Taking Stock 8 January 2026

THE New Year started on a positive note for investors, with the Financial Markets Authority undertaking to determine action to protect them.

Often criticised by random media commentators with but passing understanding of its challenges, the FMA today has recovered after losing two excellent leaders in Sean Hughes and Rob Everett, both of whom rebuilt the financial market regulator after its predecessor had had a decade of poor performance and dreadful leadership.

The common link in the regulator’s successes for decades has been its senior counsel Liam Mason, an accomplished commercial lawyer happy to stay out of the public eye over the past 25 years. His service has been heroic.

If walls could speak, they would tell an uncomfortable story about earlier years. The regulator endured a period marked by weak ministerial oversight under Lianne Dalziel, flawed executive leadership under Jane Diplock, and a number of directors who lacked the experience, energy, or clarity expected of a governance body.

Some were poachers with no sense of a gamekeeper’s responsibilities.

One was so dreadfully beyond their suitability for the role that the then chairman, tired of listening to their babble, instructed them to be silent at board meetings.

Some of the people chosen to introduce financial adviser rules were asked to resign following evidence of their unsuitability for the roles they had sought. The regulator endured some awful years. Mason battled on.

The restoration of respect had much to do first with the energy and competence of Hughes, an ex-banker and the original FMA chief executive, and later the wisdom and experience of Everett, the second CEO. Both relied heavily on Mason.

Today the FMA, led by Samantha Barrass, has focussed on several key issues. Investor protection seems to be high on the agenda.

Hampered by rapid staff turnover, the FMA now has a better budget and has displayed its new retail investor protection role with strong action, in recent days against a privately-owned Rangiora start-up run by one Bernie Whimp, who named his company Chance Voight. Whimp, a rural town opportunist, has a history going back to a failed second mortgage lender (General Mortgages), from which he departed bankrupt, convicted of a technical crime and banned from company directorship roles in the early 2000s.

Whimp later paid off his debts and scooped up what he says was around $8 million by offering the unknowing public cash offers for listed securities at a rate well below market prices. Buying at a false price he then sold at the market price, benefitting from his low-ball purchases. Ultimately he was thwarted in this aspiration which aped a similarly anti-social endeavour practised in Australia.

Whimp now describes the success of his low-ball offers as coming from a social service to “help” people who did not know how to sell often small parcels of stock. He made it easy for them.

Later Whimp sought to buy South Canterbury Finance preference shares and had some luck when very few wanted to engage. This was fortunate for him. Thanks to the appalling leadership of Key’s Cabinet and errors by the Justice Department, the SCF preference shares became worthless.

Whimp presumably had believed some of the uninsightful guidance of one Samford (Sandy) Maier Junior who forecast a future for SCF investors without accuracy and in my view without even a smattering of the understanding needed to shift the forecast beyond the rating of “clueless”.

So Whimp, armed with some modest coin after clearing bankruptcy, has since promoted himself as an inspired stock picker and skilled money lender, on his website being described as New Zealand’s best stock picker.

He promoted the tiny group he named Chance Voight and by using exemptions available for those who service only wholesale investors, advertised largely in the South Island. Assisted by an accountant (and lawyer) Paul Currie, he raised some millions from “wholesale” investors and set about mortgage lending to property developers, while from investors he sought money with which to chase 20% per annum returns from the Australian share market.

I sought from the FMA guidance on what constituted a fit and proper person. Did such a definition embrace anyone who had had a failed finance company, had been bankrupted, convicted of a technical crime, been banned from a director’s role and been barred from making lowball offers by the market regulator? Perhaps I am about to receive the guidance.

Mason, to his credit, set in place investigations, possibly not prioritising the case because it seemed the money raised was not so much modest, as so shy of a sum that it barely was noticeable. Mason must prioritise where the biggest threats to investors are sitting.

In the past weeks the FMA tired of being unable to confirm that Chance Voight was solvent and was unsure whether its structure met the intentions of the Financial Markets Conduct Act. 

So the FMA requested that Chance Voight and at least one of the linked companies be liquidated, just before New Year.

Money in various companies linked to Chance Voight was ring-fenced.

Whimp is free to use his own money, though that must also be of little magnitude given his recent plea for investor help.

We know this as the FMA reports that Whimp has asked his clients, maybe numbering a few hundred, to donate money to him to enable him to fight the FMA action in court. Legal representation is affordable only for the pecunious.

The FMA has warned investors to “understand” the risks of advancing any money and has suggested to his clients that they consult a financial adviser.

Whimp has stated that if he is not reinstated to pursue his ambitions, up to $28m of money would be put at risk.

I have never met Whimp and am interested solely because of my view that only fit and proper people should be running financial services companies. We need guidance on the determination of a fit and proper person.

My personal definition does not coincide with the record of infringement that appears to be in Whimp’s history.

The FMA is to be loudly applauded for devoting some budget to investigating Chance Voight and for placing investor protection at the top of its agenda.

If from this action we get binary definitions on the question of a fit and proper person and get clarity on any liability from accepting advertisements from those not eligible to pursue investor funds, New Zealand would have taken two giant steps forward.

Whimp and his companies would then have performed a real service to investment markets by prompting such clarity.

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TWO more agents of the Crown won widespread applause from investors and financial market plaudits over the festive season.

The High Court made a predictable but nevertheless meritorious decision when it banished the Talleys group from the defamation case it had most unwisely filed against TVNZ for a programme the TV station had screened, trenchantly condemning Talley for its allegedly casual health and safety attitudes.

