Forsyth had never had much luck with people under 25 and dismissed Clarke pretty much straight away when he heard how old he was.
“But the receptionist actually convinced me to talk to him, because she said, ‘I think there’s something about this guy’.
“So, I did, and I started him, and he was very successful. Extremely successful.”
Clarke had a mindset of success, Forsyth said.
“He was very much about perception equals reality. He was not about fake it, not about that. So, he was very much about perception equals reality, which I actually agree with.”
South Auckland-based development and investment group Du Val offered New Zealanders the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of its founders, Kenyon Clarke and his wife, Charlotte, and build wealth through property.
But the group was placed into statutory management in August 2024, owing lenders, investors, subcontractors and the Inland Revenue Department an estimated $268 million.
Kenyon Clarke had been bankrupted in 2009 after the collapse of his first business, the Sarvee build-to-rent group, and Forsyth believed the rise of Du Val showed he had learned from that.
The podcast hears from a former Du Val employee, Rob*, about the image the Clarkes portrayed of a successful international property development business.
“It was kind of like build the Ark, or portray the Ark, and they will come.
“But it was more of a portrayal; rather, he hadn’t actually built the Ark, and it was a lot of things off the plans they were sort of selling by the nature of their business.”
He also talks about what he describes as Du Val’s playbook for selling yet-to-be-built houses and high-risk investments to ordinary mums and dads.
“I would describe it as a boiler room sales environment … You know, very sort of, I don’t want to say used car salesman environment, but it was hard selling.”
Du Val had been warned by the Financial Markets Authority in 2021 and 2022 over offering unregulated investment products to people who appeared to be retail investors.
The podcast hears from one of those investors, Kate*, about the fallout from putting most of her savings into an investment fund she didn’t fully understand.
“Just heartache, it was just the emotional trauma of it, which I realised that I was actually getting sick. I was getting into this really bad space, emotionally, mentally.”
The backdrop to Du Val’s rise and fall was the biggest property boom New Zealand has ever seen, and the podcast looks into why Kiwis are so drawn to fringe property schemes.
Du Val and other property investment companies made the most of an exclusion in wholesale investment law that allowed them to offer products to ‘eligible investors’.
That regulatory framework remains in place, and financial markets watchers such as Chris Walsh, publisher of personal finance website Moneyhub, believe a law change is needed to better protect investors.
“It needs to be regulated. The wholesale model for this, mortgage-backed funds, unfortunately, does need to be regulated,” he said.
But others disagree, saying it’s needed as a way for aspiring small businesses to raise funds without being overburdened by regulation.
The Fall of the House of Du Val has been made with the support of The Milford Foundation’s Brian Gaynor Business Journalism Initiative, and MoneyHub.
*Names have been changed.
