Lombard Finance directors Sir Douglas Graham, Michael Reeves, William Jeffries ( Bill Jeffreies ) and Lawrence Bryant in the High Court at Wellington. Photo / One News
Lombard Finance directors Sir Douglas Graham, Michael Reeves, William Jeffries ( Bill Jeffreies ) and Lawrence Bryant in the High Court at Wellington. Photo / One News
Opinion
There are no winners in the latest reverberation from the finance-company calamity, in which four directors of Lombard Finance, including former Cabinet ministers Sir Douglas Graham and Bill Jeffries, have been found guilty of making untrue statements in the company's offer documents.
Certainly not the 4400 investors, many of whominvested five- and six-figure sums and will receive little, if anything, back. And not the two former ministers, for whom this is an abject fall from grace.
The political careers of Sir Douglas and Mr Jeffries owed much to their industriousness and integrity. But the Lombard judgment casts an irrevocable stain on their names.
Given the collapse of so many finance companies, there will be little popular sympathy for the defence advanced by Sir Douglas that he did not monitor Lombard's increasingly problematic lending practices more closely because he had no expertise in property development.
This High Court ruling leaves directors little option but to be knowledgeable in the affairs of any company in which they are involved and to be prepared to determine for themselves what is happening. Therein lies probably the only shaft of light from this episode.
When it is made clear that directors must fulfil certain obligations, the public can surely have greater confidence that they will be fully informed and that there is far less chance of companies straying from the straight and narrow.
