Chase

"Nothing captured the headlines like the big companies. Brierley’s, Omnicorp, Judge Corp, Equiticorp and Chase were familiar corporate names."

"Largely because he had had little debt, Heatley personally came through the crash relatively unscathed, but it taught him some painful lessons. He bought Chase shares after the crash, which at 60c seemed like a bargain, but they were worthless when the company went under. That was a lesson: Do not try to catch a falling knife. Wait and pick it up off the floor if you still want it then. ‘But it’s a bit like telling kids not to touch the hotplate,’ he says. ‘They actually have to do it to learn. It’s like every male I have ever met who has wanted to own a boat. It’s like a male rite of passage that you have to go through to realise how stupid you were to ever have wanted one. But you can’t tell someone that. Friends used to say it to me too but, no, I had to go and touch the element and buy a boat myself to learn the lesson. You have to feel the pain to learn and the market was like that.’ The six to nine months after the crash were tough and, like many other investors, Heatley incurred further losses."

"*Alan Gibbs first really entered my consciousness one day during the Muldoon era, probably early 1984, when Michael Fay returned to the office after a lunch with the deputy prime minister, Jim McLay, and a few businessmen. He was fizzing. Apparently Gibbs had let rip at McLay* *about Muldoon, it was an amazing situation; he just went for it. Michael was impressed, shocked, and in awe of his courage. Then a few years later I saw it myself at an informal meeting of business heavy-hitters a couple of days after the 1987 share market crash. Chase, Equiticorp and those sorts of businesses were all going downstairs and someone, maybe Alan Hawkins, called a meeting. They wanted us to stump up $20 million each to support the market, like JP Morgan had once done in the US. I sat there listening. Then suddenly Gibbs just launched into it. ‘The notion that you can throw a few million together to support a market is just nonsense; you guys have been cowboys for your investors and you’re getting what you deserve.’ When he goes for it, he combines the precision of a scalpel with the power of a chainsaw. The delivery is brutal, but what he said was right on point. So I knew Alan Gibbs was razor sharp and terribly impressive.*[10](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477273-050103421-10)"