Brierley's

"John Sheffield, who had been instrumental in starting Rainbow but who had left early to try other ventures, went bankrupt, as did many others. The effects lasted years. Only Japan took longer than New Zealand to come out of the post-crash mess. Heatley himself, still on the board of Brierley’s, was then 30 years old and had not been through a crash before. Like others, he initially failed to grasp the significance of what was happening. In fact, seeing Brierley’s shares come down to $3, he bought more. ‘I was young. I had never seen a bear market and initially all I saw in the aftermath of the crash was opportunity. I had not appreciated that Brierley’s’ investments in New Zealand Insurance and in everything else had also gone way down. I did not realise the substantial nature of the diminution in the valuations of everything. I had not learned about the collateral damage and the healing time required when you have a shock like that. Think of it like the Christchurch earthquake—such a massive shift will take years of reconstruction to get back to what it was but I did not appreciate that at the time. I had only seen markets go down and come back up again.’"

"But Heatley needed something new. Brierley’s had offered him the role of heading their North American operations but working in a market in which he had no contacts held no appeal for him. While they never said it, he had the sense that Brierley’s had been disappointed by his decision not to go. Maybe it would have suited them to have him out of the way, he thought. Nothing else that interested him seemed on offer. Telecommunications and broadcasting were fields about which he knew nothing but gradually, and with full disclosure to Brierley’s, he started working on the project with Jarvis and Green. By late 1988, after about a year on the BIL board, the new project was requiring all his attention and he resigned from Brierley’s. He sold all his shares in the company, making a loss on much of the stock because he had bought at $3 after the crash, thinking it was a good buy, and was selling at $2–$2.40. But as the price gradually sank to 50–60c, he was simply relieved to have got out when he did. Now he was free, cashed up and keen for a new venture."