In what was a rare example of a TV investigation, TVNZ 1 had quoted unnamed staff and displayed photographic evidence to support a criticism of the privately-owned fishing company and food processor.

Whoever advised Talleys to prolong its time in the spotlight would not meet my definition of a seasoned corporate advisor.

From its days when Ivan Talijancich began a small fishing company in Motueka, his sons Peter and Michael (now know as Peter and Michael Talley) have grown Ivan’s company into a giant, one of New Zealand’s largest unlisted companies.

Fishing is a tough business not suited for sooks. The Talleys had the flint and the bloodymindedness to overcome their competitors and eventually expand into the somewhat kinder environment of food processing. This sector succeeds by eliminating wasted costs. Rarely is it seen walking up the aisle with trade union bodies.

TVNZ 1 is hardly an arm of the media that makes or breaks large private companies. Generally its investigative journalism has deteriorated to a kindergarten level. In this case, its criticism clearly raised contestable issues and clearly cast Talleys in a poor light. It was a brave but rare exception.

Such criticism almost never produces a great outcome for a company that alleges defamation or even damaged reputation. Companies win defamation cases only when they can prove they have suffered measurable losses because of unfair criticism.

It is highly unlikely Talleys would want to open its doors to build a team that would prove it has suffered damages. Its advisers should have told Talleys to move on, and maybe tidy up any unnecessary issues, rather than drag out the spotlight on its alleged poor practices.

The High Court Judge dismissed what would have been an expensive case from which lawyers emerge with stuffed pockets, and the plaintiff emerges more bruised than necessary, having wasted executive time and a huge sum of money.

If Talleys had been a listed public company now holding a public annual general meeting, it would surely have endured grumpy shareholders, questioning the value of what would have been a multi-million dollar investment in a defence of a mildly bruised reputation. Talleys made an inexplicable mess of its response to TVNZ 1.

Full marks to the judge whose decision should help investors from seeing their money be bonfired in any future similar argument.

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YET another agent of the Crown, the Fast Track Panel, also displayed skill and reason when it consented the Waihi North resource consent application to mine for gold under conservation land.

The panel cited the extreme value of the gold resource, noting billions of dollars of exports, a billion or more in taxes and royalties, hundreds of well-paid jobs, a lift to the country’s productivity and GDP per head, and by implication another boost for the area around Waihi.

In approving the application, the panel implied the benefits overwhelmed the opposition who argue against each and every extraction proposal. These people are entitled to their opinion. They do not have any other rights.

In taking this approach, the Crown-appointed panellists eased the fear that poorly-informed news media, like the Stuff Group and the Otago Daily Times, might set the agenda for future Fast Track decisions.

The panel instead did what any half-decent journalist or environmentalist should have done — visited the towns around the working mines and conducted research on what effects the mine has had on the people, the economy and the ecology.

Assisting the panel in taking an adult view was the Waitaki MP Miles Anderson, who wrote an unemotional support article for a proposed mine at Bendigo, near Cromwell.

Anderson is a man who has made his career on the land, later representing other farmers as chair of Federated Farmers, and later still coming into government as an MP. Like virtually all farmers, he prioritises the environment, knowing that sustainable practices mean survival and a long-term future. Farmers own land. They cherish it, except in very rare examples.

Macraes mine, near Oamaru north of Dunedin, has extracted millions of ounces of gold over the past 35 years via open pit and underground mining. It employs 600 people, making it easily the biggest employer in Oamaru and a huge contributor to the area.

Anderson, the local MP, found that all bar a handful of local people are highly supportive of Macraes, now owned by Canadian listed company OceanaGold, which also owns the mine at Waihi.

A technical report of 209 pages filed in December 2023 noted that overall no material environmental issues have arisen. Macraes has been a responsible miner for more than 30 years. The Oamaru water supplies have not been ruined, toxic dust has not destroyed nearby crops, tourists do not avert their eyes but in large numbers do visit the mine.

The Fast Track panel clearly considered the views of locals and, leaning over to be fair and wisely decoding the hysterical language of some opponents, had weighed the advantages with any, usually temporary, scars caused by extraction, and considered carefully the scientific and technical submissions.

The panel would have ignored the nonsense such as claims that no tax is paid, that hundreds of tons of rock are dug up to obtain a gram of gold (why would anyone do that? A gram of gold is worth around $240) or that toxic dumping destroys local rivers.

This display of respect for science, respect for credible opposition, but without time wasted on monkeys banging saucepans, has lifted Australian and NZ investor respect for the consenting process.

The discount on the value of the Bendigo / Otago project has been mildly reduced, the market value of Santana Minerals rising a little as a result of this display of common sense.

I suppose long-term media observers, such as me, were not surprised that not a single daily paper reporter visited Oamaru and recorded the facts - the economic benefits and the absence of environmental disasters after 35 years of mining.

If the Fast Track process is to be sabotaged by frivolous attention-seekers, the government ought to regulate the need to provide substantial bonds to compensate for any losses and legal costs. Perhaps that bond could be described as a sustainable tariff.

Over the past 45 years I have lent money to, and invested in, many mining ventures. My experience is that respected gold miners have built wealth in NZ and provided careers for thousands of New Zealanders.

As regularly disclosed, my family are minority investors in the Bendigo project and in another potentially valuable project at Waikaka.

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Travel

21 January – Wellington – Fraser Hunter

27 January – Christchurch – Fraser Hunter

Chris Lee

Managing Director

Chris Lee & Partners