Investors urged to seek advice

Investors owed money in failed finance companies need to seek independent advice before selling their debentures, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) partner John Fisk says.

The warning comes after Australian firm Stock & Share Trading Company offered investors in Strategic Finance 20c in the dollar for their debentures.

Fisk said this was the third offer that had been brought to his attention.

Another firm, Marchmont Securities, offered investors 10c in the dollar for their investments in January before Strategic was placed into receivership.

Marchmont's offer resulted in a warning from the Securities Commission. The commission said investors should be cautious of any unsolicited offers.

At the time, the commission said it was very difficult to assess accurately the value of debentures when a company was in moratorium. This was because they were not trading on any organised market.

The commission said under securities legislation it was not illegal to offer to buy securities below their face value.

Fisk said that never in his career as a receiver had he seen firms offering investors in failed finance companies deals to buy them out.

"I haven't seen this with a finance company before. It's certainly unusual. Investors need to get advice, we, the receiver cannot give advice to investors. At the moment we are looking at the book and seeing what may be available," Fisk said.

"To date I am not aware any requests [from investors] have been made to transfer shares."

PWC has yet to release a report on Strategic and it would be premature to speculate how much investors would get from the receivership, Fisk said.

He added that these companies were offering deals on the chance the payout from PWC would be higher than their offer.

Strategic was placed into receivership last month. The company owes 13,000 investors about $147 million.