clinton Braude, that they would repay investors the full purchase price of their investments, including commission.
The undertaking is enforceable in the High Court.
Solicitors for Braude and Mauerberger will write to investors in the next week offering to repay them the full purchase price of the shares, including any commission, in exchange for the shares held by the investor.
"We urge investors to respond promptly to this letter," said commission general counsel Liam Mason.
Braude's solicitors have told the commission he has deposited funds into a trust account to repay all investors.
Under the court-enforceable undertaking, Braude and Mauerberger have also pledged not to act as directors of a New Zealand company, act as investment advisers in New Zealand, or act as investment brokers in New Zealand for a period of seven years.
