Chase Corporation

"Sometimes, the corporations created their own opportunities. Omnicorp was symbolic of the time. It was New Zealand’s largest public float when it listed in 1985, with its three major shareholders being Equiticorp and Chase Corporation, each with a 20 per cent stake, and Rainbow Corporation with 15 per cent. The remaining 45 per cent sold to the public. Its directors were Heatley, Allan Hawkins, Peter Francis and Colin Reynolds. The names of the directors and the shareholding by their respective companies were all that Omnicorp had to its name besides its issued capital of $50 million. It had no other assets and no stated raison d’être except to allow its three major shareholders to make investments they could not make individually. Although it was not said publicly at the time, the main shareholders were interested in acquiring Fletcher Challenge if they could. It never happened. But whatever its intentions, or lack of them, investors flocked and its 50c shares went straight to $1.50 on listing."

"Heatley thinks Hawkins was fixated on controlling companies in which he had an interest. ‘Why else would he want to pay a 300 per cent premium for cash? Whereas I was thinking, Where do you ever see this—you buy something for 50c and someone offers you $1.50 for it five minutes later? So I said, “Right, sold.” It not only gave us profit but all the money back that we had put in. It was a great day for us.’ A year after its listing, Omnicorp’s purposeless nature seemed more obvious and more troubling. *The Evening Post* quoted Chase Corporation’s Peter Francis as conceding that the other commitments of Omnicorp’s directors had made it difficult to find time to make investment decisions.[1](private://read/01jectdbce729daxqkxt7cbe8r/#mn5)"

"The crash changed people’s perceptions of their wealth, though sometimes it took a while for them to understand the new normal. Before the crash, Grieve recalls hearing from a director of Chase Corporation who wanted to buy a boat. Instead of borrowing, the director had decided to sell some of his company shares to fund the purchase. Grieve bid him $6 a share, and the director sold 200,000 of them. A few months later, Chase shares were valued at $10 and the director said, ‘Grieve, because of you I have the most expensive boat in Auckland Harbour.’ Then the crash came and Chase was wiped out. ‘Nine months later I met the same guy at a function and I said to him, “Because of the crash you now have the cheapest boat in Auckland Harbour.”’"

"Gibbs’ business associates — Bidwill, Paine, Myers and Friedlander, in particular — were all prospering. Perhaps the highest flyer of this period was Colin Reynolds, the founder of the property development company Chase Corporation. Now that these men and their wives were regulars at the Gibbs house in Parnell, it was less appropriate to get around in bare feet when entertaining. Amanda Gibbs, then a university student with socialist tendencies, was shocked when she saw her parents’ new bourgeois lifestyle."