KEY POINTS:
That other well-known pirate of the moment, Johnny Depp's character Jack Sparrow, displays an uncanny knack for getting out of seemingly hopeless situations against enormous odds.
New Zealand's own corporate "pirate" may need to call on similar other-worldly skills to extricate himself from his latest fracas.
At the height of his fame as one of the 1980s' highest profile New Zealand businessmen, Bridgecorp founder and managing director Rod Petricevic was proudly known as "the Pirate". He lived in a mansion in Sydney's swanky Darling Point.
Early in his 30-year career in the financial markets he was a partner in merchant bank Fay, Richwhite & Co.
He went on to found investment group Euro-National, which invested in other high-profile companies including Ariadne, Renouf Corporation and Kupe.
Shortly before the 1987 sharemarket crash he was rated one of New Zealand's wealthiest men, with a fortune estimated at $80 million.
He gained his swashbuckling sobriquet for the way he snatched key executives from rival companies.
Following the crash, Euro-National's assets plummeted in value. The company posted a $255 million loss in 1988, the year Petricevic resigned from the board.
By the end of 1989 the house was sold, the shares were gone and he was back in Auckland.
It was 1992 before Petricevic reached a final settlement in a dispute over money outstanding on partly paid Euro-National shares.
Euro-National survives within the CDL group of companies even though it made huge losses.
In the early nineties Petricevic started trading quietly, mainly in financing and on a such a small scale that he even had a pot-plant hiring business on the side.
After purchasing former mining concern and toy retailer Bridgecorp as a shell company in 1993, he slowly built the business into New Zealand's seventh largest finance company, specialising in property lending, with more than $600 million in assets.
Last night at Petricevic's Remuera mansion the lights were out and nobody came to the door.
One has to wonder whether, like the fabled Jack Sparrow, this white-collar Pirate has also reached the end of his franchise and is, as the movie title says, "at world's end".
- additional reporting by nzherald staff
